Innovative and superior customer experience strategy By Bhawani Nandan Prasad IIM Calcutta Mature companies routinely perform a set of sound, standard practices that result in a high-quality outcome. It's true for manufacturers--they don't get up in the morning and start pondering how they'll produce high-quality widgets that day. Similarly, retailers have practices for keeping their supply chains flowing and their shelves stocked, and media companies have practices for getting the news online and into print. That's how grown-ups do business. Companies that want to produce a high-quality customer experience also need to routinely perform a set of sound, standard practices. These practices fall under six high-level disciplines: strategy, customer understanding, design, measurement, governance, and culture. The strategy discipline is the game plan. It's a set of practices for crafting a customer experience strategy, aligning it with the company's overall strategy and brand attributes, and then sharing that strategy with employees to guide decision-making and prioritization across the organization. The customer experience strategy defines the intended experience. For example, the experience at Big Bazaar - a large retail store where customers push giant carts through huge aisles stacked high with value-priced products--is very different from the experience at an Apple store, where customers see a comparatively sparse selection of pricey products and get expert assistance with picking the right one. Big Bazaar's experience aligns with its overall strategy as a cost leader; Apple's aligns with its strategy of innovation. The strategy discipline is critical because it provides the blueprint for the experience we design, deliver, manage, and measure. Without it, the employees and partners won't know whether to deliver an experience like the one at Big Bazaar, at Apple, or somewhere else entirely. Worse, we could deliver a Frankenstein experience of mismatched parts, like putting an Apple genius bar in the middle of a Big Bazaar store where customers wouldn't care about it but would worry that prices were going up to pay for it. The customer understanding discipline is a set of practices that create a consistent shared understanding of who customers are, what they want and need, and how they perceive the interactions they're having with the company today. In other words, it's the thing that replaces everyone's best guesses about customers with real, actionable insights about customers. The practices in the design discipline help organizations envision and then implement customer interactions that meet or exceed customer needs. It spans the complex systems of people, products, interfaces, services, and spaces that your customers encounter in retail locations, over the phone, or through digital media like websites and mobile apps. The measurement discipline is a set of practices that let organizations quantify customer experience quality in a consistent manner across the enterprise and deliver actionable insights to employees and partners. This is how you put customer-experience metrics on par with traditional-business metrics, such as sales and profitability.

The governance practice is essential because it holds people accountable for their role in the customer experience ecosystem and helps keep bad experiences from getting out the door. It also gives a boost to initiatives that improve customer experience. The culture discipline consists of practices that create a system of shared values and behaviors that focus employees on delivering a great customer experience. You might think of it as the way you shape what your employees do when you're not in the room. Apple founder Steve Jobs said when announcing the iPhone in 2007, “Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.” However, the product is only part of the story. Revolutionary products such as the iPhone flourish by providing a fantastic customer experience. It’s the product, the in-store experience, the applications, the customer service, the whole ecosystem. In today’s globally competitive world, companies that want to succeed must combine innovation with customer needs and satisfaction. Apple has been able to create successful new business in recent years because they focused intensely on the customer experience. Customer Experience Management is a result of many overlapping messages, product features used, goals achieved, and emotions felt. Companies that address the full spectrum of levels of customer needs will be more valuable, profitable, enduring, and strategically aligned with the market. This new Total Experience Model integrates functional, activity, and life needs with the right mix of basic, performance, and delight features. Meanwhile, some companies need to stay viable and healthy by having product lines that turn over quickly. These companies achieve success, in part, by having a pipeline of innovations that continuously replace outdated features and products. They recognize that their products and innovation investments must continuously improve to fulfill their customers’ activity and life needs. Whether it's launching its latest iPhone or iPad, Apple sure knows how to create buzz with consumers and the media. While other companies fight for attention, Apple seems to effortlessly dominate the media--not to mention the hearts and minds of customers--with its new product launches. Recently, Apple sold 2 million iPhone 5's on day one, and then a couple of days later the stock hit the stratospheric price of $700 a share. So you could say they're doing something right. The strategies and tactics used by Apple to create media and consumer buzz that were not commonly employed by other brands. Many companies go to great lengths to preserve confidentiality during the product development phase, but Apple is a master of the teaser marketing campaign, dragging on the suspense for as long as possible. For weeks if not months before the release of every iPhone, the media conversation builds to deafening levels. Apple stokes the buzz by providing virtually no information. Luxury goods marketers have long realized that scarcity (real or perceived) makes a product more desirable and in demand. Scarcity not only increases the value of a product, it propels the procrastinators and all us who want to be part of the trendy crowd to step up and buy. That's why it is a favored tactic of designer handbag manufacturers and other luxury goods. Apple has found its own ways to hype the sense of faux scarcity. It did not have enough

