The Luxury of CX

This week's instalment of The Joy of CX we speak to globally renowned marketing and CX specialists Megan French and Craig Lee, alongside our very own CX Guru Stephen Priestnall, about how the word Luxury has evolved to mean something far deeper than the expensive and desirable. 

We explore the way in which these brands think about their customer experience - and learn from the mistakes that can arise when attempting to implement a luxury ethos globally across multiple domestic markets when each is characterised by its unique nuances and varying interpretations of the concept among people from diverse cultures, backgrounds, and beliefs.

Presented by Sue Carter.

Featured guests;

Stephen Priestnall - CEO at oomph agency
Megan French - Senior Marketing Executive based in Kingdom Saudi Arabia
Craig Lee - Global CX & EX Specialist based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Recorded & Edited by Mr Anderson Limited for oomph.

Transcript

Sue Carter: 0:04

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of The Joy of CX podcast. I'm Sue Carter, I'm back here with you. And we have a really exciting, interesting episode lined up today to talk about customer experience. You may remember if you've heard our last podcast that last time we talked about the human side of user experience and how we really need to think about humans. Well today we're gonna have to think about what if those people those humans are luxury seekers, are on the luxury end of customer experience? How do we adapt if we need to our customer experience for them to satisfy their needs, and possibly, more crucially, their expectations. So to delve into all of that, I'm joined by some fantastic guests today. So I'm joined, as usual, by Stephen Preistnall, who's the founder of oomph agency, and a customer experience specialist with many decades behind him. Morning, Stephen,

Stephen Priestnall: 1:06

good morning, Sue. Nice to be here.

Sue Carter: 1:08

I didn't mean that to sound like you're 105 years old.

Stephen Priestnall: 1:12

I thought I best not comment.

Sue Carter: 1:15

So I'm also joined by two guests, which I'm delighted to have with us today. So Craig Lee, and Megan French. Megan, I'm gonna go to you this time, or perhaps ask you to introduce yourself if you could.

Megan French: 1:28

Sure thank you Sue. Morning, everybody. I'm a marketing strategist who have been in marketing for probably shouldn't mention how many years let's just say a few decades. And obviously, customer experience lies at the heart of everything to do with marketing and strategy. And I've been in the MENA region for about 15 years, for the last three years, been leading marketing for some of the Giga projects that Saudi are currently rolling out as part of their aim to build out a tourism economy. And so the worlds of luxury and customer experience are something that I'm sort of immersed in daily. So I'll be bringing sort of that lens to this discussion today.

Sue Carter: 2:11

Fabulous. Thank you, Megan. And of course, you've reminded me that this is our first truly global podcast. So thank you for being with us today. And Craig, welcome, if you'd like to tell our listeners a little bit about yourself as well.

Craig Lee: 2:22

Yes, thank you, Sue. And thanks again for inviting us to participate today in quite an exciting, and I hope that thought provoking conversation. My focus is really on helping businesses transform. And sometimes that's with leadership and mindset. Other times, it's with employees, and most of the time is really focused on the customer and bringing the customer into the mainstream of strategy for organisations. I've been doing this for more years than I'd like to think, and I'd see my colleagues smiling at this, but have always really been fascinated with, with how organisations transform, and how we get the culture in the mindset right to get things done. So I've worked with global brands recently, more recently in luxury and lifestyle brands globally. Wealth Management in banks, telcos, hospitality, hotels, etc. And before that, for about 10 years, I led the customer experience efforts at Emirates Airlines as we were going through rapid change and transformation. I work with clients globally, and I'm positioning myself more these days as in an advisory capacity where I can work with C suite, and helping them understand the various elements of transformation. And I suppose I really say I help companies join the dots between all the related disciplines to drive exceptional customer experiences.

