Introduction
The pandemic has severed the customer experience and service processes and forced companies to change their strategies surrounding it to bring more customer convenience and security. The digital transformation has brought the need to get good customer feedback on the updated strategies ensuring that all services are frictionless. Customer strategy ensures that the company has put all plans regarding customer service in place in order to provide great and excellent customer experience at every touchpoint. Forging a good customer experience strategy welcomes enhanced business outcomes, prioritizing which actions are necessary and aligning such with company goals and objectives.
In this context, the customer experience strategy of Samsung will be outlined. Samsung is a major electronic and gadgets behemoth operating globally, based in South Korea. The company has incurred a revenue of 22 billion dollars in 2021 alone, and it enjoys a vast customer base. Hence, the company surely puts forth a strong customer experience strategy to ensure that customers are not being displeased with the service and such that their revenues are not affected. This report hence discussed the strategies employed by Samsung, by drawing on customer journey and persona, while evaluating the marketing channels utilised by them. Also, the report included certain recommendations, such that the performance of the company gets increased regarding customer experience.
2. Importance of Customer Experience
Customer experience is the impression a company makes in the market while dealing with a number of customers from varying geographical backgrounds. The customer experience is the perspective of the customer which he or she developed throughout the buying journey with the specific company. The touch points that are critical to customer experience are products and people. An excellent customer experience is vital to the sustainability of the company amidst the growing market competition (Hossein Bodaghi and Rostamzadeh, 2018). Remarkable customer experiences enhance customer loyalty and help the company to retain existing customers and attract more. A good customer experience further promotes brand advocacy. For a company, the product they sell and the services they offer are not adequate for building positive brand recognition or gaining traction. Customer experiences build loyalty among customers, build more satisfied customers as well as reduce the customer churn, while boosting the company sales. Through a robust customer experience strategy, a company like Samsung can increase revenue and build massive market competition.
2.1 Concept of Customer Experience
Customer experiences are mere interactions between a firm and its customers. The process entails the overall journey of a customer and his or her experience with the company. Such interactions lead to attraction of the customers, customer awareness, cultivation and brand advocacy. The company sells its products and services while the customer buys such. The customer experience is measured by the experiences the customer had with the company during all touch points against the customer expectations (Kumar and Anjaly, 2017).
There is a slight difference between customer service and customer experience. Customer service deals with the factors in the customer’s journey, and on the other hand, customer experience deals with the introduction and interactions of the customers with the brand. Customer service is part of a bigger dimension called customer experience. Customer experience management is a study that deals with knowing customers and being aware of their preferences. Such knowledge and understanding about the customers lead to delivery of tailored services, and help the brand to advertise its services through word of mouth. A deep understanding of the customer base comes from acquiring the customer data from all channels and contacts across the enterprise. The customer experience is all about gathering information and processing customer data, and doing so with accuracy and precision. With such understanding, comes brand loyalty, customer value and brand reputability, while giving the company a competitive advantage.
Figure- Importance of customer experience as per managers across the world
Source- Zendesk
Therefore, a company needs collaboration and cooperation in its service so that the brand can enjoy a seamless and consistent customer experience strategy. This requires collaborative effort from all departments of the organisation and supervision of the management team, thereby leading to a robust customer service.
2.2 Importance of Customer Experience at Samsung
All companies need to develop and scale up their services so that they can provide a good and robust customer experience, thereby building trust and reliability. Being a frontier in the electronics and gadgets industry, Samsung brings multiple innovative services to the customers. The company heavily invests on providing a seamless customer experience since customers are the pivotal aspect in their business (Hernawan and Sidjabat, 2021). Without customers, the brand has no credibility. Hence the brand put multiples concepts in place to design a customer experience framework that allows them to bring more customers and be more productive.
The brand always looks for new opportunities to engage with prospective customers and connect with them to provide them with whatever they require. They also put emphasis gathering information and data and record such in reports and assess the customer preferences and build their products. The company has always focused on developing new and improved products as well as innovative services, addressing the competition with similar brands like Huawei, or Redmi, Lenovo or HP. There are many market players that threaten the share of Samsung in different geographies.
Therefore, the main focus of the company has been on improving the customer experiences within the company. The company puts several strategies in place that range from updating site experience, bringing more developed products, innovating with new features, and bringing devices at affordable prices. The pandemic has imposed risks on the service of the brand and the brand has been putting efforts to restore their customer experience strategist to elevate CX along with increasing customer engagement. The company has further improved the search experience, so that the customers can get help whenever they want and solve their queries (Happ et al, 2021). The brand has further launched support tools like Yext support to track their performance in customer services. With vast technical advancements, the brand has utilised AI and big data to ease the complexities and provide better customer experience.
