Introduction 

The report is going to analyse the customer experience (CX) strategy of Heinz for its Baked Beans product in England. First, it will discuss the importance of customer experience. Following this, it will create a consumer persona creation. It will also develop a customer journey map in relation to the consumer persona. Lastly, it will describe omnichannel marketing, CX performance metrics, and CX processes in different industries.

The Importance of customer experience

Customer experience refers to the interactions that customers have with businesses in regard to the brands of the businesses. It plays an important role in developing a stronger bond between the brands and customers (Bueno et al., 2019). In addition, it emphasises identifying the needs and requirements of customers.

Heinz is keenly focused on delivering good customer experience as it tends to directly impact customer loyalty and brand image. Customer experience remains a key important factor for Heinz’s baked beans product as it helps in highlighting the quality standards of the product. Apart from this, the customer experience offered by Heinz helps in establishing a strong emotional connection, developing trust, anticipating needs and improving customer retention. Thus, as a result, the company obtains significant benefits in increasing brand loyalty over its baked beans product. Customers are likely to make repeated purchases of the baked beans products of the company.

Thus, it helps the company in increasing sales numbers and improving financial performance. Therefore, it can be stated that customer experience remains a crucial factor for Heinz’s baked beans products as it helps in driving brand reputation and customer loyalty.

Furthermore, Heinz also utilises customer experience in enhancing its competitive edge in the baked beans segment in England. Customers are likely to switch to competitors regarding the issue of product quality or pricing. Thus, offering a good customer experience helps companies in increasing competitiveness (Ameen et al., 2021). Moreover, offering a good customer experience also helps Heinz in improving its marketing tactics. Thus, it helps in increasing the brand visibility and exposure to a larger audience. The company operates in a  highly competitive environment, thus, customer experience enables the company to withstand the challenge of rising competition and retention of its customers.

Consumer persona creation 

Consumer persona is referred to as representations of subsets of the customer base who possess similar behaviours, expectations, needs and motivation factors (Lehnert et al., 2021). It plays an important role for businesses as it helps in segmenting customer groups and understanding their expectations. Companies tend to utilise the consumer persona for making decisions taking into consideration the needs, requirements, expectations and motivations of consumers which helps in offering good customer experiences. Heinz company also utilises consumer persona for improving its customer experiences regarding its baked beans product.

Table 1: Consumer persona creation

(Source: Created by the learner)

Mapping the customer journey

The customer journey is referred to as the path of interactions between customers and brands. In addition, it involves different experiences that customers obtain during interacting with brands. The “customer journey map” is considered a key useful tool for visualising the customer’s experiences during interacting with brands from the point of view of customers (Ponce et al., 2020). It plays an important role in finding out the operational inefficiencies that tend to negatively impact customer experiences. There are a total of 5 stages in the customer journey: “Awareness, consideration, purchase, retention and advocacy”.

Table 2: “Customer mapping journey”

(Source: Created by the learner)

Omnichannel marketing 

Explanation of omnichannel marketing

Omnichannel marketing is considered the integration of different channels that businesses utilise for interacting with target audiences as well as developing a good brand experience. It plays an important role in customer experience strategy as it helps in offering seamless services to customers across different channels (Cui et al., 2021). In addition, businesses also aim to determine the touchpoints of customers through omnichannel marketing. Heinz offers its baked beans products through a range of channels to the target audience. The company primarily sells its product through an extensive network of distributors, agents and independent brokers across England. Apart from this, it also maintains a sizable presence in the e-Commerce platforms to sell its baked beans. The company is keenly focused on offering products through online mediums to obtain more data from customers. The firm offers Heinz Baked Beans in bundles to customers through its “Heinz To Home” website across the UK (Reuters, 2021).  It provides in-depth insights into the consumer behaviour and purchasing habits of the company.

