Three customer centric strategies worth considering

Written by Marcela Presecan on June 1, 2015. Posted in Articles, Operational performance, Trending

As much as we may like to have all the answers right, there still are the inevitable instances in which we don’t. That is why we sometimes need to do a little research in order to understand what we did wrong. Various implementation models of performance management systems worldwide do not make our job of getting the right answers less difficult. However, it is through research that we can benchmark our practices to those of our peers and, ultimately, discover the limitations behind our rationale.

1. Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A., the Italian sports car manufacturer, uses a social customer-centric approach to deliver its strategy of becoming “the most desirable luxury super sports car brand in the world” (Roberto Ciacci, 2015). In spite of its measurement intricacy, product desirability is one of the leading focuses in Lamborghini’s social strategy. So, how do performance specialists at Lamborghini measure desire?

As part of their social strategy to nurture trust, enable growth, improve governance and work on brand protection, performance experts at Lamborghini also developed a 170 page list of KPIs aimed at monitoring product desirability. This required a combination of social engagement and loyalty KPIs that made the measurement of product desirability, tangible.

Some of the social engagement KPIs Lamborghini plans to abide by in 2015 are:

# Interactions – to evaluate the number of interactions with the brand’s audience;
% Average engagement rate – to assess the level of implication and dedication to the brand;
% Engagement rate per post type – to monitor audience involvement with one specific topic or subject.

Some of the loyalty KPIs, Lamborghini promotes are:

% Audience growth – to monitor the number of new fans the company page gained during the selected time span;
% Churn rate – the percentage of total daily dislikes to lifetime total likes, to assess how many fans decide to stop following the company page;
# Average page views – to assess the number of page views of the social property per user;
$ Feedback rate – to track user feedback, such as comments, which require a stronger level of participation or which leave a public trail for intense debate.

2. Pernot Ricard, the number one company in Premium and Prestige Spirits worldwide, owner of the renowned Absolut Vodka and Ballantine’s brands, started its digital ascension with the creation of a networking platform dedicated to its senior executives. This particular platform extended to company employees all over the world who actively engage the whole organizational community into becoming a global team that shares continuous dialogue.

The functionalities of the platform were only fully acknowledged when a group of Pernod Ricard employees discovered compliance irregularities with an Absolute Vodka display, inside a duty free shop. While a group of company employees were waiting for their flight, they noticed something wrong with the product’s label, and posted it onto the mentioned social network. They tagged the company compliance group which confirmed that the label was counterfeit. The display was immediately removed and restorative actions were deployed.

Realizing the benefit this social networking platform brings to the company, Pernot Ricard extended the online community component by providing it with new roles, processes, and content moderation. The optimization of the platform was monitored through a scorecard built on key performance indicators that measured:

Reach: the share of regular users that logged in daily;
Engagement: the contribution of the members to the platform.

The social platform Pernot Ricard made available for its employees delivered real value to the company, aside from the fact that it constituted an enabler for the company’s digital transformation.

3. The Heathrow Airport in London is one of the busiest airports in the world. However, its customer centric strategy has managed to trigger an impressive 110% increase in non-member visits, in 2013. Due to this achievement, Heathrow Airport’s distinctive Customer Loyalty Programme was highly commended with a Loyalty Award in 2014. So what is the secret behind the success of London’s Heathrow Airport?

Besides the fact that it rewards its passengers for everything they do, the airport also has a service quality rebate and bonus scheme to ensure that exceptional quality performance is achieved. Where performance falls below a certain level, Heathrow must repay a proportion of charges levied back to the airlines. The rebate scheme monitors the performance of the Heathrow Airport in terms of: queuing incidents at the departures security area, passenger satisfaction with the seating in the departures lounge, visitors’ perception of the airport’s environment and facilities, functionality of terminal tracking system, performance of the baggage claims burro etc.

Some of the KPIs used to monitor the performance of these aspects are:

# Departure lounge seat availability (index/score)

# Cleanliness (index/score)

# Flight information (index/score)

# Security (index/score)

% Central security queues – Times queue

% Central security queues – Times queue < 10 minutes

% Arrivals reclaim (baggage carousels)

The rebate scheme also includes a bonus element to reward high performance that benefits passengers. It also provides the airport with an incentive to meet required standards of service quality.

The customer centric strategies of Lamborghini, Pernot Ricard and Heathrow Airport, set these companies aside in their achievements and public acknowledgements. Although, they are not at all the same, and neither of these strategies provide a standard for the industry, they are unique in their ability to produce desired results. And there is nothing that brings more focus to performance management and measurement alike, than a resourceful results oriented company.

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