phones available when it went on sale. Just one hour after the iPhone 5 went on sale for preorders on September 14, 2012, the Apple website reported that heavy demand had necessitated delayed delivery. Adding to the illusion of scarcity was the fact that you could only preorder the phone, and lines were long. The tactic worked. Not only did the iPhone 5 set a record for first-day sales, even two weeks after the iPhone went on sale, it was on a back order of three to four weeks, prolonging the difficulty (and desirability) of owning one. Apple products have always been designed to be different, delightful and friendly. "Friendly” because the core driver of every Apple product is the removal of complexity in favor of ease of use with innovative features like touchscreen "gestures” for zooming and scrolling or SIRI, their personal assistant. Its history of innovative, "friendly” gadgets creates anticipation about what they will do next to advance the consumer experience. The new iPhone 5 ads capture its new friendly features in one phrase: "4-inch Retina display, ultrafast wireless, iOS 6, in a thinner, lighter design.” While other tech manufacturers see their products as utilitarian, geeky and inexpensive, Apple is the opposite: cool, friendly, and upmarket. Apple has created a brand culture that has attracted a passionate brand community of followers who identify with the brand's innovativeness, simplicity, and coolness. They are fans who lock into the entire family of Apple products and must have the latest gadget right when it comes out, even if it means waiting in line for hours. It's quite a phenomenon to behold. Once the apple iphone was launched, it had been costing the significant $599. Nevertheless, thousands and thousands of individuals hurried away to find the brand new telephone, shelling out another around they’d have experienced these people anxiously waited an additional a few months. a few months following the preliminary discharge, Apple company decreased the buying price of the actual apple iphone in order to $399. This particular angered Apple’s faithful clients as well as customers that bought the brand new telephone simply several weeks previously. Twelve months later on, Apple company once again decreased the buying price of the actual apple iphone in order to $199, 66% under the initial cost. Within This summer, 2007, the actual Iphone had been all of the hoopla. Their own item had been probably the most revolutionary away on the market location, Iphone marketing strategy providing Apple company the actual independence in order to cost the actual apple iphone from whatever these people desired. Numerous thought which Apple company experienced reduce the cost following finding less than anticipated apple iphone product sales. Technology items tend to be usually contending towards “the most recent as well as greatest” whilst sustaining another cost on the market location. Experienced Apple company not really decreased the buying price of the actual apple iphone, the client bottom might have dwindled rapidly as numerous individuals are not willing to invest $599 on the mobile phone, regardless of the number of helpful functions the telephone might have. Since the apple iphone continues to be to become the main smartphone close to, the merchandise keeps growing, growing dimension abilities, growing the amount of programs obtainable, as well as supplying brand new functions which are launched via brand new iterations from the telephone, still give a higher worth towards the apple iphone as the prices continues to be appropriate.

At the moment within the item existence period, Apple company is constantly on the discharge improved iterations from the apple iphone. Along with the majority of apple iphone customers un-willing to buy a more recent edition from the apple iphone due to cost, the prospective target audience for that more recent era cell phones is actually brand new apple iphone clients. Along with Apple’s set up bottom ongoing to develop, they’ve discovered a means generate reoccurring income using their current clients with the product sales of the software downloading. Because increasing numbers of people buy the apple iphone, Apple’s target audience with regard to new clients is constantly on the diminish. Luckily with regard to Apple company, they’ve built-in an additional supply with regard to income which proceeds through the existence I-phone marketing strategy from the item. According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, Apple's iPhone 5 overtook Samsung's Galaxy S3 to become the world's best-selling smartphone model for the first time ever in the fourth quarter of 2012. A rich touchscreen, extensive distribution and generous operator subsidies have propelled the iPhone 5 to the top spot. As BlackBerry launches the first smartphone from its make-or-break BB10 line in India, one of its most loyal markets, the company faces new competition from a formidable rival that has long had a minimal presence in the country. More than four years after it started selling iPhones in India, Apple Inc is now aggressively pushing the iconic device through installment payment plans that make it more affordable, a new distribution model and heavy marketing blitz. "Now your dream phone" at 5,050 rupees , read a recent full front-page ad for an iPhone 5 in the Times of India, referring to the initial payment on a phone priced at 45000. The new-found interest in India suggests a subtle strategy shift for Apple, which has moved tentatively in emerging markets and has allowed rivals such as Samsung and Blackberry to dominate with more affordable smartphones. With the exception of China, all of its Apple stores are in advanced economies. Apple expanded its India sales effort in the latter half of 2012 by adding two distributors. Previously it sold iPhones only through a few carriers and stores it calls premium resellers. The result: iPhone shipments to India between October and December nearly tripled to 250,000 units from 90,000 in the previous quarter, according to an estimate. At The Mobile Store, an Indian chain owned by the Essar conglomerate, which says it sells 15 percent of iPhones in the country, iPhone sales tripled between December and January, thanks to a monthly payment scheme launched last month. India is the world's No. 2 cellphone market by users, but most Indians can't afford fancy handsets. Smartphones account for just a tenth of total phone sales. In India, 95 percent of cellphone users have prepaid accounts without a fixed contract. Within the smartphone segment, Apple's Indian market share last quarter was just 5 percent, according to Canalys, meaning its overall penetration is tiny. Still, industry research firm IDC expects the Indian smartphone market to grow more than five times from about 19 million units last year to 108 million in 2016, which presents a big opportunity.