Sue Carter: 4:00

Fabulous, thank you, Craig, let's see if then we can join the dots ourselves a little bit this morning. So I'm really excited about the conversation we're going to have today. And I know that there's also going to be some hopefully interesting and enlightening anecdotes from our guests today. So some some real true experience from the ground. So looking forward to hearing about those. So let's get cracking with the conversation. I introduced this as we go to start thinking about the luxury of CX. So the the luxury customer and what they're looking for and how we satisfy their needs. I think really, even before we do that, let's have a think about what luxury even means these days because things do change. That's probably changed over the years it might have meant something 20 or 30 years ago, probably means something different now. And then we can think about, you know how we meet that customer experience. But that's I can start with you, Craig, what does Luxury even mean anymore? Is it just about spending the most money? Or is there more to it than that?

Craig Lee: 5:05

It's a really confusing idea. Luxury, I think today is no longer about material possessions, or exorbitant price tags or exclusive events. There's there's something far more human that's coming through in terms of exclusivity, personalization, and an exceptional experiences. So, I think where we moving to, and especially when we talk generationally, I know Megan will have quite a few things to say about how different generations are responding to luxury, think, you know, luxury could be anything from being offline, to having a really high pressure hot shower in a safari tent in the middle of the African savannah. It's about creating experiences, it's about linking into quality. And it's gone, it's gone really from this idea of, I suppose, what I would call conspicious consumption, not my term. It's been around since the 1890s. But where everything's about what it does to make you look affluent, what it makes you do to look wealthy, to more of a conscious consumption. And that probably leads us more into the conversation around sustainability and how we feel when we are interacting with with luxury brands. I think that label luxury is, is thrown on to too many things today, which is partially what creates our confusion. Anything from Starbucks as affluent, affordable luxury, to an Apple experience as affordable luxury is being lumped together with you know, somebody building a new apartment block and calling it the epitome in luxury lifestyle. So I think we need to be really mindful about what it means to the consumer, rather than what it means to the organization's trying to push what they believe is a luxury experience.

Sue Carter: 7:21

And Craig, I'm just gonna pick up on something you mentioned there, which was about sustainability. And this being much more personal, and no longer about having perhaps the bling as one would have called it in the 90s. There's me showing my age. And Megan, I think you also have a point of view on that sustainability about the purpose side of luxury, it's no more about best things or know more about having more of the best things.

Megan French: 7:49

Yeah, I mean, for me, just picking up on what Craig was saying, Well, firstly, it's a complex concept, luxury. And I think, depending on so many things in our own lives, and how that influences the lens that we see life through ourselves, we also our perception of what how we define luxury also changes. So for example, before I started in the current role that I'm in, which is we're talking about luxury in terms of speaking to the 0.0001% of, you know, the kingdom's most discerning, so that's just luxury at a completely different level. And so when I, when I define and, when I speak to luxury, I'm speaking with that audience in mind. Now before the position that I'm currently in, I had never had the opportunity to work at that level, I would say at this level, luxury vibrates at a completely different pace. But when I think about how I would define it, for me, the way I've been able to create some order, and structure in my own thinking around that is I've kind of thought about it in terms of you've got accessible luxury, and there's customer experiences designed for that. And that's the luxury, there the brands that we all know and admire, such as a Louis Vuitton, a Bentley, etc. But the luxury in the definition that I'm talking about now to that point, 000 1%. That's what I would call inaccessible luxury, this is 'in the know' luxury. So this is not for everybody. And I would say that there's some certain characteristics about this segment of the market that also shapes very different characteristics around the customer experience as well. And so for example, these people because primarily, they come from a place of old wealth, so wealth that's been passed down through the generations These people that are very discreet. So this sense of luxury is about high barriers to entry. And I think just on those two points, what what you see in terms of definition is these people care less about materialism. So just picking back up on Craig's point, it's not about that, because they've had that their whole life. It's more about intention. It's, it's a sense of purpose for luxury. There's connections into again, what Craig was talking about, it's driven by this concept of doing the right thing by humanity by doing the right thing about the planet, by putting their resources into use in a way that will be sustainable. For people on planet for future generations, it's about legacy. So they're very deep intellectual constructs, I would say, which is my definition now of luxury, which has changed from how I defined luxury three years ago, for example.

