Small details that make big differences

Abstract

1 Authors appear in alphabetical order 3 SMALL DETAILS THAT MAKE BIG DIFFERENCES: A RADICAL APPROACH TO CONSUMPTION EXPERIENCE AS A FIRM'S DIFFERENTIATING STRATEGYPurpose -Service organizations and marketers have focused too much of their energy on their core service's performance and too little emphasis on designing a customer journey that enhances the entire customer experience. There is nothing wrong with firms seeking continuous improvement in service quality and customer satisfaction. These efforts are needed for firms to be competitive in the marketplace. The problem occurs when performance levels and service offerings become too similar within an industry, so that price is the only competitive weapon that remains. We argue that in order to break this deadlock, companies need to focus on the small details that make big differences to customers.Design/methodology/approach -The paper builds on interviews with executives in successful service organizations. It provides an analysis of differentiation strategies in diverse service organizations across consumption contexts, nations and cultures around the world.Findings -We develop three research propositions and argue for radical approaches to help service organizations truly understand customers and provide service experiences that engage and delight them. We argue that the new challenge for marketing is to help companies find and implement these small details to make a large impact on the overall customer experience.Originality/value -In order to truly understand the customer experience, we need a holistic view of all interactions customers have with a company. We need to understand the customerfirm interactions at all touch points, that is, during search, purchase, consumption and postconsumption. Customer experience involves the customers' cognitive, affective, emotional, social and sensory responses to the firm. The originality of this research lies in our focus on the 4 small details that make a difference to customers during the service process rather than in the final outcome of the service performance.

Understanding the Customer Journey to Create Excellent Customer Experiences in Bookshops

“…Customer experience is commonly presented as the differentiation strategy able to obtain the competitive and market success (Bolton et al, 2014). …”

“…Nowadays marketing managers commonly agree that customer experience is the key strategy for the present and the future struggles in competitive environments, but this is a difficult strategy to execute (Bolton et al, 2014;Dirsehan & Yalçin, 2011;IBM, 2005;Nenonen, Rasila, Junnonen, & Kärnä, 2008;Tax, McCutcheon, & Wilkinson, 2013;Teixeira, Nunes, Nóbrega, Fisk, & Constantine, 2012). The biggest challenge in creating an excellent customer experience does not lie in creating single excellent touch-points, but rather in creating a link among them, so that they result from a general design and consistent framework (Rawson et al, 2013).…”

“…Third, their business model is expected to change rapidly according to the cross-fertilization among product categories, other channels, and so forth (Addis & Sala, 2007). In such a situation, delivering an excellent customer experience is the most promising differentiation strategy (Bolton et al, 2014). Indeed, the sociability, the flow, and the freedom experienced in conversation and communication make bookshops "third places", venues for local communities to enjoy (Laing & Roile, 2013).…”

“…A deep understanding of the customers' world is a needed step toward the customer centricity . Indeed, a well-analyzed customer journey leads to excellent customer experience, thus indicating how to innovate and differentiate the offers (Bolton et al, 2014;Voss & Zomerdijk, 2007). Despite the theory, mapping the customer journey is not an easy task, as well as capturing useful knowledge to leverage on the journey and identify the customers' insights at the basis of a true customer centric approach (Ordenes et al, 2014).…”

“…Only if managers capture the external signals early and in real time and then get ready when they occur, those difficulties can be dealt with. Second, customers bring into the experience their whole world of cognitive and affective processes, giving rise to multidimensional responses with which companies are not familiar (Bolton, Gustafsson, McColl-Kennedy, Sirianni, & Tse, 2014). Understanding the customers' voice and observing their behaviors might still be difficult to marketing managers nowadays, but they know how to deal with these aspects: Purchases, complaints, or even intentions to recommend are customers' responses that companies know at least how to register and analyze through their KPIs such as revenues, NPS, and so on.…”