Samsung Electronics dominates Indian smartphone sales with a 40 percent share, thanks to its wide portfolio of Android devices priced as low as Rs 5500. The market has also been flooded by cheaper Android phones from local brands such as Micromax and Lava. Most smartphones sold in India are much cheaper than the iPhone. Apple helped create the smartphone industry with the iPhone in 2007, but last year lost its lead globally to Samsung whose free Android software is especially attractive in Asia. The new monthly payment plan in India goes a long way to expanding the potential market. The Apple campaign is not meant for really the regular top-end customer, it is meant to upgrade the 10,000-12,000 handset guy to 45,000 rupees. BlackBerry, which has seen its global market share shrivel to 3.4 percent from 20 percent over the past three years, is making what is seen as a last-ditch effort to save itself with the BB10 series. Until last year, Blackberry was the No. 3 smartphone brand in India with market share of more than 10 percent, thanks to a push into the consumer segment with lower-priced phones. Last quarter its share fell to about 5 percent, putting it in fifth place, according to Canalys. Apple was sixth. Culture, people, training, and motivation must be carefully nurtured. You can’t open a box of these attributes, put them in your business and have them just start working. One of Apple’s best known but least understood innovations is the Apple Store App. This is a downloadable app for iPhones that lets customers schedule appointments to shop, get help, get training, or get their own project work done. Putting the control in the customers’ hands is central to superior customer experience design. This app, and the operational infrastructure that supports, is what supplies some of the magic. One of the many ways Apple creates air-tight customer loyalty is by consistently increasing the value customers get out of their devices. Shortly after iPhone 5 was released, Apple announced iOS 6. The iOS 6 upgrade gave the users over 200 new features for existing iPhone 4s. All the users had to do was download the software upgrade to turn the camera into a panoramic camera, get Siri to now make restaurant reservations or give scores for favorite teams and have a GPS on the iPhone. Apple keeps customers happy with consistent and valuable upgrades; FREE upgrades that enhance the customer experience in relevant ways. Enhancing customer value inspires customer loyalty. Customer loyalty inspires bigger profits. Apple employees execute the recently leaked “A P P L E 5 Steps of Service” model from the super secret Apple Customer Service Training. A P P L E stands for:

Approach Customers with a Personalized Warm Welcome

Probe Politely to Understand All the Customer’s Needs

Present a Solution for the Customer to Take Home Today

Listen for and Resolve Any Issues or Concerns

End with a Fond Farewell

Apple stores are so very profitable and enjoyable because employees approach customers with a warm welcome, they gently ask questions, there’s a fierce focus on solutions the customer can take home that day, concerns are addressed head on and customers leave with a fond farewell. Study Apple’s 5 Steps of Service and look for ways you can adopt, adapt and apply the steps in your business, be that a retail business, call center or an online customer experience. LG has an extensive range of microwave ovens that meet the requirement across the entire segment of consumers. LG microwave oven is the undisputed market leader for the past 3 years. It has a market share of more than 35% in 2012 proving that it has got an unassailable lead over its competitors. LG’s key USPs include highest auto-cook menus; lightwave technology for healthy and tasty cooking; long-lasting stainless steel cavity; char- coal lighting heater; Indian bread basket; most extensive product range with superior aesthetics; healthy fry; steam chef; three cookery classes free; prompt customer service – 450 service centers – recipe book; and smart start-up kits. Some of the unique features include auto-cook menus, lightwave technology, long-lasting stainless steel cavity, charcoal lighting heater, Indian bread basket, steam chef, and smart start-up kits. With their extensive variety of models and innovations to choose from, LG microwave oven has definitely outdid rivalry in the microwave oven industry with its short period of operations. It comes with a 5 year warranty. Industry leaders are not capable to stopover the show of expertise and skill.

With state-of-the-art and topnotch technology, constant research and innovations, LG microwave oven has definitely set the values / volumes in this industry.