Experiencing the Brand; Branding the Experience

Most companies realize that customer experience is critical to their success. Many have done a good job of theoretically defining a branded customer experience for their organization. However, in Accenture's experience, many companies run into trouble putting the branded customer experience into practice—a puzzle that leading companies have solved to their benefit. By learning from these masters, other companies can develop the capabilities and the commitment required to turn their customers into advocates, and keep them coming back for more.

Successful companies forge a strong bond with their customers by creating and consistently delivering an experience that not only meets customers' needs and preferences, but is also strongly aligned with the company's overall business and brand strategy. In an era when product features are quickly duplicated and prices swiftly matched, the ability to provide such a branded customer experience has become a critical differentiator for businesses in both the business-to-business and business-to-consumer sectors.

Accenture has found that masters are able to effectively create and deliver a branded customer experience because they excel in two significant areas. First, they rigorously include customers' voices in the process, as well as measure the delivery of the experience on an ongoing basis. This enables them to understand the key levers in the experience, what opportunities for improvement exist and what impact these changes will have on customer loyalty. Second, they operationalize these insights to ensure the customer experience is delivered consistently—across the organization and time after time, regardless of how, or when, the customer interacts with the company.

Accenture believes that many companies are in a good position to make fundamental and lasting improvements to their customer experiences because they already have much of the necessary technologies in place—especially the powerful data warehouses needed to support data collection and mining.

Accenture's research into high-performance businesses has found that the most successful companies exhibit a relentless focus on the customer. At the most tangible level, that focus is manifested in the day-to-day interactions between an organization and those who patronize it.

While there is no single course of action guaranteed to produce results, we have observed that leading organizations take similar actions. Focusing on the customer experience by emulating these masters will not turn a company into a high-performance business overnight. But it will help a company in its pursuit of high performance by creating happier and more loyal customers, a stronger brand and, ultimately, a more robust balance sheet.

Woodrow "Woody" Driggs leads Accenture's Operational CRM business, which delivers integrated enterprise-class CRM solutions that deliver high-end capabilities for direct sales, field service and partner relationship management. He is also responsible for our alliances with Siebel, SAP, Microsoft and other enterprise CRM platform providers. He has an extensive background in the communications and high tech industry. Based in Boston, he has an extensive background in the communications and high tech industry.

Susan Piotroski is senior executive with Accenture's Marketing & Customer Strategy group, with responsibility for managing the company's Brand Analytic service line. She is based in Wellesley, Massachusett, and has more than 15 years of experience in the consulting industry, where she has helped companies in a wide range of industries develop and execute customer, brand and advertising strategies.