In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, customer needs and behaviours have shifted rapidly in just a few months.
Shoppers across the globe now have less to spend, they feel more vulnerable, their values have evolved and they are becoming increasingly digitally savvy.
In this ‘new world’, the customer experience and a brand’s ability to build lasting relationships with consumers have become more crucial than ever.
As experts at the KPMG Nunwood Excellence Centre put it: “We are entering an ‘integrity economy’, one where the ethics of an organisation are as important as its products and services.”
So which brands are best placed to win in that market?
According to research from KPMG’s international think tank, 23 of the top 50 brands in its Customer Experience Excellence ranking for 2020 are retailers.
TV shopping channel QVC led the way, finishing second in the ranking behind internet bank First Direct, which retained the top spot.
John Lewis & Partners rose up the list to fourth, one place ahead of Lush, while Lakeland and Marks & Spencer also made the top 10.
Rank | Brand | Sector | Year-on-year change |
---|---|---|---|
1 | First Direct | Financial services | Unchanged |
2 | QVC UK | Non-food retail | Up |
3 | Starling Bank | Financial services | New entry |
4 | John Lewis & Partners | Non-food retail | Up |
5 | Lush | Non-food retail | Down |
6 | Monzo | Financial services | Down |
7 | Lakeland | Non-food retail | Down |
8 | Côte Brasserie | Restaurants and fast food | Up |
9 | Marks & Spencer | Non-food retail | Up |
10 | American Express | Financial services | Up |
11 | M&S Food | Grocery retail | Up |
12 | Joules | Non-food retail | Up |
13 | Tesco Mobile | Telecoms | Up |
14 | Wagamama | Restaurants and fast food | Up |
15 | Netflix | Leisure and entertainment | Up |
16 | Nando’s | Restaurants and fast food | Up |
17 | Welsh Water | Utilities | Up |
18 | Miller & Carter | Restaurants and fast food | Up |
19 | National Trust | Leisure and entertainment | Up |
20 | The Body Shop | Non-food retail | Up |
21 | M&S Bank | Financial services | Up |
22 | Premier Inn | Travel and hotels | Up |
23 | Asos | Non-food retail | Up |
24 | Hilton Hotels | Travel and hotels | Up |
25 | Aldi | Grocery retail | Up |
26 | Bupa | Financial services | Up |
27 | Giffgaff | Telecoms | Up |
28 | John Lewis Finance | Financial services | Down |
29 | Skipton Building Society | Financial services | Unchanged |
30 | Waitrose & Partners | Grocery retail | Up |
31 | Waterstones | Non-food retail | Down |
32 | Yo! Sushi | Restaurants and fast food | Up |
33 | Next | Non-food retail | Down |
34 | Krispy Kreme | Restaurants and fast food | Up |
35 | Nationwide | Financial services | Down |
36 | AO.com | Non-food retail | Down |
37 | Screwfix | Non-food retail | Up |
38 | Apple Store | Non-food retail | Down |
39 | Paypal | Financial services | Down |
40 | Fat Face | Non-food retail | Up |
41 | Amazon | Non-food retail | Down |
42 | Specsavers | Non-food retail | Up |
43 | Churchill | Financial services | Up |
44 | River Island | Non-food retail | Up |
45 | Leon | Restaurants and fast food | Up |
46 | Dorothy Perkins | Non-food retail | Up |
47 | Prudential | Financial services | Up |
48 | Ted Baker | Non-food retail | Up |
49 | Octopus Energy | Utilities | Down |
50 | New Look | Non-food retail | Up |
Lessons from the customer experience champions
The KPMG Nunwood Excellence Centre suggests there are now six key pillars to driving the customer experience: integrity; resolution and innovation; expectations; time and effort; personalisation; and empathy.
Integrity
“Trust is an outcome of consistent organisational behaviour that demonstrates trustworthiness,” KPMG says. “There are trust-building events where organisations have the need to publicly react to a difficult situation. And trust-building moments where individual actions by staff add up to create trust in the organisation as a whole.
“Behavioural economics teaches us that we trust people we like. The ability to build rapport is therefore critical in creating trust.”
KPMG hails Waitrose’s creation of a £1m community support fund, Deliveroo’s donations of 500,000 meals to NHS staff and Aviva giving £15m to the Red Cross and NHS charities as examples of brands that have shown integrity during the coronavirus crisis.
Resolution and innovation
Turning a poor experience into a great one is crucial if brands are to retain customers for the longer term.
As KPMG’s report puts it: “Customer recovery is highly important. Even with the best processes and procedures, things will go wrong.
“Great companies have a process that not only puts the customer back in the position they should have been in as rapidly as possible, but also makes the customer feel really good about the experience.”
A host of banks and building societies acted quickly to preempt this, scrapping overdraft fees and introducing payment holidays on loans and mortgages to help customers in financial difficulty.