Role of Interaction in omnichannel marketing

The interaction revolves around responding to customer preferences, requests and expectations immediately. It plays an important role in boosting conversion rates, enhancing personalisation services, producing quality leads and creating interactive engagement (Hayes and Kelliher, 2022). Heinz uses social media marketing to offer key information about its Baked Beans products to customers. The company maintains a sizable presence on popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to establish strong communication with the audience. As mentioned earlier, the company emphasises offering products via online mediums to collect customer data such as purchasing patterns, transaction history and behaviours. It helps in improving the omnichannel tactics as well as improving interaction with customers.

Identification of different sales and marketing channels used by Heinz for its Baked Beans

Omnichannel marketing offers significant help to Heinz in creating a cohesive and integrated customer experience. The company principally offers its Baked Beans product through 3 key channels: e-Commerce, food distributors and traditional retail. The company does not run its own physical stores, instead, it sells its products through the network of retailers and wholesalers across England. Most importantly, the company has increased its e-Commerce presence to improve its product offering to the customers. It helps in ensuring the easy availability of the product to customers (Nguyen et al., 2022). Apart from this, when it comes to marketing, the company utilises a range of channels to promote its baked beans product extensively across England. It uses both traditional and digital marketing tactics to target its audience. For instance, Heinz conducted a campaign named “Beanz Meanz More”  to promote the healthy credentials of its Baked beans (Marketing Week, 2021). One of the key advantages of traditional advertising is that it helps in reaching a diverse audience. Thus, the company relies on traditional marketing to promote its baked beans product in the UK.

Figure 1: Advertising campaign of Heinz

(Source: Marketing Week, 2021)

Moreover, it also conducts digital marketing strategies to promote Baked Beans in England. The firm uses a popular social media platform to promote its baked beans product in England. One of the key advantages of digital marketing is that it is cost-effective compared to traditional advertising. In addition, it also helps in targeting a larger audience. Most important, it helps the firm in sharing key information including the nutritional benefits of its Baked Beans product to the customers. Thus, integrating traditional marketing with digital marketing enables the firm in delivering a seamless customer journey.

CX performance metrics

CX performance metrics help businesses in evaluating how satisfied or loyal customers are with their products or services. The 2 key popular CX performance metrics are as follows:

Lifetime value (LV):

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) works to quantify a person’s total value that will be generated for a business throughout the relationship of the person with a brand. The lifetime value of customers is calculated by multiplying the “no of years a customer stays with a company” by the “annual value of the customer” (Marisa et al., 2019). It helps in assessing the potential value of customers for a business. Thus, it enables businesses in prioritising potential customers as well as allocate resources effectively. However, it also presents the challenge of data quality as well as availability. In addition, the other key drawbacks of this metric are the uncertainty and complexity of the data which offers poor insights about the customer’s lifetime value.

Relevance of LV to the Heinz company:

Heinz can use this indicator to identify the lifetime value of their customers. Thus, in this regard, the company needs to collect significant amounts of data as it can help in calculating the annual value of customers. Most importantly, it can compare the annual value of customers for its online and offline selling. Thus, in this regard, it can collect sales data and transaction amounts of investors over their time period.  It can help in segmenting potential customers as well as make specific marketing programs to target the customer group more (Mosaddegh et al., 2021). Apart from this, the company can also identify the cost of acquiring customers.

Net Promoter Score (NPS):

“Net Promoter Score (NPS)” is a key popular metric that tends to survey customers on a scale of 0 to 10. The customers who give scores between 0 to 6 are referred to as detractors. In addition, the customers who give scores between 7 and 8 are considered passive. Lastly, the customers who give scores between 9 and 10 are referred to as promoters (Fisher and Kordupleski, 2019). It also helps in measuring customer loyalty. The NPS works to ask one question of the customers regarding their overall experiences of them with the brand. It offers key insights into the repurchasing of production and growth opportunities for businesses. It is calculated by subtracting the “percentage of promoters” from the “percentage of detractors”. When it comes to benefits, it enables businesses to identify improvement areas that further help in boosting customer satisfaction. In addition, it also offers significant help in increasing customer loyalty. However, one of the key drawbacks of NPS is its inability to find out as well as act on key factors regarding customer satisfaction. Apart from this, it also does not provide adequate insights into the competitive dynamics of a market.

