Achieving Perfect Customer Experience — American Express As Case Study

What kind of organization doesn’t want to have loyal customers, an edge above the competition, greater revenue, and expanding market share? However, achieving this is not a cup of tea. And an important piece in this puzzle is Customer Experience.

So, ideally, business strategies must evolve and focus around CX. Now an important question that every organization deals with is, how to enhance their Customer Experience? Simple! Enhance each type of experience that aggregates to form CX.

Confused? Let’s look at this new concept of CX in detail.

What Exactly is Customer Experience?

From the varied information sources, we have the birds-eye view of what Customer Experience is. But what we often overlook is the show that runs behind the curtains. CX is not just a direct simple topic you can learn about instantly. Rather, it is a much deeper subject that requires consistent practice to master.

Here’s how HubSpot defines CX:

“Customer Experience is the wholesome impression of your brand that a customer derives from the varied aspects of their journey with the brand.”

For any transaction, big or small, customers go through a specific journey with your brand. This customer journey has multiple touchpoints. And Customer Experience is the sum total of all the varied experiences across all these touchpoints. Hence, it is important to manage these individual experiences to deliver a perfect overall experience.

In this series of blogs, we will be focusing on what these individual experiences are that your customers have and how you can enhance them to get the best business and brand results!

Before we dive in, let’s understand why brands keep obsessing on CX.

Why Customer Experience?

A good CX can achieve you great returns not just in terms of profits but also customer retention. Here are some statistics proving the worth if CX for organizations:

• With CX organizations are able to achieve a growth of 85% in sales above their competitors.
• About two-thirds of companies are competing on customer experience as a core differentiator according to Gartner.
• A good CX is a catalyst of loyalty for 96% of customers according to Forbes.
• Retaining merely 5% of customers leads to a 95% increase in profitability and is 25 times less expensive than making new customers according to Harvard Business School.
• Around 52% of customers would switch brands if they do not receive a personalized customer experience according to Salesforce.

Now, let us see some remarkable examples of CX by some top and well-known brands of the world…

How are Brands Across the World Managing Their CX?

One thing that all the successful CX examples teach us is that Customer Experience isn’t a result of drastic steps. Rather it is the small changes and efforts that transform your CX to great extents.

For instance, McDonald’s, the tasty food giant whom we all look forward to as a lender of last resort has always put its customers as a priority. McDonald’s takes customer feedback, not for the sake of it but actually implements their suggestions. This is why it made its menu simpler and installed digital self-order kiosks, reducing waiting time and making customers happy. This results in the enhancement of Brand Experience.

Image: How McDonald’s used a customer’s tweet suggestion and converted it to a new offer.

Another tasty example is from Domino’s who made ordering pizzas more fun by using emoji orders. All the customer needed was a Dominos.com account and a saved Easy Order. Text or tweet the emoji and your pizza is home in 30 minutes. Creating a fun touchpoint for conventional processes can gain you huge CX. This is the enhancement of the Delivery Experience.

Apart from food giants, sports brands like Adidas make technology their friends to serve customers better. The Run Genie by Adidas gives runners real-time insights on what type of shoes would fit their taste and trends. Amazing, isn’t it? This is known as Store Experience enhancement.

A classic example of CX that has achieved excellence in all types of experiences is that of American Express. Let’s discuss this case further…

The American Express Case: An Introduction

American Express also known as Amex was founded in the 1850s as a delivery service. Over the years it gained momentum and today it has backed a position in the largest global payments networks. It has a B2C as well as B2B clientage making it an ideal case for every organization. Customer relationship is embedded within the very culture of Amex.

In an interview with Forbes, Raymond Joabar, EVP, Global Servicing Network at American Express, stated an astonishing story of Amex customer care.

Once an Amex merchant hotel manager called the Amex team requesting their assistance to trace a customer whom they had sold a toxic cake. Amex team immediately got into action, gathered information, identified 21 card members who made transactions at the cafe in that hour and reviewed the accounts to find the right match and stop a tragedy from occurring.

When they say Customer Care, Amex employees truly do care for their customers irrespective of whether it is related to their products and services or not. That is why their contact center employees are called Customer Care Professionals. And they are empowered to do everything for the benefit of the customers.

And this is only one aspect of CX shown by Amex. There are a lot many things one can learn from them. We shall continue this case part by part in the next blogs.

Conclusion

Customer Experience isn’t just black and white. Because it ultimately deals with humans and their behavior. So it has a variety of flavors to it. And that is precisely why you must put yourself into the shoes of your customers and think of their experience at each point of the customer journey. It’s only then that you can enhance your overall customer experience.

In the other parts of this series, we will learn more about each of the six varied types of experiences forming Customer Experience

1. Brand Experience

2. Product Experience

3. Service Experience

4. Store Experience

5. Delivery Experience

6. Contact Center Experience

So, keep reading…