Nowadays, customer experience is more and more considered as one of the main differentiators across industries, but there has also been a large discussion with regards to what actually makes it great.  For some, the answer is having an easy and frictionless journey, for others it is having a memorable experience that makes you go “wow!”.  There is also a third view which says that you need to have both.    

In relative research that was published from Harvard Business Review in 2021, 4500 consumers from the US were asked about their experience with 134 brands in five different industries.  One of the findings was that customer spending is correlated to both frictionless and memorable experience, even though the degree of this correlation is different by industry.

A very important conclusion was that from a certain point and beyond there are zero-sum gains for companies that pursue both easy and “wow” experiences as a strategy.  In plain words, if we don’t prioritise one of these routes, there can be growth up to a certain level, but if we want to go over and above, then a choice must be made on either be increasingly frictionless or increasingly memorable. 

The findings also showed that brands with big market share tended to be easier to do work with, while more memorable brands usually had a market share which did not exceed 15%.  From the above, one might say that the path to growth for companies will come from focusing on making customer experiences as frictionless as possible rather than be considered as memorable.  But is this the answer?  How possible is to migrate from one strategy and follow another? 

Theoretically speaking this could be possible, but it means that a company would have to abandon its’ positioning and change its’ DNA.  In my view, there is no right or wrong way to manage customer experience.  Different approaches are more suitable for different brands, based on how they compete, so the first step is to be clear about what type of brand we have.     

For instance, mass market brands that compete on price, variety, and availability, invest heavily on making the experience for the customer as frictionless as possible.  On the other hand, boutique brands compete by giving memorable experiences to their clients through carefully planned customer journeys.  

In conclusion, companies should always remind themselves that managing customer experience is the same as managing clients for growth.  Without making these customers keep coming back, the road to success would be difficult.