I have battled for a long time with my desire to shop at Waitrose or Ocado and my wallet’s desire to shop at Asda.  Yes, Waitrose is on the whole a nicer experience. If I shop with Ocado I get to know who is going to deliver my shopping, the licence plate of the van he will arrive in and what fruit his van will be dressed in and he takes my shopping into the kitchen for me –  while my Asda delivery man deposits my shopping at my front door with hardly a syllable uttered.

However, with Ocado, I have to spend about 10% extra on an average shop for the privilege of knowing ‘Barry’s’ name prior to arrival. While this is wonderful service, it simply isn’t something on which I place enough importance in my shopping experience.  With three hungry children, value is more important.

So I was interested to hear about Publix – an up-and-coming American supermarket that promises both service and value. Interestingly, Publix’s mantra is that, being so close to the consumer, they know not only what their customers want now, but also what they’ll want next.

I want my service companies to meet my needs…but I am delighted when they anticipate them.  Service improvements such as I’ve described by Ocado are nice, but they don’t change my opinion – as they really don’t meet any needs I have.

When online grocery shopping really took off, around 2004, it was seen as the next big thing. Consumers were fascinated with the idea of hassle free shopping.

Then the novelty of shopping groceries online started to fade as people realised that it took them a lot of time to fill up their baskets, perhaps more than they would have spent if they had gone to the physical shop. At least, they knew more or less where things were physically located. In addition, it was the nightmare of organising the delivery. People also realised that they were missing-out on the great promotions or the new products.

Since then some things have changed (e.g. more delivery slot options, free delivery, etc.) and many people continue shopping online. However, consumers are not really being wooed by the online experience offered by grocery retailers.  It’s still tedious and time consuming. Unless you have the exact name of the variety of the product you want or its code, browsing for it is not really easy as you have to go through long list of small visuals of similar products.

However the online shopping experience for groceries may be about to change now with slingshotshopping.com – a new platform that promises to make shopping easier and more fun.

Slingshot basically allows you to add products to your existing online shopping basket from many places. You could add a product from a facebook page, pintisterest or any page as you see them in day-to-day life while browsing the Internet – meaning that you don’t longer seem to have to browse the entire site of Tesco.com or Ocado.com (or the website of the online grocery retailer you use) to look for a specific product.

The advantage for retailers, on the other hand, is that Slingshot facilitates impulse purchasing, so their sales could go up. Slingshot is already working with the bigger online grocery retailers in the UK – Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda and Ocado – and is keen on adding more retailers to its platform. It has been tipped as one of top 10 start-ups in the world right now by Forbes, TechRadar and PepsiCo.

This is definitely a space that all (not only grocery retailers) need to watch out for.

Once upon a time, luxury brands were premium and budget brands were mass-market.  Yet as consumers become more demanding, brands are becoming ever more creative in meeting multiple, seemingly irreconcilable customer needs.

The launch of Bloc Hotels is in Birmingham is the latest in a series of such feats.  A ‘Boutique Budget’ hotel brand, Bloc has developed a new model based on an in-depth understanding of customers’ behaviour and needs when travelling on a budget (rooms start at £30).

As most short-stay travellers do not unpack and prefer not to eat in their hotels, Bloc has chosen not to offer storage or dining facilities.  The resulting savings mean that its hotels can focus on those elements that cue a premium accommodation experience for guests: for example luxury linen, powerful drench showers, state-of-the-art WiFi and HD TVs, and a superb location.

By focusing on the brand touch points that make a real difference to its customers, Bloc is able to provide a luxurious experience in spite of its failure to tick all of the customary ‘luxury hotel’ boxes (with associated price tags).  This innovative challenger model has potential to shake up not only the travel industry, but also potentially any luxury product category.

Even if you can’t build your customer experience from the ground up, do you have a full understanding of what’s important to your customers and what isn’t?  Focus on the elements that have a real impact on consumers’ perceptions, rather than wasting resources on those that don’t, and you can create a superior experience without an associated increase in cost.

If you’re interested in identifying and innovating around the touch points that are most significant and differentiating for your customers, drop us an email today to find out more about how The Value Engineers can help you chart and make the most of your customer journey.

I travelled to Paris this week and stayed overnight.

The hotel sent me a feedback survey the very next day which I duly completed with a comment about the check-in process.

It was only a little niggle in what was otherwise an ok stay but they asked, so I told them.

Within 24 hours I had received a personalised email in response with appropriate apology and an offer of an upgrade next time I stay.

Closing the loop done well.

Yes, I’m more likely to choose that brand of hotel again and yes I’m telling people about the experience.

One person taking responsibility and taking action swiftly has turned a potential detractor into a promoter.

By contrast, we’ve booked a week’s skiing next month (having first checked out the hotel on Tripadvisor) and have been more than a little concerned to read a lengthening series of terrible reviews from customers who have stayed there very recently.

Dreadful food, cold showers, staff who don’t have a clue and don’t take responsibility.

At least there is snow !

We contacted the company and told them we had read the reviews and were worried. They responded with something about ‘teething problems’ and promised that they were sorting it all out.

The poor reviews keep coming. ‘Don’t book’, ‘Avoid’ etc. are not words calculated to make us look forward to a care-free holiday.

Promises are one thing – and these came from the brand manager.

Keeping promises is something very different indeed.

This company know very well that if they continue to provide such a poor customer experience they will be in deep trouble and yet they haven’t yet taken the action needed to fix the problems they clearly have in running an effective operation.

I’ve just called the brand manager to ask him what he proposes to do to ensure we get the holiday his brand has promised and we have paid for.

Will he take responsibility and give me the guarantees I’m looking for ?

Will he take refuge in blaming others or simply spouting platitudes about how ‘customer feedback is important to us’ ?

I wonder…

Come on, put your money where your brand promise is ?

Show me the customer (and especially this customer) really does matter.

Watch this space…

PS If you want me to name names, please drop me a line timkaner@thevalueengineers.com

We often take it for granted when we refer to a ‘brand’ that we all mean the same thing when we use the word.  Sometimes, however, it is useful to return back to basics and remind ourselves of the power of a really simple definition.

We believe that a ‘brand’ is more than a just a logo and is more than just an advertising campaign… a ‘brand’ is the total customer experience with a company across all of its touchpoints, as a result of buying and using the products and services sold and operated under the brand name. So, the brand name represents the overall promise of a certain experience which a company makes to its customers.

How would you describe your brand’s promise of a customer experience across all of its touchpoints? We can help you define this promise to help make your customers’ experience even more powerful than it is already and truly differentiated from the competition.

•  ‘Interactions with brands are sources of experience, experiences which influence consumer attitudes’ – P. Gomy / F. Casellas
• ‘The only source of knowledge is experience’ – Albert Einstein
• “A brand is a living entity – and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures” – Michael Eisner, CEO Disney
• “What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children” – William Blake
• “Every detail…image…shadow…placements…contributes to the user’s associations and judgements about the company they are dealing with” – Shawn Borsky

Borrowed with pride from all over the place.