Sue Carter: 11:04

And I'm going to bring Stephen here, actually, because we've had, both from Craig and Megan, some brilliant articulation of what luxury means and can mean now, which I think poses a challenge for us all, as customer experience specialists, we're always looking at people's needs, but as need are changing as we're trying to understand those needs, that customer experience becomes more challenging. So, Stephen, i'm putting you on the spot, but off the back of what you've heard from both Craig and Megan, about that personal luxury, that personal luxury, about the purpose, about the privacy, about luxury could be I'm just gonna have some time offline, which I love by the way, Craig, that would be my idea of luxury as well. You know, how do we bring that back to some of the basics of customer experience? What singing out for you, there?

Stephen Priestnall: 11:59

Yeah, the experience of Craig and and Megan had in this space across the luxury brands they've worked for across the different regions that they spend time with, it does give give us some real challenges when we're trying to bottom out and say what are we what do we do? What are the interventions? What are the what are the experiences we create? I think I would bring it back to the idea of the needs of the individual. So we've talked about customer needs a lot. But we also talk about the state that the position that the customer is in, for a particular set of needs at a particular time. So if we start thinking about what luxury means for you, when you're backpacking in the Andes, your idea of luxury, as Craig talked about earlier, even if that your position is a comfortable one financially, your idea of luxury will be different to when you're staying in a five star, luxury hotel in Dubai, and I think getting an understanding of how your needs change, but your perception of luxury sustains is a really important thing for us to understand. So not just assuming because we know Craig, and our customer database, so we know Megan, and we know Stephen, then we define their sense of luxury, on the basis of what their experience has been with one product or service, we have to be able to be fluid, and understand that our needs associated with luxury changes over time and over contexts. And I think that's what's important for us to build experiences. And if you get that wrong, as Megan's described some of these people who have the ability, their financial position to be be pretty selective about their luxury experiences will just select something else pretty quickly. So I think that idea of understanding needs this move over time around luxury, is what is the biggest challenge for me.

Craig Lee: 14:17

As practitioners of CX or as people who are trying to lead and drive CX, or as people that are thinking about how they position themselves in the luxury space, creating new experiences, what luxury is is definitely personalization. It's the it's weird, but that's always been the holy grail of what CRM has offered us CX has offered us and with the type of technologies we have today, we should be able to really personalise but somehow we've we've depersonalised through those experiences. So luxury for me in a CX space is really about absolute focus on seamlessness and convenience. In other words, making it easy for me to engage, constantly seeking ways to engage in any form of rapport that is meaningful to me. So to Stephen's point, needs and wants, I have a need for water, today, I wanted in a Lalique bottle, tomorrow, I want it delivered in a five, five litre bottle for my water machine. And when I'm travelling, I want to use my, my sustainable water bottle to be able to travel in. My need remains water, but my want is very different dependent on where I am and what I'm doing with that. So I think this idea of luxury being around personalization about being around time and freedom and making it easy to engage. And then of course, the sustainability issues on top of that drives us to luxury is also about authenticity. It's about the uniqueness that's provided to me by a brand or an individual, so very much based on my needs for now. I'm not the same person when I'm going on holiday as I am going to the office. And we need to be really cognizant of that, especially in this this time of wanting to always put people in a very defined box and not see them moving between those boxes.

Megan French: 16:38

Yeah, and what I'm what I'll pick up on that as well. And what Stephen said earlier, I think, despite whether the segment of the market, for example, whether we're targeting as marketeers, Gen X, Y, Z, whether we're talking about inaccessible versus accessible luxury, whether we're talking about one to one versus mass sort of customer experiences, I think there's a there's some characteristics that today's contemporary luxury customer is, is unified around. So for example, we know that there's there's some sort of seamless blend of opulence personalization, as Craig mentioned, I think is a big one and exclusivity. And I think that those sort of characteristics or components of luxury, I think go across generations, and they go across geographical borders. So I think that somebody that is that point 001% of the population expects those seamlessness opulence, however they define that whether that's defined in terms of time, whether that's defined in terms of wisdom or influence, versus a Gen Z, who might look at opulence in terms of gadgets, and digital tech, opulence. Personalization, I think is a common denominator that brings all those worlds together. And this concept of exclusivity. And I see that, for example, in Saudi, where you've got the most youthful population of any country in the world, you're talking about 35 million people, of which the lion's share of those fall into the Gen Z bracket. Now they're not all wealthy. So you wouldn't necessarily I would say in a, in maybe the way I define luxury, certainly, you know, in years gone by, I think these people are expecting no matter what their financial ability is, all of the people that make up that cohort of Gen Z, they expect a seamless sort of blend of opulent opulence and personalization, and exclusivity, they expect brands to be talking to them to be having a one to one sort of conversation with them. So I think there's some of those sort of like constructs that, that bring together different segments, and different markets.

