Why are premium brands better at CX?

Tata Motors, Apple, Samsung, and NEXA are brands you rarely mention in the same breath. However, as per Havas CX’s ‘The Global X Index’ report, these are the nation’s best when it comes to customer experience (CX).

Launched on August 22, 2024, the report, now in its sixth year, surveyed 55,000 consumers in nine global markets (U.S., U.K., France, Mexico, India, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, and Argentina) to evaluate the customer experience performance of 525 brands.

In India, it covered 50 brands from across nine categories and listed the below as the best in the country regarding CX.

1. TATA Motors

2. Apple

3. TATA Cliq Luxury

4. Kia

5. Samsung

6. ITC

7. NEXA

8. Zara

9. JBL

10. TATA Cliq Palette

A good number of these brands are premium and, as per the report, the best in CX; imagine entering an Apple showroom and without anybody telling you anything, you're looking forward to the visit.

We (afaqs!) spoke to Prashant Tekwani, MD, Havas CX India and Ekino India about the report, why premium brands are better at CX, on data and CX, and AI’s impact on customer experience.

Edited Excerpts

How did you choose the 50 brands to survey?

It is always a task to pick out 50 brands because we are a part of a big group and there are a lot of brands we service. So, it is very important to keep that bias out.

Also, it does not start from the brands, it starts from the categories.

We are tracking the categories which are doing well on CX. If we see an upward trend in certain categories, we pick up brands belonging to them.

A good number of the winners are premium brands. What do they do differently from the others when it comes to CX?

The brands which create an unforgettable experience at every touchpoint or the relevant touchpoint are great at CX. The report clearly states that 59% of the people surveyed said they do not buy again from a brand if they've had a bad experience.

So, the luxury and/or premium brands go over and beyond to make sure your experience with them, and your overall feel, is premium and delightful.

The report stresses personalised experiences over functional selling. At what part of the consumer journey do Indian brands need to buckle up?

Marketers break down the consumer journey into awareness, concentration, purchase, and post-purchase. The consumer does not understand them.

There is a different expectation from the consumer in each category. For instance, post-purchase delight is crucial for Taj Hotels.

When our global CEO David Shulman made his first trip to India, he stayed at the Taj. When the hotel realised this fact, its staff created his LinkedIn profile in the form of a cake. This is a post-purchase delight.

There is no set formula. But every brand needs to buckle up on two learnings.

One, India as an audience is constantly expecting innovation. What was innovation four years ago has become a way of living right now.

Second, Indians are not afraid to give you data until you are using it in the right form and format and bringing delight.

The bit about data is a double-edged sword. Brands want to personalise using consumer data but can end up annoying people.

Brands need to draw a line in terms of where and what they wish to do at the end of the day. If a financial services brand keeps calling me for loans and cards every day, I will not go to them when I really need a loan because it has not given me that consumer delight.

A great CX doesn't happen overnight. It's a consistent effort you put in for years for it to eventually start showing out there. Now, one of the key things in anything that you do in CX is a feedback loop.

You have to keep the consumer at the centre of everything that you are doing and not the brand. If a brand reaches out to me many times and I’ve said I am not interested, it means it is not the right time to reach out to me. Unfortunately, many brands do not have such feedback loops in place.

Keeping these in mind, do brands realise money is tight for consumers (inflation) and they won’t hesitate to leave a brand?

A lot of the brands are cognizant of that. For the past few years, we’ve been hearing about third-party cookies getting disabled and stuff and because of all these, every brand manager, every CMO realised data is the king and we need to start collecting it as much as possible.

Now, brands need to take a call on what they wish to do with the data. I feel that in the last few years, brands have also become very mature in their conversation with consumers.

They are cognizant of the fact that they will reach out to you for only X things, not for Y things. But again, there is a clear divide between the mature brands and the brands which are still waiting to reach a certain level of maturity.

One thing that came out in this report says even if you have a brand retention of 8-10%, that will eventually lead to almost 30% of your profit being a lot more because you have engaged the customer in a certain way. So yes, I think brands have become a lot more cognizant.

How did brands react to Google’s backtracking on third-party cookies after all the effort they’d put into acquiring first-party data?

When Google started talking about the third-party data being disabled, I think that was one of the best things that could have happened to CX because CX is essentially creating an experience for your consumer in a closed environment, your own.

As Google decided to go away from third-party cookies, what happened in the last four to seven years is that brands have taken initiatives to collect such data.

Now, it is up to the brand, the brand manager, its chief information officer, and chief marketing officer to do something with this data. Is it an effort? It is a lot of effort. It is not just about waking up this morning and saying, ‘Oh, I have a database, now I am going to do something with it.’

People who had a head start with the whole data thing because of the third-party cookies are only going to do much better if they take the right steps in order to use the data and information that they have.

Coming to AI, are we still at the stage where AI bots need to be kept only for basic functions or has AI matured enough to handle challenging human customer queries?

Three years ago, you could only ask a chatbot for financial services, what your balance is, where is the nearest branch, and all of these things. Now, over a period of time, the AI bot has become a lot more receptive. But, there is still a learning curve for AI.

Now, our expectation from the AI bot has also become a lot more. So, it is an expectation mismatch as well.

AI cannot emulate empathy, that is key to any communication, and in CX, empathy is very important.