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I don’t think anyone will argue with the idea that customer expectations are changing fast, and that it is very difficult for retailers to keep up. The problem is not limited to retail; pretty much anyone serving consumers finds themselves in this expectation loop. If a consumer has a great experience with a banking app, for example, all of a sudden they expect every retailer to offer something similar in terms of a digital wallet.
If you look back on the evolution of retail, it’s easy to believe that prior to the consumerization of technology and the rise of the internet, customer expectations of retailers did not evolve very fast at all. I’ve borrowed Scott Galloway’s line many a time, that if you look at most retail stores today, the most disruptive technology that has been introduced in the last 100 years (outside of computerized point of sale) is air conditioning and escalators. That beyond a few flashy screens in stores that don’t do much, the store experience of 2018 is effectively indistinguishable from the store experience of 1985.
Run that idea up against the idea of “brand”. This is a much-discussed topic in retail these days – whether brands are dead and consumers only value price, what it means for a retailer to try to be a brand, especially when they don’t make their own products. A brand, when it comes down to it, is a set of promises made to the customer. Brands should evolve with the times – you just have to look at how breathtakingly sexist product ads were to women in the first half of the 20th century to realize that a brand trying to speak that way to consumers today would be pilloried by the public.
But fundamentally, brands should be constant. The way that they speak to consumers might change, but the values that the brand stands for, and how the brand promises to live those values in what they offer consumers, should not change with the wind. A retailer who executes well on brand promises offers consistency – that consumers can know what to expect from the brand.
So then I ran into this blog from Applause, a digital user experience company, which argues that customer experience is a moving target, not just because consumer behavior shifts over time (ask any Gen Z if they have a Facebook profile, for example), but because even a good customer experience drives demand for an even better customer experience next time. Basically, retailers are in a customer experience arms race with consumers.
This made me pause. Is that true? I immediately thought of McDonalds. Not because I was hungry, but because I did some consulting work for the company many ages ago, and one of the things they talked about constantly was the importance of consistency. They’re famous for it. They make a brand promise around quality, cleanliness, service and value, and they basically are promising that you will experience those things no matter which restaurant you walk into, anywhere in the world.
If I have a good experience at McDonalds – if I find that the food tastes the way I expect it to taste, if the restaurant is clean, if the price is good and the food is delivered pretty fast – do I now expect McDonalds to somehow be even cleaner, faster, affordable, and taste even more, I don’t know, McDonalds-y?