Blog #2: (Mis)Understanding Your Opponents: Marketer’s Toolkit Needs Updates for the Invisible Yardstick of Customer Experience

Key Takeaways:

• Tech goliaths such as Apple, Amazon, and Google have revolutionized the world by making complex tools designed with user experience at the center
• Rather than being limited to competitors in a company’s field, companies are all silently held to ease of use, design, and speed of delivery standards they set
•  All companies with a mass market product need to consider Apple, Amazon, Google, and others as their competitors, regardless of their industry, making a User Experience “benchmark” as a necessary update to the chapter

The book Marketer’s Tookit was originally published by Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation in 2006 (Harvard Business Essentials, 2006). While it offers great information, it needs to be updated for the way Apple, Amazon, Google, and others have shaped competition across all industries in the past 14 years. The first iPhone was released June 29, 2007, one year after the book was published. The authors likely exchanged celebratory texts and emails with each other on Palm Pilots and Nokia devices, now seen as relatively obsolete.

People often marvel at how children as young as two pick up an iPad and instantly operate it’s core functions, only to leave disappointed sticky streaks on traditional displays elsewhere touch capability is not offered.

Similarly, Amazon Prime subscribers have an infinite array of products at their fingertips, promising to arrive in only two (or fewer) days. I must confess I have personally stopped shopping at previously favorite online retailers because waiting two to three weeks for a product seems inexcusable.

The Financial Services Industry is one example of a group that may not identify big tech as a competitor immediately. Yet, many electronic banking sites offered by local and regional banks remain stuck in 2006 in terms of customer experience. According to TheFinancialBrand.com, banks that lead in customer experience are recommended 1.9 more times and occupy a 1.9 times greater share of wallet than their benchmarked competitors (Marous, 2018).

Regardless of industry, all companies are now subject to customer expectations set by big tech. The word “delight” is particularly prevalent in tech mottos, and other industries are taking note.  In 2014, Frito Lay sought to launch a new Cracker Jack line, vowing “new flavors that will continue to delight our consumers” (Roose, 2014). This is not the kind of “chips” normally associated with technological disruption.

If factory-based foods are adapting to new customer experience expectations set in Silicon Valley, you can bet your industry should too.

References

Harvard Business Essentials. (2006). Marketer's Toolkit: The 10 Strategies You Need To Succeed (Harvard Business Essentials). Harvard Business Review Press.

Marous, J. (2018, December 13). Customer Experience Has Massive Impact on Banking Providers’ Bottom Line. Retrieved from The Financial Brand: https://thefinancialbrand.com/78131/cx-banking-customer-experience-revenue-growth/

Roose, K. (2014, August 10). What Silicon Valley’s Favorite Word Says About Tech Priorities. Retrieved from NYMag.com: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/08/silicon-valley-whimsy-is-trumping-usefulness.html