3. Creation of Customer Persona
A customer persona reveals the user of the service and their interaction with the product that would help the brand to produce a relevant as well as an engaging product. The customer persona is a fictional archetype that helps the brand to understand the consumer preferences and reveals the main traits of the customer. The persona is created based on the available data of the customer and analytics. It includes information regarding customer traits, habits, motivations as well as demography and profile. Below is a representation of a customer persona of Samsung that details a customer’s preference and pain points and reasons to use Samsung services over others.
| Demography and Bio | Mary Jacobs is a lousy millennial pursuing a Master’s degree who spends most of her time in digital medium. She comes from a middle class background and has a part time job that requires travelling. She requires an affordable mobile device that pertains to her huge needs, along with necessary features like calendar, GPS, with a strong battery backup. |
| Profile | Job title- MSc Student, part timer
Age group – 16-24 Status- Committed Urban, middle income family Phone- Samsung Galaxy F23 |
| Needs | The main criteria for Mary are the features that convey durability, organization, big screen, data storage, good battery backup, excellent camera, Google enabled and has access to necessary features like alarms, calendar etc. |
| Motivations | The main motivation for Mary to buy a Samsung mobile is the accessibility to premium features at an affordable price with a technologically advanced brand with quality service. |
| Goals | Accessing advanced features like a big screen, 6000 mAh battery, faster processor, excellent camera and everything at an affordable price. |
| Personality | Mary loves taking pictures and always needs a camera handy. Her requirements are always changing and she is just on the verge of finishing her masters. She is well aware of technology and likes to stay fit. She needs to communicate with people and requires a well serviced and featured device. |
| Pain points solved | ● More data storage
● Affordable ● Superb processor ● Big screen ● Batter backup |
Table 1: Customer Persona
Source- self
4. Customer Journey
Customer journey is all about understanding the experience of the customers, being aware of their behaviour and preferences, as well as what can be done to improve their queries and trip with the company so that they become loyal customers of the brand (Stein and Ramaseshan, 2020). Customer journey refers to mapping of the behavioural patterns of the customer using data and analytics. Mapping the customer journey is an easy marketing tool, which is an invaluable addition to the organisation’s marketing strategy. With constant development of technology, there are new ways of experiencing the products and the purchasing patterns of the customers have changed. Therefore, it’s essential for a company to plan a strategy to understand the behaviour of the customers in every step of interactions with the brand. It can further help a business to understand how the customers will behave while experiencing their brand and help them to understand the customer’s behaviour to make further optimal decisions.
4.1. Importance of Customer journey in Customer Experience
Customers react with the brand on a digital platform multiple times before reaching a decision. These interactions are small aspects of the customer experience. The overall interactions of the customers with the brands across the marketing channels builds the customer experience. By analysing the pattern and steps of the customers, a company can build an accurate idea of the customer’s demands, needs and preferences (Wong and Yan, 2018). This further helps the brand to capture more sales by introducing more efforts in marketing via open and integrated data source, creating alerts and identifying potential issues without compromising the customer experience. The customer journey builds a road map for the brand to plan future investments in products and services, which would provide further insights into the customers obstacles, opportunities and segmentation. Mapping the customer joinery further allows the development of smarter business decisions and solves the customer’s queries, paving a more improved customer experience.
