Building a Robust Customer Experience Management Strategy: Lessons From Nike

Customer experience management is how a brand builds and grows relationships with their customers and creates consistent, meaningful, and enjoyable interactions at different stages of the customer journey, across channels and touchpoints. Brands like Nike have been successful in understanding their customers over the years to create enhanced and seamless experiences. Here are a few lessons from Nike’s customer experience game plan to help you build your customer experience management strategy.

Customer experienceOpens a new window is a journey that begins at the brand or product exploration stage and continues through the decision making, purchase, and service steps. It is an ever-evolving process where brands need to consistently work on identifying customers’ requirements and preferences to better connect with their customers, build trust, and design memorable experiences for them.

A powerful customer experience management strategy is a must to gain and sustain a competitive advantage.

According to Merkel’s The Experience Impact ReportOpens a new window :

• 66% of customers prioritize experience over price while making a brand decision
• Nike, Amazon, and Apple, were voted the top favorites when it comes to delivering personalized experiences
• Amazon, Nike, and Apple also aced the charts for delivering exceptional online experiences
   

The report also mentioned, “Nike embodies a customer-centric approach by monitoring consumer preferences and shifting focus from the products to the overall brand and the individual consumer interaction.” NikeOpens a new window takes a quality-focused approach for its products as well as to build customer relationships. Let’s see how Nike’s customer experience management strategy has helped it become one of the leading sports and apparel brands.

Learn More: What is Customer Experience? Strategies, Best Practices and TrendsOpens a new window

Building a Customer Experience Management Strategy

In this era of perpetual connectedness, customers expect brands to anticipate their needs, deliver hyper-personalized responses, and be hyper-responsive in solving their pain points. Here is how Nike is pulling it off with its customer experience management strategy.

1. Build Relationships
 

To stand out in a highly competitive, saturated market, brands need to do a lot more than merely sell quality products. They must build lasting relationships and add value to customers’ lives. Taking initiatives to understand their audience’s lifestyle and offering them relevant and entertaining experiences is key to gaining trust and forming strong bonds.

The Nike PlusOpens a new window initiative helps the brand interact with customers, even when they are not buying from them. Customers can track their health, workouts, access personalized training programs, get priority access to sporting events, and much more through the app. And with more customer data and rich insights through Nike Plus, the company can work on enhancing customer experiences.

2. Hyper-Responsiveness Across Channels
 

Online shopping has gained prominence, but brick and mortar stores haven’t lost its charm just yet. When it comes to trying on products or speedy shopping experiences, shoppers still turn to physical stores. If brands can find an overlap between digital and physical experiences and cater to customers’ needs, only then they can create truly seamless experiences across channels.

In an attempt to marry digital and physical personalized shopping experiences and provide better customer serviceOpens a new window , Nike opened an experimental store in Los Angeles – Nike by MelroseOpens a new window . This store was designed to curate a collection of city-specific styles determined by data fOpens a new window rom Nike Plus members to cater to their needs. The store also offered a selection of Nike’s bestselling products and running, training, and other sportswear. Aimed at providing better customer service, the store allows customers to try-out products pre-reserved through their Nike Plus app.

Learn More: 

Customer Service Vs Customer Experience (CX): Key Differences And SimilaritiesOpens a new window

3. Hyper-Personalization
 

Personalization is the holy grail of customer experience. Most companies have trouble identifying customers’ unique preferences and delivering ‘exactly’ what they want. But Nike turned the tables by letting customers tell the brand what they want.

Nike iD or Nike by YouOpens a new window is an online service where customers can customize their gear by choosing their preferred color, design, and features. By offering customers to design their sneakers, Nike got a chance to understand them better and form direct connections with them.

Learn More: Häagen-Dazs, Nike Among Brands Exercising Power Of Social for Direct-To-Consumer MarketingOpens a new window

4. Dedicated Customer Service
 

Customer experience management strategyOpens a new window is incomplete without customer service. Prompt customer service can calm irate customers, curbing escalations, and a social media crisis. Quick resolutions can also help promote your brand through word-of-mouth marketing. Since social media has emerged as a preferred channel for customers to share their experiences, it presents a tremendous opportunity to promote your good work as well as address customer problems.

At present Nike’s Twitter handle has 7.9MOpens a new window followers, but they also have TeamNikeOpens a new window , a dedicated handle for customer service and support. This handle ensures that customer service gets their team’s complete focus and they respond to customers’ pain points swiftly.

Learn More:

How To Improve Customer Experience (CX): Top 7 Tips for 2020Opens a new window

Key Takeaways from Nike’s Customer Experience Management Strategy

To succeed and stand out, an effective customer experience management strategy is a must. Sales, conversions, and Return on Investment (ROI) are important factors, but it is the customer experience and how your customers bond with you that will impact the bottom line.

Focusing on building relationships, crafting relevant and personalized experiences across channels, anticipating customers’ needs, and proactively addressing their pain points will help you create superior experiences and in turn, win their trust and loyalty.

Your customer experience management strategy must ensure a balanced approach to customer focus, experimentation, and innovation.

Plan, prioritize, and as Nike says – Just Do It!

Do you have a customer experience management strategy like Nike? Share your tips with us on TwitterOpens a new window or LinkedInOpens a new window or FacebookOpens a new window !