Relevance of NPS to the Heinz company:

Heinz company can opt to ask one question to its customers to measure customer loyalty. For instance, the company can ask “How likely you are to rank the Baked Beans of Heinz regarding its quality standards and convenience?” to the customers. Furthermore, after evaluating the rank of the products, the company can further conduct consumer surveys to collect in-depth insights about customer behaviour and opinions. Customer surveys are regarded as very important as it helps in identifying the negative and positive perceptions of customers. Therefore, it can be stated that asking one question regarding a product can help the firm in measuring customer loyalty.

CX processes in different industries 

CX critical factors:

Governance:

Governance is referred to as a set of plans and methods that companies follow for managing their CX programs. It offers a framework that consists of priorities, objectives and vision of CX programs (Ameen et al., 2021). The governance structure plays an important role in supporting the decisions regarding CX strategies. For instance, in the financial sector, companies prioritise complying with the guidelines set by the “Data Protection Act 2018” of the UK as it helps in maintaining transparency in processes as well as prioritising ethical manners in businesses.

Culture:

Organizational culture also plays an important role in offering a good customer experience. It refers to the values and behaviours of an organisation’s employees. Employees play a key important role in enhancing customer engagement. For example, Technology companies are keenly focused on prioritising collaborative work culture to develop innovative solutions for customers.

“Customer Experience Strategy Design”:

It refers to the plans that take place to offer positive customer experiences for each touchpoint across the customer journey. In this regard, companies spend a sizable amount of time collecting data about customers as well as their feedback. It helps in determining the needs and expectations of customers. Furthermore, companies offer training sessions to employees to offer customer-centric services.

Process of implementing critical success factors in a company

Companies prioritise strong communication for implementing CSF effectively. The company works to share goals and expectations regarding CX with its employees as it helps in working towards the same goal. Apart from this, companies also utilise different performance metrics such as NPS to identify improvement areas.

Comparison of processes regarding implementation of CSFs between Instagram and Heinz

“Customer experience design strategy”:

Heinz utilises its e-Commerce platforms to obtain data regarding customer behaviour and expectations. It helps the company in designing its customer strategy. On the other hand, Instagram also relies on the preferences of its users to make changes in its key features and support offering strong CX.

Governance:

Heinz has its own code of conduct which requires suppliers, employees, and business partners to follow (Keiningham et al., 2020). It helps the firm in running operations in an ethical manner. Whereas, Instagram also complies with the data regulations act to protect customer information.

Culture:

Heinz relies on collaborative work culture to support its customer-centric product offering. Employees who feel valued and empowered are likely to offer good customer experiences. On the other hand, Instagram relies on an innovation culture to develop new services to enhance customer satisfaction.

Conclusion 

The customer experience provided by Heinz plays a key role in establishing a strong emotional connection and developing trust with customers. It found that the company integrates its digital marketing with traditional marketing to offer a seamless customer journey. Using NPS can help Heinz in enhancing customer satisfaction. Furthermore, it found that the firm relies on collaborative work culture to support its offering of strong customer experiences.

Reference list

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Cui, T.H., Ghose, A., Halaburda, H., Iyengar, R., Pauwels, K., Sriram, S., Tucker, C. and Venkataraman, S., 2021. Informational challenges in omnichannel marketing: Remedies and future research. Journal of Marketing, 85(1), pp.103-120. [Accessed 11 May 2023]

Fisher, N.I. and Kordupleski, R.E., 2019. Good and bad market research: A critical review of Net Promoter Score. Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry, 35(1), pp.138-151. [Accessed 11 May 2023]

Hayes, Ó. and Kelliher, F., 2022. The emergence of B2B omni-channel marketing in the digital era: a systematic literature review. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing. [Accessed 11 May 2023]

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