Improving Customer Advocacy Through Customer Experience

India’s online retail market grew at a rapid rate of 78%, albeit on a small base, in the last 10 years. This growth was supported by 9x growth in the number of internet users and 26x growth in the number of online shoppers between 2008 and 2018. In fact, the same consumer has different emotions across the customer journey, especially with online and offline pathways increasingly intersecting.

With growing complexities in the purchase pathways, retailers need to decide what matters most to their core customers in pursuit of the consumption prize. In order to do this, retailers need to build a 360-degree view of the customer journey, identify moments of truth and design the appropriate customer experience proposition.

A report by BCG (Going for Gold: Creating customers that create customers) mentions that “The consumer market in India is estimated at INR 110 Trillion in 2018. Domestic consumption has grown at a rate of 13% in the last decade and is expected to maintain a similar run-rate of 12% CAGR to reach INR 335 Trillion by 2028. Between 2008 and 2028, the share of private consumption in India’s GDP is estimated to increase from 57% to 62%, higher than the emerging market average which is expected to be constant at 50-51%.”

Customer experience is defined as the cumulative impact of all the interactions that a customer has with the company across all touchpoints. Different parameters of customer experience such as value for money, customer service convenience, etc. matter differently across product categories. Improving customer experience across key parameters helps in building advocates who drive positive word of mouth. Positive word of mouth has proven to have a direct impact on growth and market share, across all categories. Therefore, to truly win the prize, a holistic approach is required to drive the Customer Experience Transformation. This transformation comprises of 3 phases – Measure, Act and Improve. (Or as LitmusWorld calls it the M.A.I.^™ framework)

The Measure phase focuses on generating customer insights by identifying the most profitable customers, what matters to these customers and what opportunities lie in their customer journey. Here, it is important to benchmark own performance against competitors to understand the reasons for churn.

The Act phase focuses on using insights from the diagnosing phase to build the customer experience proposition. Keeping that in mind, moments of truth are identified in the customer pathway. Retailers need to prioritise investments on products and services that address these moments of truth and embed them holistically in the organization.

The Improve phase focuses on adopting, tracking and improving key metrics that drive customer experience. As companies evolve from ensuring satisfaction in driving loyalty and, consequently, building advocacy, these metrics, and tracking mechanism also evolve. It is a continuous process of learning and adapting, to drive mindshare and consequently market share.

Retailers can take the support of various tools and techniques as they embark on the customer experience transformation journey. Different tools are applicable to different stages of the journey to help reach specific insights. One such tool is LitmusWorld where we not only help you in measuring your customer insights but also help in designing corrective measures and improving on the key pain areas to create a great customer experience.

Feel free to take a look at the Solutions page and get a view of our capabilities.