February 2014 | © Copyright 2014. Paul Writer. All rights reserved.

SNAPSHOT SURVEY REPORTCustomer Engagement

Customer Experience Top Priority in India For Indian marketers, the focus is on offering strong products and building a better experience.BY LAUREN GIBBONS PAUL

The world over, marketers need to keep their collective fingers on the customer pulse. Understanding customer priorities is key to staying

relevant to minds and wallets. Given that, a recent poll asked senior marketers in India where they believe customers would like them to invest their budgets in the coming year. The majority said clients would want them to spend on improved products/services (33 percent) and a “better experience overall” (43 percent). Indian marketers are clearly

brick-and-mortar venues—is achievable with back-end

systems that support this seamless interaction.

Survey respondents also indicated they are looking

over the horizon at giving customers greater mobile

access and improving targeted offers. “Customers

are looking for more mobility, i.e., access, through

smartphones and tablets,” said one respondent.

Additionally, prevailing marketing techniques vary

considerably from industry to industry. In business-to-

business markets, for example, many companies need

to build and maintain loyalty in their dealer network,

and targeted offers greatly aid in that pursuit. “In the

cement industry, companies do everything to make

dealers loyal. For that, better targeted offers is the

most suitable method,” said one respondent.

“As India becomes a more consumer-driven

economy, and as enabling technologies become more

widespread, we will see the focus on a good customer

experience becoming the norm, not the exception,”

Jessie Paul concludes. n

Lauren Gibbons Paul has written extensively on customer relationship management and customer experience management for more than 15 years.

This research project was funded by a grant from SAP.

becoming more tuned into the importance of building

a strong customer experience, before they venture into

more sophisticated initiatives such as targeted offers

and mobile access (see Figure 1, “In India, Marketers

Think Customers Prize the Basics”).

“While many firms still view the customer experience

as driven by the product, over the past 12 months we

have seen some futurist marketers break away and

work on the holistic customer experience from pre-

purchase to after-sales,” says Jessie Paul, CEO of Paul

Writer in India, which focuses on end-to-end aspects of

developing the B2B marketing infrastructure.

“We all keep announcing new products and services,

but what our customers really want is an overall

better experience,” one respondent agreed. Another

concluded that the best customer experience

combines quality, relevant products and price. “It’s

time to give the customer better products, service and

the best quality at an optimum cost,” he said.

Some respondents pointed to technology’s role in

providing compelling customer experiences, using

analytics to unearth customer preferences and

integrating systems to achieve consistency across

all channels, including phone, Web, mobile, instant

messaging and in-store. “Customer experience should

be about building infrastructure that allows customers

to do whatever they want through whatever channel

they choose to use,” said a respondent. Today,

delivering an ”omni-channel” customer experience—

an unbroken, continuous dialogue and consistent look

and feel (and touch and sound) across digital and

MethodologySAP and Paul Writer launched a global survey via LinkedIn in late 2013 to determine what types of investments senior marketers believe their customers most desire for the coming year. Approximately 622 respondents from India participated in the survey.

Titles included:

n CXO

n Vice President

n Engineer

n Business Owner

Marketing Investment Priorities Respondents were asked to name the marketing investments they thought their customers would value most highly.

A better experience overall

Improved products/services

Better targeted offers

Better mobile access

Other 1%

Base: 622 respondents Source: SAP/Paul Writer via LinkedIn

43%

33%

13%

10%

FIGURE 1