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Aan essay on Integrated Customer Experience- the heart of marketing for every industry

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Integrated Customer Experience

Introduction

Consumers today are considerably volatile or unpredictable in terms of their demand and preferences, which to a certain degree is justified. They are willing to pay for a product that is worthy; with an abundance of different brands and products, it has become easy for them to choose a brand over another. Today’s consumer market is extremely competitive than it was ever before; customer experience is the key to ensure the degree of their devotion to a particular brand. There is another element that works in adverse manner; globalization has practically intensified the level of competition organisations have been dealing with earlier. It has now become fairly impossible to consider “what is being offered to the customers is unique”. It also is important for the organisations to move past the orthodox methods including- considering data to weigh possible experience” and look into the actual quality and type of experience their products are offering. There have been numerous studies and experiments conducted in order to study the element of customer experience and how it can be influenced.

Main Body

Customer experience must be an intended act, instead of unplanned or spontaneous result. The point is manufacturers and organisations must be well aware of their customers and their demands and preferences in order to ensure they deliver to such expectations. Innovation is another way for ensuring a strong hold over customers; customers today are considerably open and embracing to new technologies. However, even innovations must be in line with the sort of demand and preferences customers portray in order to ensure their loyalty towards the organisation. 

Customer Experience

According to Brodie et.al, (2013) have defined the term “customer experience” in different manner. However, it can be regarded as “consumer encounter quality with products or brands”; how a customer encounters the quality certainly affects the nature of experience of the customer. There are various other aspects as well that have the potential to affect the consumer experience quality including- packaging, advertising, the final product to how careful the company is in terms of taking care of their customers, reliability and service features. There are organisations that have produced positive results with constructive consumer experience, while there are organisations still struggling even to outline the plan of action for achieving such outcomes. According to Hair et.al, 2012 organisations previously did seek for competitiveness through the means of offering innovative product and services. The mentality that previously worked through the management at almost every organisation then is “identifying the needs and providing products matching to those needs” would be more than enough to ensure customer loyalty. This however has changed over the last decade, since it is really tough to differentiate among the functionality of products; the experience that customers gain in the process makes the difference. Every procedure that an organisation outlines for providing best in class product to their customer is linked directly to the quality of experience that a customer might encounter.

Integrated Customer Experience

This considering the technical dimension is “a process of aligning people, procedures and technologies in a line to help manufacturers deliver “customer experience they have always intended to”. This can as well be regarded as keeping promises made by the service providers to the customers. Organisations today as opined by Rafols et.al, 2012, have started to consider the human side more than an entirely commercial one. The term “people-centric” has apparently replaced the term “customer centric”. The term allegedly reduces the human side to it and increases the commercial aspect significantly, which according to Malhotra, 2007, can often lead to making business mistakes. “Customer experience” has become the 4th economic offering including goods, services and commodities. It is vital to recognize this 4th element as customers always seek for experiences that can last for a long time. An increase in the consumer demand would certainly refer to a quality experience they had while using a particular product or a brand. The term however is according to Rafols et.al, 2012 has previously been restricted to a certain type service only such as- theaters and theme parks. However, the term today has moved beyond the conventional meanings; products or services have certainly become interchangeable for there is a lack of practical differentiation. This has certainly led to a competition that is entirely based over experiences rather than the products.

Customer experience & conversion

Conversion is directly connected with relevant and consistent user experience, and relevance to a considerable degree is a matter of awareness or perception. How a customer develops certain perception is entirely upon the quality of experience he or she develops over time. Conversion for obvious reasons remains entirely over the organisation and how they want their brands to be perceived or how a customer develops a perception. This clearly shows the attitude an organisation has towards its customers and how serious they are about providing what is worthy of consumer attention and money. While on one hand, conversion can be easy, it on the other hand can as well be tricky; it simply is a matter of awareness and common sense as opined by Brodie et.al, 2013.

However, both have been synonymous; conversion can only happen when an organisation lives upto the promises made to consumers. Customers will only consider leaning towards a product or a brand if only the manufacturer is consistent in terms of its promises. A customer according to Reinartz et.al, 2011 is highly fickle minded, since the market today is crawling with manufacturers offering identical products. What makes the difference is the user experience. For example: a customer would only consider a product useful for the second time, when it has used it for the first time and experienced more good than bad. Smartphone market today is filled with numerous brands offering products to their customers; however, “Apple IPhone” has been consistent in terms of providing best quality of user experience. This is the fundamental reason for Apple’s popularity and sustenance thoroughly, regardless of how competitive the smartphone market is today. With brands like Samsung, Nokia, Huawei and others offering maximum usefulness in considerably low price, Apple hasn’t experienced any competition, however for a particular customer category. Apple Inc. has been justifying in terms of delivering upto their promises made earlier, which is the key to ensure conversion. Shankar, V., Inman, J.J., Mantrala, M., Kelley, E. and Rizley, R., 2011 suggest that there is a number of techniques that have gained popularity across organisations for monitoring conversion including- email, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) etc. However, it takes more than just monitoring the traffic including- what convinces customers to finalize and buy. Looking into these elements would certainly help an organisation to ensure they are keeping an eye over their consumers. Innovation has also been a part of the Apple Inc., they have been innovative with their products; features like AI (Artificial Intelligence) has been quite remarkable for ensuring customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

Customer experience has always been crucial for any brand, irrespective of their market share or brand image. The reputation of any brand depends to a considerable degree on user perception along with the potential connections of that user, regardless of place, person and time. A general interaction with any social object, an employee of a content of the business does have the potential to impact the consumer perception and therefore brand’s reputation. Definitely, at times where the significance of the “word of mouth”, “shift from the sales to buy”, reducing trust/confidence along with effect of community gets clearer. The quality of experience is also directly connected with the “conversion”, which happens when an organisation delivers as promised regardless of when and where. As discussed earlier, customer experience has always been vital for any brand, irrespective of “how big of a brand they are” or “how much of the market share they own”. This would certainly be helpful for the organisation to grab attention of their potential customers.product

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