Sue Carter: 19:08

So if we, if we think about those, those constructs and those broad concepts and the personalization, and the needs. What I'd like to do now, what I'd like to do now is really bring it to life. So we've been talking about theoretically, but I know that Megan, Craig and Stephen, you all have some interesting experiences to talk to, some examples of great customer experience, or perhaps not so great customer experience when it comes to the luxury side of things. And I think for the listeners, let's try and bring it to life a little bit. So So Craig, if I may go to you. I know you've worked with some fantastic companies. And you would have some great examples of where you, just some small tiny changes really make that difference. But also perhaps without naming names, anything where people just have got it wrong when you kind of got your head in your hands when you're looking at it?

Craig Lee: 20:13

Well, challenging question. I think, you know, I think we've got a lot of examples from, from luxury fashion, just not getting it culturally right. Getting it wrong when it comes to trying to apply. Trying to apply one one way of thinking for the whole world. So let me give you an example. An Italian, an Italian brand where everything is done out of out of Milan, you know, has its visual merchandising for all its shop windows designed at the head office, and pumped out and boxed out to all its branches. Well, a few years ago, it was the year of the pig. And so they use pig in their design, it was super important for the Chinese market and celebrating the year of the pig. It also just happened to coincide with Ramadan in the Middle East. And the windows had pigs in them. Totally, totally unacceptable culturally, what was that brand thinking? When I went into the store manager in the Kuwaiti store, he had covered the pigs with with sort of a velvet, a velvet cloth. He said, But the pig had to stay there because he was audited on what Head Office wanted. Now, the story there is really about cultural sensitivity, but also that in this globalised world we live in one size doesn't fit all. And where luxury brands sometimes make a big mistake is they don't tap into their local knowledge and bring it to the centre to create better experiences that are more appropriate, but rather still trying to dictate from the centre. So you've got certain brands as part of a signature saying Bon giorno in Shanghai, to Mandarin speakers, Mandarin speakers to Mandarin speakers, because it's an Italian brand, there's got to be a different way of doing that.

Sue Carter: 22:19

Craig, can I just ask you what what what do you think went wrong there then, because when you tell the story, you know, we're all grimacing a bit, we all can see in the cold light of day, that of course, that's inappropriate. So what went wrong behind the scenes?

Craig Lee: 22:36

Well, I think it's the mindset that we have to, to what luxury is and how it translates globally. So when you think of a mindset of have a very, very proudly Italian brand, or a proudly French brand, they're exporting Italianata or, or French culture and cuisine, etc, to another part of the world as part of their brand, their brand footprint. The people leading those brands, don't spend time setting context. Don't encourage a two way conversation because there's an arrogance around luxury brands, that one size fits all. And this is how it's done. This is how it is. Now in in contrast to that what I probably use as an example, is when Emirates was going through rapidly, rapidly recruiting and changing. It had to double in size every four years. So you can imagine going from 10,000 cabin crew to 21,000 cabin crew in four years. And still trying to maintain a above average premium experience. You have to be able to set the context and the types of things that needed to be done was not to compare oneself with other brands in the in the same space. You didn't want to have the best airline food. That's not the way you think as leaders. And the President at Emirates used to challenge people all the time. How can I be the best restaurant at 35,000 feet? was the question. So suddenly, you are benchmarked with everything else in terms of the best restaurants. Now how do you perform and deliver that. And when you consider that many people that were driving a first class experience had never really had a fine dining experience themselves. One had to then reset what was required in a fine dining experience. Experience that oneself in a training process so that you could have the context of how to deliver that and I think that's where that's where a lot of luxury brands, which, where a lot of luxury experiences fall really flat, when you go into some very, very high boutiques where you are treated as if you're shouldn't be a customer here. You're not made to feel welcome. In fact, I'm not incentivized to sell handbags so somebody's not even going to talk to me when I walk into a certain store. And that's all because we haven't set the context of what that should be around around delivering, delivering those experiences. There are many, many other examples, but I'll leave it at that for now. Because I'm sure the other questions and Stephen and Megan might want to comment on that.

