LB5215 – Strategy and Leadership
Lecturer: Dr. Adrian Bradshaw
Assessment 1 – Article Review – Article 2

Tran Thi Phuc Thuan 12974676
Date of submission: 29 July 2014
Word count: 497

Duncan, E., Jones, C., & Rawson, A. (2013). The truth about customer experience. The Lean Management Enterprise, Harvard Business Review, 55-65.

This journal article presents how important of managing customer journey, and why companies usually focus on individual interaction of customers. The authors emphasize that businesses should implant the customer journeys in their operating models by these four ways: First is Identify key journeys; Then, Understand the performance in each; next is Redesign and support those journeys; and finally, Change mind-sets to sustain the initiatives at scale. The organizations can achieve higher benefits through managing the customer journey fully, by focusing on increasing satisfaction for customers, reducing churn, increasing revenue and also greater satisfaction of employees. The companies would do their best with the individual transaction, also try to understand reasons deeply, focus on main causes, and give feedback to improve interactions both upstream and downstream. They would build a culture that can connect well the organization from top to bottom. This article is quite easy to understand, but re-reading is also necessary because it would help readers can have more times to think and build connections between the articles and their own experiences. The authors seem refer to what companies and customers think of as a ‘customer experience’. However, many customers do not think that their interactions with organizations in terms of experiences. For instance, Prada - is known as one of the most popular fashion brands (“The Top Fashion Brands,” 2012). Their products include clothes, leather products, luggages, hats and shoes for both men and women. Moreover, it is famous because of stylishly simple but sophisticated designs. The customers tend to focus on whether they can feel satisfied with products quality, or can they look fashionable with products; hence, they will decide to continue doing business with companies or not; or is it acceptable for the products with those expensive prices? How easily could customers find the information of companies and products, through TV, newspapers and online networks, and can that information of products make sense to customers? etc. In fact, unless companies conduct an interview or survey with customers to research customer experience, so that would make them think in term of ‘experiences’. The concept of customer experience seems idealistic. Fashion industry today is a hyper-competitive and dynamic global marketplace, then customer experience is seen as a critical differentiator. Over the next three years, with current strategic positioning, Prada still could be sustainable in the industry, since the company always focuses on increasing the quality of products experience, reducing churn, improving the quality of frontline performances, and also sales performance. The authors suggest that the customer mapping process brings a soloed focus that loses the whole visitor experience. Visitor interaction at every touch point could be high, but overall experience can be lower. The researchers have a good understanding on their context. Many businesses nowadays understand that satisfying expectations of customers is central to get their loyalty. Diagrams were also included within the article to demonstrate the authors’ thinking and analysis on customer experience. However, this article has failed to focus on the end-to-end journey connected with customer experience.

References
The Top Fashion Brands in the World. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/most-influential/the-top-fashion-brands-in- the-world/