by Lynne Gordon (@lynne_gordon) Classical marketing was built on touchpoint management, aiming for exceptional delivery of key moments of truth, be that at the shelf or in the usage occasion. In a new marketing landscape, as touchpoints fragment and competition proliferates, a new demand for integrated customer experiences emerges.
For marketers, this requires new skills; for organisations, it demands new ways of working. But for the neighbourhood salon owner, it’s business as usual — providing gritty lessons in the art of customer-experience management.
The salon experience
After Eight Beauty Salon operates from a modest space on the streets behind Park Station, Johannesburg. As the name suggests, the salon is open late, designed to service busy millennials who arrive after work, and settle in for four hours with three hairdressers working to complete a head of braids. There’s no closing time here; salon hours are determined by the customers.
The hairdresser examines her customer’s hair with an expert eye. After sharing the story of a client, whose breaking, thinning hair was restored in just three weeks using T444z, she recommends the lady in front of her use it, too. It’s a minute 150g tub, for R400, but to the client with the problem, it seems a bargain. Without expensive advertising, smart branding or celebrity sheen here, recommendation rules.
Thuli will only have her hair done at Mangkosi’s Salon in Rosettenville, Johannesburg. Clustered in the store are a hair salon, nail bar and hair extension specialist alongside a small internet café and cellphone shop offering repairs, airtime and accessories. While she has her hair done, she has a Hunters Dry brought in, along with some food from the local chisanyama, which she shares with her stylist. In the background, a Nollywood movie plays, provoking lively debate on the latest drama going down.
This is the ultimate customer-experience economy, built upon a mastery of the complete consumer interaction, designed with the client at the centre. It’s the sum of small details that keep loyal customers returning to their hair salon, and it’s the story of the full experience that is passed on through word-of-mouth, bringing in new customers.
The journey to growth
It’s clear that good consumer journeys fuel brand growth. A focus upon the customer experience positions brands to derive benefits of differentiation, repeat purchase, premiumisation and reduced churn.
It’s hard, because brands are not running a single hair salon, and are faced with channel fragmentation, market clutter and long value chains. Brands that crack it — from Red Bull to Nike and Yuppiechef — will benefit disproportionately precisely because the bar is tough to meet.
So what do these brands stand to gain?
1. Great customer experiences offer a compelling path to differentiation in cluttered markets. The hair-salon owner understands that differentiating based on products and services alone is simply insufficient in a landscape where an estimated 40 000 informal salons proliferate the choices available for consumers.
Yet ask any black woman with a weave and she’ll tell you that she’ll drive miles to her favourite salon in the backstreets of Braamfontein, even when she lives and works in Sandton. Experiences count, differentiating brands which offer as much value in the interaction as they do with the product or service they provide.
Red Bull has built a media empire delivering an immersive brand experience centred on extreme sport, enabling it to face the onslaught of “me to” energy drinks with a clearly differentiated experience that’s hard to replicate.
2. Compelling customer experiences create new opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell consumers, growing revenues from selling more products to existing customers.
Just as with the R400 T444z sale, great customer experiences set a different bar for acceptable pricing, allowing Woolworths to command a premium in a highly competitive retail landscape, and taking me back to buy the next must-have kitchen gadget from Yuppiechef.
3. Great customer journeys are the fuel of brand stories and word-of-mouth.
Brand advocates are born out of experiences. Endorsement is fuelled by the sales assistant who goes the extra mile. My Vida cappuccino is Facebook-worthy not because of the flavour of the brew, but because of the barista’s leaf drawn in my foam. The holy grail of word-of-mouth in turn fuels new growth for brands that get the integrated experience right.
Successful hair salons get it right because a passionate owner understands her customer and invests in creating an irresistible customer experience.
Marketers connected to their consumers are making the leap, digging deep into the consumer journey and transforming their brands to create exciting new experiences in a new way of brand-building.
Credits: With thanks to Thuli Motaung (project director: qualitative insights) and Thabang Leshilo (project manager: brand-building) for their insights and photographs of marketing on the roadside.
Lynne Gordon (@lynne_gordon) is the managing director at strategic marketing consultancy Added Value. She learned marketing on-the-job and is fascinated by the streets of South Africa, where small entrepreneurs — untrained as marketers — apply the art and science of branding to their businesses.
Her monthly MarkLives column, “Homegrown”, explores everyday businesses and the lessons corporate marketers can learn from the streets of Mzansi. Share your own observations, photos and examples of marketing from SA’s roadside with @lynne_gordon on Twitter.
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