Sue Carter: 25:43

I just actually just wanted to ask Megan just, I was really fascinated there, Craig, by your point that people who were creating some of these experiences have not experienced them. So you're you know, you have a team who is told we need to create a first class experience in the dining at 35,000 feet, who have never heard that themselves. So Megan you said that you know, you you and your team have been working with that kind of 0.0002%. How do you motivate and encourage and support your team in creating customer experiences for your audiences and your customers?

Megan French: 26:22

Well, let me answer what I think, uou know, when when you're saying to Craig, what where do you think it went wrong? That the relevance of the pig in the Chinese market could be mistaken for being relevant in an Arab world which it's certainly not. What I will say is, I think, in my experience, and for, if you look at luxury brands that get the customer experience, right, you know, primarily luxury hospitality have a commitment to customer service, you look at the likes of Ritz Carlton. Now, in my experience, where where there may be a disconnect is, in the worlds where the experience, the customer experience needs to be absolutely impeccable. And for the audience that you're targeting, the economics may just not stack up. In other words, the marketing budget may not be deep enough to run the to run the exercise in the strategic work required to establish the customer experience and to deliver on that now that's a real possibility. And I've had experience in that. So and that that's a big challenge. If you think about it for brands, if you're not operating, if you're not delivering products and services to that super wealthy client, which most brands are not, but you still have to define and deliver an impeccable one on one personalised experience. At some point, the economics need to make sense. So how much can you invest in architecting, and delivering that journey of an impeccable, personalised customer experience? If in fact, you can't charge a commensurate rate for your products and services, and that maybe your target audience wouldn't pay. So, I think that that's a possibility in the example that Craig gave, I don't know. But that's where my head went to when he was explaining the situation.

Craig Lee: 28:31

I think there's, there's a, there's an interesting, there's an interesting thing there because if we say luxury is not about products and services, but luxury is something more. You've got to have great products, you've got to have great services. But there's something on top of that. So let me give you another another quick example where it doesn't have to cost anything to change the mindset of the leaders of those organisations, to reframe how people can deliver sometimes at the same cost or even cheaper, because it's not about the product or the service that has to lift itself. So, working with an airline, we wanted to find out how we could give customers more recognition. And I use the word customers, not passengers, because passengers are like self loading freight, you know, it's abbreviated to PAX and then the PAX becomes a seat number and you lose all personality. So, in this in this case, we asked in a focus group, we got a whole lot of loyalty members of various airlines together really top end premium, premium customers, and we asked them, what could an airline do to give you more recognition? And of course, like most marketers and people who are involved with product, when immediately thinks 'Oh, Champagne in economy for premium customers, more newspapers in the lounge more this more that' thinking products and services, the absolute mantra that came out and it changed the whole way of thinking and drove so many different changes was call me by my name. The highest form of recognition in luxury is to be recognised and to be called by your name. Now, that sets a completely different challenge. Because how do you do that when a passenger list has 23 characters, half the names fall off the list because they are triple barreled surnames. You want to be called by which name your family name or first name, etc, etc. But that one insight drove an entire programme of if that's what your top customer back to Stephens comment about needs, if the top recognition is going to be going to come from calling me by my name, how the hell do you get that right?