Expectations
Even during a global pandemic, customers have expectations around how their demands will be fulfilled. As KPMG points out: “Customer satisfaction is the difference between expectation and actual delivery. Understanding, delivering and, if possible, exceeding expectations is a key skill of great organisations.”
KPMG points to Tesco as a prime example of a business that achieved this during the pandemic, praising the way it “reacted quickly to changing customer demand, putting the needs of the many first and restricting the products manufactured by its suppliers to the essentials”.
It adds that weekly customer email updates from chief executive Dave Lewis kept shoppers informed of changes being made for customers, staff and communities, proactively managing consumer expectations at the height of the crisis.
Time and effort
The modern shopper is increasingly time-poor and wants “instant gratification,” KPMG says.
As a result, “removing unnecessary obstacles, impediments and bureaucracy to enable the customer to achieve their objectives quickly and easily have been shown to increase loyalty”.
The likes of Amazon continue to use time as a source of competitive advantage, growing their sales during the pandemic by rationalising ranges so that it could maintain rapid delivery times.
Personalisation
Retailers and brands have long grappled with the art of personalisation and attempting to master it in order to give their shoppers genuinely unique and tailored shopping experiences.
During the coronavirus crisis, shoppers wanted to feel as though their specific needs and circumstances were being understood and accounted for. Companies’ abilities to address customers directly by name and access knowledge of preferences and past interactions are all key to creating an experience that feels personal and starts to build an emotional connection.
Supermarkets leaned into this, offering dedicated opening hours for older and vulnerable customers and NHS staff, while KPMG also hails Starbucks for the way it extended its mental health benefits to workers’ family members, offering them personalised, confidential mental health care during the pandemic.
Empathy
Arguably the most important pillar during the pandemic, this metric measures how a brand drives a rapport with its customers based on an understanding of their personal needs and circumstances.
According to KPMG: “Empathy-creating behaviours are key to establishing a strong relationship and involve the telling of personal stories that reflect back to the customer how you felt when in similar circumstances. Then going the extra step because you understand how they feel.”
For example, Sainsbury’s prioritised older and vulnerable shoppers for online food deliveries, FirstVet offered free video appointments to people who were self-isolating with pets and Admiral Insurance gave its customers a £25 ‘stay at home’ refund because fewer drivers were on the road.
How First Direct scooped first place again
British bank First Direct has been top of the KPMG ranking five times in the last 11 years. The report calls First Direct “a global exemplar of what constitutes customer best practice”.
Amid the pandemic, First Direct moved quickly to protect its customers by offering fee-free overdrafts, loan repayment holidays and lower insurance payments.
It quickly expanded what KPMG calls “a dedicated, empowered team” to “empathetically respond” to customer queries and difficulties.
“Proactive engagement, strong communications and a highly committed team meant their customers continued to receive outstanding service at a time when they needed it most,” the report says.
It highlighted five key areas that underpin First Direct’s approach to the customer, all of which have served it well during the coronavirus crisis:
- A strong sense of mission and purpose with around 3,000 people committed to the customer.
- Its “people-first” approach. First Direct has three critical metrics it uses to shape its approach to business: how are our people feeling? How are our customers feeling? What is our commercial performance?
- The “active nurturing” of its culture. First Direct’s culture is recognised by its leadership team as “a critical part of the employee experience”, KPMG says. It suggests that culture is “carefully nurtured to ensure it continues to be relevant for today’s challenges”.
- Deep knowledge of the customer and a clear target experience. According to KPMG’s consumer research, First Direct “knows exactly what customers are seeking physically, rationally and psychologically and are very diligent in delivering the target experience”.
- Physical reinforcement. First Direct uses “symbols and totems” to ensure the brand and its purpose remain “uppermost in their peoples’ mind”.
Leon’s recipe for success
Leon was the biggest riser in the KPMG Nunwood Excellence Centre ranking in 2020, rocketing 204 places to establish itself among the top 50 brands.
The business was established in 2004 when co-founders Henry Dimbleby and John Vincent had a vision of building a chain that served up “fast food with a purpose”.
Despite growing to operate 65 restaurants across the UK, Leon has stayed true to that vision and it came to the fore during the coronavirus crisis, allowing the company to display two of KPMG’s six key pillars, integrity and empathy.
Leon’s restaurants remained open for takeaway and delivery services during lockdown and served thousands of meals to NHS staff at a 50% discount. It also transformed its restaurants into grocery shops at a time when panic buying was on the rise, adding fresh food to its click-and-collect platform.
The chain has also pledged to donate any profits made during the pandemic to the Feed NHS campaign.
First Direct, Leon and its peers in the top 50 offer examples of how retailers and brands can ramp up their customer experience credentials in a post-coronavirus world.
But others still need to adapt. As KPMG concludes: “The ‘new customer’ has the potential to disrupt every enterprise. How well businesses compete in this changed environment will determine future viability and growth.”
No comments yet