4.2 Customer Journey Mapping in Samsung
| Stages of Journey | Activities | Feelings and Needs | Potential
Opportunities for Improvements
|
| Awareness | Keeping the customers informed about the products and new releases | ● Guiding customers
● Solving queries ● Scepticism ● Hesitation ● Ignorance |
● Keeping the customers informed about the brand
● Providing new channelled of information gathering ● Solving the doubts of the customers routinely ● Providing a more robust website |
| Consideration | Promoting the products and services of the brand in online media and advertising such in digital networks | ● Analysing the priorities
● Finding other alternatives ● Affordable solutions ● Identification of requirements |
● Bring value to the customers
● Seamless experience to the customers. ● Optimising the user experience ● Omni-channel support to customers |
| Conversion
|
Encouraging the customers to make the purchase through lucrative feature and advertising | ● Understanding the price of the products
● Evaluating the factors and functions ● Comparing the services
|
● Sending customer incentives
● Frictionless services ● Digital updates ● Keeping them informed through press release |
| Retention | Providing a robust and satisfying customer experience to keep them loyal | ● Approaching usage of products
● Trying out the new features of the smartphones ● Gathering insights about more products ● Understanding the features of the products |
● Optimising the transaction processes
● Ensuring product quality ● Good advertising ● More website reach |
| Advocacy | Making more informed decisions to improve the customer experience strategy | ● Addressing the needs of the consumers
● Providing better customer experience ● Making then aware about new updates |
● Make more initiatives to bring and attract customers
● Surveying the customer needs and preferences ● Gathering more insights about customers ● Improving the customer experience strategy |
Table 2: Customer Journey Mapping
Source- Self
5. Omni-channel Marketing
Omni-channel Marketing refers to the collaboration and cooperation of various channels that are used by a company to communicate with consumers in the hope of establishing a robust brand experience. Omni-channel approach is a multi marketing approach that entails methods of increasing the sales and providing the customers with a buying experience that would be unparalleled. Such channels include digital, telephony, or through brick and mortar stores (Mbama et al, 2018). The Omni-channel marketing allows the brand to increase brand visibility, ensure more personalised services to the customers as well as optimising the strategy and forming the budget to increase the company’s performance. In modern times the companies are using omni channel support to create an enhanced customer experience while improving the customer interactions between the brand and the customers.
5.1 Marketing Channels at Samsung
Samsung naked use of a number of marketing strategies as well as techniques to ensure brand visibility and more awareness. So far, the marketing strategies of the brand have allowed it to diversify in new markets and open new opportunities in a number of ways. The brand has reached out to celebrities to advertise the brand products. With their relationship with the customers, the celebrities were able to enhance the market reach of the company, and promote such in different social media platforms (Gorgoglione and Panniello, 2018). Teaming up with the celebrities, the brand has guaranteed a wider exposure to the customers, leveraging the large fan base of the celebrities. The brand has also used digital marketing techniques to achieve corporate results, making more customer engagement and making them aware in the process. With its socialised social media page, the brand has gathered more attention and traction bringing more valuable products to customers.
6. Customer Experience Performance Metrics
The customer experience metrics are key indicators of the business that involves the techniques of the business to involve the customer’s input. Such metrics allow the brand to understand the feelings of the customers and their future preferences. Such metrics can also allow the brand to revaluate the brand strategies and understand how effective such is. These are very important parameters for a company like Samsung to check reality and reassess its strategy to improve as well as increase customer engagement and retention.
Figure- popular customer metrics followed by brands
6.1 CX Performance Matrix and recommendations
Customer experience metrics are the KPIs that businesses make use of in their business strategies. The most popular strategies include Net promoter score, customer effort score and follows. The businesses should follow the metrics that are relevant to the business (Emerson et al, 2019). A brand like Samsung can include the net promoter score or customer satisfaction, which can further help the brand to effectively analyse the customer preferences. These metrics are simpler to use for the brand and will allow them to collect feedback from the customers easily. Adding more complexity in business doesn’t add value and thus, Samsung needs to focus on the relevant things and improve its results and fix necessary issues in business.
7. CX Processes in Various Types of Industries
Here the consumer experience between Samsung and Apple has been discussed. With recent experiences, it has been seen that Apple has fallen in terms of customer service compared to Samsung among the customers, especially in the US in 2020. Data suggests that Apple has acquired a satisfaction score of 81, a 2% drop, now tying with Motorola and Google. However, customers have voted Samsung as the leading customer service provider with their new models and line-up. Among the comparison criteria, customers voted Samsung because of its ease of features in mobile devices with further calling and audio ease. This explains that customers are more satisfied with Samsung products than they are with Apple products (Angelin et al, 2021). This can also be attributed to the fact that Samsung tries to ease their customer service unlike Apple which survives on brand reputation. Samsung brings new features as well as affordable devices in the market unlike Apple. Furthermore, their brand has been focusing on betterment of the services unlike Apple who doesn’t have seamless customer service, or affordable devices.
8. Conclusion
The purpose of the report was to thoroughly examine the concept of customer experience from the standpoint of Samsung. The customer’s journey and the firm ’s customer persona have both been highlighted in this study. The value of Samsung’s omnichannel marketing strategy in terms of customer experience has also been explored. The many CX performance measures have been scrutinised, and suggestions were made as to which two metrics Samsung should adopt to improve customer experience. A comparison of Samsung’s CX procedures to those in other industries has also been made. Therefore, the report has successfully highlighted the customer experience strategy of Samsung.
References
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Samsung.com, 2022, About Us, viewed on 09/05/2022 https://www.samsung.com/uk/about-us/company-info/
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