Sue Carter: 31:13

I think that brings us you know, that brings us back full circle in some ways to that really personal element, doesn't it at the customer experience. And I'm gonna come back to Stephen, who is obviously a man of luxury. But Stephen, I think, you know, Craig is hit on a brilliant point there, which is, that was just one small thing and obviously, there was a lot of change behind the scenes. Technology change, culture change for for people working there, etc. But that was one small thing that we've identified. So for you, Stephen, can customer experience really turn on just one or two small things like that? Have you seen that as well?

Stephen Priestnall: 31:53

Yeah, I think there's a there's a little story in my mind that's linking what Craig's been talking about, and, and what Megan said earlier on about different elements of luxury, moving towards the idea of this sustainability even and a kind of a social consciousness as well. And these are really hard things to deliver. And also, I think, Megan, your point about having the bottom line follow the luxury delivery of service, that that bubbles out in all sorts of ways. So there's a cycling, British Cycling clothing brand that launched in early 2000s, it's at the high end of cycling wear. Backed British Tour de France winners. And they got a couple of exclusive outlets around the world, one of which was in London. And I bought a jacket there. Actually I was given a jacket for a birthday gift. And that was a commuter jacket, I used it in London, I did my usual thing, I fell off a couple of times, hitting curbs and stuff. They had, they had an offer, which is you send it back to us, we'll repair it or replace it, for life. So I did that twice. And the first three years and it was great. It was repaired adequately. And I tried it again about three years ago. So this is 10 years later. And then the TNCs had changed. And then there was suddenly a, within the realm of reasonable wear and tear. And I thought I thought one thing really specifically, right, that's a promise undelivered. I don't buy that brand anymore. And we compare that with a brand like Patagonia, which, you know, it's mass luxury, certainly, it's not a it's not a super exclusive space, but it is that they're expensive clothing, outdoor clothing brands. And they absolutely are committed to repair and renew their products. And they are committed enough to now be a B-Corp of organisation for a, for a company with a manufacturing footprint like Patagonia's that's quite hard thing to be. Now, I think it's interesting that the first brand, I suspect the accountants got hold of that service delivery and flipped it. And then we'll see with Patagonia committed to be called I suspect they have no choice other than to maintain that role. Now, if you take those ideas, which, you know, I'm talking about a personal experience, so and the number of people that will have sent a jacket back in for repair will be a tiny number. So it really is not gonna hit the bottom line significantly. But something changed in that organisation and they stopped that commitment to that personalised service. And I think that's where we need to think about ourselves and in that luxury space is not just about the idea of a luxury delivery, it's about sustaining it. And that's not all about sustainability. It's about sustaining it and that wonderful idea of call me by name becoming a programme Craig just outlined. We all know, in the organisations we've worked in how hard it is to make data do the job it's supposed to do around customers. So actually, that's a really challenging thing for an organisation to commit to. And there is cost associated with it. So I think Sue that's where that's where my head would be kind of joining the dots of this conversation, that idea about if you're gonna deliver a luxury experience and promise something, you have to follow that promise through. Not days, not weeks, not months, but but for years. Maintaining that personalization is really tough.

Megan French: 35:32

Yeah, but can I just build off that, Stephen, because I think that example, there is a great example of where I was trying to get to, and that is, in all my years of experience in talking to different experts about customer experience, and luxury. And in this conversation, we're putting those two together. But just think about that and think about how many times you've all worked with practitioners or advisors or strategists, whoever it may be other companies. And how often is that conversation held in parallel with the economics of the business in terms of we need to define a customer experience that we know financially is sustainable, that we can deliver on that we can hope we can deliver our promise in perpetuity, like, in this case, to your point. Yeah, the accountant may have had a look and said, well, we just the company can't possibly afford to do this. You know, but but that thinking wasn't done, I guess at the outset. And certainly, in my experience, I myself have also, to be honest, not really lined the two worlds up before, it's easy when you start working for these, these super high high end brands, you know, and projects that I'm talking about in my current position, because you have the budget, to bring the best in breed to the table. But most brands, most companies are not in that space albeit they still need to define and deliver impeccable customer experiences, which is what you were just talking to, but they have to be financially sustainable as well.

