Creating exceptional customer experiences instantly differentiates brands in today’s mobile world

CHICAGO - July 16, 2013 - PRLog -- In today’s social media-dominant culture, the customer experience can almost instantly help or hurt a company and its reputation. Customer experience, no longer an overlooked commodity, can now define a brand immediately thanks to digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as well as mobile applications available on smartphones and tablets around the world.

Consumers can now share their experiences — good or bad — with the masses, resulting in either increased brand loyalty and advocacy or lost customers. Giving customers an engaging and satisfying experience can significantly boost an organization’s appeal to others who hear about those experiences. Using data to shape those experiences leads organizations in the right direction.

According to Alicia Rankin, Head of Research and Fan Insights for the National Football League (NFL), it has been imperative for the NFL to make sure that the in-stadium experience is exceptional. And in 2007, it became a corporate initiative to focus on in-stadium engagement to ensure that it is not just as good, but even better than watching an NFL game on TV. Since that time, the NFL started a Gameday Experience/Voice of the Fan research platform that is driven from Rankin’s department and executed across all 32 NFL clubs. The online survey with ticket members evaluates the entire driveway-to-driveway gameday experience.

Rankin will speak about how to effectively track and leverage the customer experience at the marcus evans Customer Experience 2013 Conference, August 13-14 in Chicago, Illinois.

“Not dissimilar to most businesses, the NFL has a core group of fans that drive a large part of our business. That group starts with our ticket members who spend more than three times as much time with the NFL in a given week as the average fan,” Rankin explained. “And with fan insights revealing that ‘avid fans’ generally bring along ‘casual fans’ with them, it is critical to make sure that their gameday experience is great every time. Regardless of whether your team is winning or losing, you want fans to feel compelled to be there so that not only do they keep coming back, but they act as advocates for others to attend in the hopes they become interested in getting their own season ticket package, thus keeping a strong pipeline of fans and revenue.”

Research has played a critical role in how the NFL evaluates the customer experience. “The advantage of any tracking study is the ability to benchmark, and we do that on both a league level (all team data aggregated) and club level,” Rankin stated. The research allows the NFL to determine which areas may need to be more league-focused and driven vs. club-driven. An example of the former is the League instituting mandatory in-stadium replays of all big plays, regardless of it being of the home or away teams.

“Both quantitative and qualitative research with our ticket members have told us that fans are accustomed to seeing replays on TV and want to see as many as possible in the stadium as well,” Rankin said. “Separately, through factor analyses, we can gauge which areas of the overall experience are most likely to impact ticket renewals. So for the clubs, the data generated has been extremely helpful to them in determining which areas of gameday operations and/or gameday entertainment to prioritize.”

Rankin added that the Customer Experience 2013 Conference offers organizations critical knowledge on how other companies and industries put their customers first and what research programs they utilize to measure success. “The passion, questions, and opinions in talking with conference attendees about the NFL are endless (in a good way). Afterwards I always feel like I just did a focus group with a hundred people, just without the M&M’s!”

The marcus evans 2013 Customer Experience Conference will take place in Chicago, Illinois, August 13-14, 2013. For more information, visit the event website.