THE EFFORTLESS EXPERIENCE - CONQUERING THE NEW

BATTLEGROUND FOR CUSTOMER LOYALTY

BY MATTHEW DIXON, NICK TOMAN AND RICK DELISI
Reviewer: Charlie Hills, strategy director
“Customer service is getting it wrong…it should be less about offense – bending
over backwards to please customers – and more about defense…preventing frus-
tration and delay”
This is an unusual book for a marketer to read because it is primarily about customer service, not ‘marketing,’ howev-
er it’s a fascinating read and I believe many of the principles in it are very applicable to marketing; and how marketers
can positively impact consumer loyalty. A lot of what they learned is scary to marketers too.

The core premise of the book is that customer service is getting it wrong. “Customer service should be less about
offense – bending over backwards to please customers – and more about defense, in the sense of preventing frustra-
tion and delay. What if the Holy Grail of customer service isn’t customer delight, but customer relief – the simple re-
laxing of the shoulders that comes from having your problem handled quickly and smoothly… the effortless experi-
ence.”

They define loyalty as repurchase, share of wallet and advocacy. It’s about “getting them to stay because they want to,
not because they have to”. They have identified 4 big findings, but as you read these don’t panic – this is about cus-
tomer service…. Not marketing. But the core principle applies.

1: A strategy of delight doesn’t pay

There is virtually no difference at all between the loyalty of those customers whose expectations are exceeded and
those whose expectations are simply met. Delight is rare – customers said their expectations were exceeded only 16%
of the time.

2: Satisfaction is not a predictor of loyalty

20% if customers who reported they were satisfied also said they were planning to leave
28% of customers who said they were dissatisfied said they fully intended to stay loyal

3: Customer service interactions tend to drive disloyalty, not loyalty

Any customer service interaction is 4 times more likely to drive disloyalty than loyalty.
71% of people who have positive product experiences engage in word of mouth, but only 32% of people with a nega-
tive product experience do so
BUT for customer service it’s different. Only 25% will share a positive customer service experience, 65% will share a
bad one.
45% of people who had positive experience told fewer than 3 people
48% of people who had negative things to say told more than 10

4. The key to mitigating disloyalty is reducing customer effort

“We pick companies because of their products, but we often leave them because of their service failures. The role of
customer service is not to drive loyalty by delighting customers but to mitigate customer disloyalty”.

© Copyright Cherry London 2013 | Kieran Mansfield| Nov 2013 1

THE EFFORTLESS EXPERIENCE - CONQUERING THE NEW
BATTLEGROUND FOR CUSTOMER LOYALTY
BY MATTHEW DIXON, NICK TOMAN AND RICK DELISI
Reviewer: Charlie Hills, strategy director
They identify 5 drivers of disloyalty, 4 of which are about effort:
1. More than one contact to resolve (effort)
2. Repeating information (effort)
3. Perceived additional effort to resolve (effort)
4. Transfers (effort)
5. Customer Service Rep: Generic Service (not effort). This is where the rep treats them like a number and makes
no effort to personalise the service at all.

And 2 that can positively drive loyalty, one of which is about effort:
1. First Contact Resolution (effort)
2. “Moments of Wow: Teaching Customer Something New” (not effort)

96% of customer who had high effort experiences reported being disloyal, compared to only 9% of customers with low
effort experience who reported being disloyal. After this point, the book becomes very customer service centric, which
is well worth a read if this is your field, with many applicable learnings to experiential and face to face marketing disci-
plines too.

However, the transferable learning to marketers from this front section is quite clear. Make your customer interac-
tions easy and effort free and once, and only once, that is right should be developing the razzle and wrapping that is
the delight of marketing communications. We all know intuitively how important being effort free is in today’s hectic
world, but this book gives us the science to prove it.

© Copyright Cherry London 2013 | Kieran Mansfield| Nov 2013 2