Stephen Priestnall: 37:08

They do. Craig, I'm just gonna ask you to come in on a good point, actually, because I think that you talked earlier about culture in an organisation and I wonder, Megan, was it about whether the numbers stacked up with the example or was it rather about, there was a brief given to finance separate from CX, which was we need to save X amount off our bottom line. And this just ended up as one of the line items. And wasn't, is that was actually the reverse maths wasn't done. The impact of that wasn't done back into the CX and marketing team.

Megan French: 37:45

Yeah.

Stephen Priestnall: 37:46

And I think that, that, you know, Craig, you talked to it earlier idea about getting a culture in an organisation of understanding what luxury in CX actually means may well play really hard in that way.

Craig Lee: 37:57

Yeah, I think for for me, if I if I synthesise what you what you're both saying. When an organisation is fixated on the silos in the organisation, it's very difficult to have an ROI on things. And somewhat cynically, I would say, it's because we never asked the finance department, what's the ROI on the finance department? We leave them to ask everybody else but try that I've tried it with one finance department, they couldn't answer the question. So where I think we're going through this, the synthesis in this is that are you a relationally focused organisation, or are you a transactionally focused organisation? If we if we drop everything to transaction, then we go into the realm of process improvement of costing every element of the transaction, and we lose the bigger picture, that sometimes when we remove something from what seems insignificant, it has a significant impact on the relationship we have with the customer.

Megan French: 39:13

Yeah.

Craig Lee: 39:14

And if I just think of this in current marketing terms, it's, it so frustrates me to listen in on conversations in boardrooms about acquisition, digital acquisition, etc. And I say what's your retention strategy? And the board goes quiet. Somehow, the people that are in our systems as customers are just sort of there and if they leave, they leave. That's totally wrong. And an example from from just post COVID. The amount of work top luxury brands have had to do on trying to re establish links with their local markets. Because for the four years prior to COVID, they focused almost totally on trial on Chinese, the Chinese market visiting Europe and you would walk into a luxury store, there would be many, many visitors purchasing in luxury stores to the extent that the local, the local customers of those stores were not even considered. Post COVID, and some of those visitors dried up and are still slowly trickling back into the system, they realised they had no relationship with their longtime existing customers. So I think that part of our part of our problem is not whether it's luxury, whether it's CX. Part of our problem is a business problem of all we focused on retention, and relationship equaling bottom line, or are we focused on the micro micro transactions, which means we constantly having to really acquire and spend a lot of money on acquiring. And the last point on the acquisition side, we are also indiscriminately acquiring customers that shouldn't have been our customers in the first place. And we spend millions trying to keep those customers because they happen to be in our database. But they should never have been acquired in the first place because they weren't really out our customer profile. So there are a whole lot of things to do with how we think as an organisation around our customer base, how we value them, how we make people feel valued, and how do we retain them?

Megan French: 41:57

Yeah, and can I just pick up off that? Because I think, well, there's a couple of very complex points, which probably wouldn't get covered in this podcast, but there could be very interesting content further downstream.

Sue Carter: 42:10

Well you're, you're thinking the same as I am making, I've already got my eye on the next few podcasts.

