Great customer experience wins the race

We at Forrester believe that a consistent customer experience builds a trusted brand. But that’s not the end of the story. Our own (and industry-wide) research shows it also leads to:

• Higher revenue per customer. Customers who have an above-average experience with a company are more willing to buy again from that company. As demonstrated in research from Watermark Consulting, a US-based customer experience firm, companies with high customer experience scores deliver significantly higher shareholder value than low-scoring ones.
• Improved customer retention. Happy customers who had a better experience are less likely to churn. Airlines and wireless service providers have the most to gain — the revenue potential for an airline is more than $800 million annually; it’s nearly $700 million for a wireless service provider. Other firms can see tens of millions of dollars of incremental revenue by embracing a customer experience discipline.
• Customer experience excellence. If you want to attract and retain customers — especially your best customers — you must provide an excellent customer experience at each and every moment of engagement. Be the leading light for your industry; take a page out of the go-to-market strategy telcos use to serve F1 clients.

On that last point – it’s long been known that F1 clients enjoy a great customer experience from their network providers. I recently published a report to take a look behind the scenes as to why this is so, and what sourcing and vendor management professionals in other sectors can learn and apply to their own organizations. I found it’s a two-way street: Providers ensure that the F1 team’s network is reliable, always available, and delivers peak performance when needed, and F1 sourcing professionals provide the guidance, insight, and support to make sure providers know what teams need. This is as much a concern for CIOs as it is for sourcing professionals in their quest to win, serve, and retain customers.

The IT Director at Mercedes AMG Petronas, Matt Harris, told me that if it had been a pit lane service provider, a niche player, success would have been difficult to pull off. They knew latency was a huge concern, so chose Tata Communications, with its global and well-established inter-telco relationships, to mitigate that specific risk.  In other words, the right network provider enables the business to focus on what they’re hired to do — not worry about the network.

Clement Teo is a Forrester senior analyst, serving sourcing and vendor management professionals with a focus on telco services in Asia Pacific. Read Clement’s report: “Driving Toward Communications Sourcing Excellence” and follow Clement on Twitter: @cteo_forrester. Blog: http://blogs.forrester.com/clement_teo

What have you seen great customer experience lead to? How can you be the leading light for your industry? Leave your comments below.

Tata Communications was the Official Connectivity Provider of Formula 1® between 2012 and 2019. Tata Communications was also the Official Managed Connectivity Supplier to Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, and Official Digital Transformation Partner to ROKiT Williams Racing until the end of the 2019 season.