Megan French: 42:15

So, so one is this concept of organisations that put the customer at the centre of everything they do. And so what we're talking about here is this thread back to corporate culture. So it really has to be led from the board level down. And when you've got that disjointed approach, that's what we're just talking about in terms of the example that was given where the finance department is not talking to the marketing department. But yes, they have to take responsibly, responsibility, the leaders of those functional areas, but really, it's driven from the absolute top of the organisation down. For organisations, luxury or non luxury space that are so customer centric, that put the customer at the everything at the centre of everything they do. And an example that comes to mind is Apple. You know, I don't know if you've ever read any of the books that Steve Jobs wrote or any of the films about Steve Jobs, but one thing he was absolutely hell bent on is having the customer at the centre of everything, you know, that informed design, product mix everything, and he had to fight hard for it, but have a look at the legacy he's left and whilst while some people would say that Apple is not a luxurious brand, the way we've defined luxury it absolutely is. It can be personalised, there's a level of opulence, it's relevant across different segments and geographical divides, etc. I mean, I'll give an example of an experience that I've had a personal experience with a luxury watchmaker for a timepiece that I had purchased and saved long and hard to have. And at the time my husband and I were living in Dubai. My husband's Austrian, so we were going to Austria and I had made an appointment with the luxury watchmakers store in Vienna, to have my band on the timepiece replaced. And at the time, it was COVID and so the customers had to line up outside the front of this luxury watchmakers store to be able to access their meetings. So after lining up for, it must have been about half an hour. And when we were allowed in the store, the lady who assisted me said in a very mocking way to my husband and I, she she could hardly believe that we had travelled all that way for, for a 500 Euro replacement band on my timepiece, as if to say that most of their customers would have just bought a new timepiece like it's unbelievable. She's never heard anything of it. It was so insulting beyond belief. That it just completely, completely changed my whole view of this, and I would say they're one of the leaders in luxury timepieces in the world. And so that's a good example of where, if you, maybe you've defined your customer experience, but if you haven't embedded it in your organisation, you know Craig does a lot of that in terms of advising. So maybe Craig, I'll connect you with this luxury time, they might need your services Craig, example of customer experience going totally wrong in the luxury world.

Sue Carter: 45:32

There's opportunities everywhere out there. Thank you, Megan, I'm sorry, you had, I'm sorry, you had that experience, I am, I think I'll round up the conversation at that point, because Megan has brought us brilliantly back to having the customer at the centre, which I think is sort of our guiding light, and it's our North Star, often for customer experience. I think perhaps to pick up on some of the other themes that came through today. And I'm going to watch and see if you are nodding, and smiling when I summarise them. You know, we've talked about how that customer experience needs to be personal, needs to have purpose, really interesting conversation there about how we do need to invest in that customer experience about the financial implications, that it needs to be thoughtful and considered. And not always global. It's not a one size fits all. I think, Craig and Megan, you've both given me some, or us, some great ideas for future podcasts. So same time next week, I'm thinking? Also for our listeners, we've touched on a few things there, which we have covered in previous podcasts. So if you are someone who wants to persuade your board, of the importance of CX we have talked about that in previous podcasts, and about why it's important and how to get that investment over the line. So again, thank you, Craig, and Megan, for giving me the opportunity to plug some of our previous episodes. So on that note, I think I will wrap up today, although I did know, Craig, you may have had one final point. So perhaps I'll leave the last word to you.

Craig Lee: 47:07

That's very kind of you, you know I could keep the points rolling. I think the the key the key thing to bring customer experience and, and luxury together is the emotional connection. And I would really encourage practitioners to think about what emotional indicators they can create that transpose globalism. So if I say, create a sense of family in your brand, you're going to do that very differently in New York to the way you're going to do it in China. But the same feeling from your brand is going to be omitted. And I think creating these emotional intense indicators becomes a really, really important thing for that consistency of experience. But in a localised contextualised way, where individuals delivering the brand also have enough freedom to deliver it. So I'd say that, you know, CX CX only works when it all works. And if you're going to be doing things, you don't want to have a fantastic meal in a fabulous Michelin star restaurant, where you've got a brilliant interaction with the chef, and then wait half an hour to pay the bill. Because then it all falls flat. And this is what we've got to consider when we think about CX in the luxury space. How do we constantly put the customer at the front end of that? And how do we make sure it all works, so that we create emotional bond that is enduring and sustainable with the client. And I'll keep quiet from this point on. Thanks, Sue. Thanks again for the opportunity and look forward to having another conversation, if if that's useful.

Sue Carter: 48:56

I'm sure we will. And thank you, Craig, you're you've certainly made me very happy today, as have you Megan. So there's some some emotion there for me. Thank you also to Stephen for joining us as usual. It's been a great conversation today. I hope we've sparked some thoughts, some interest, some emotion from our listeners. Thank you all for joining us. And we'll join you next time on The Joy of CX.