Connecting the Dots

One of the most annoying Cx ‘leakages’ I find is not connecting to existing value – which is more than a missed opportunity, it is unrealized impact. After focusing on the right questions to solve for the business and customers, it is vital to connect (all) the dots along the customer journey.  One of my top non-pharma offenders, which is also one of my top personal brands, is BMW.  This is a brand with a high lifetime value, ample resources, and enduring if not hallowed brand love – so why can’t they get out of their own way and have a consistent and connected customer journey?  

A recent example:  people are literally blown away that my BMW credit card reward points can be applied to car payments (brilliant!) – we haven’t had to actually make a payment in two years!  A friend actually purchased a BMW for the first time because of this, but when she went to several dealerships for test drives – no one knew about it and she literally had to ‘Google it’.  BMW does very little cross-marketing of this, not even at the point-of-sale, much less as an acquisition driver. The credit cards are (in theory) a shining example of product relevance – tailored offerings for cars vs. motorcycles, discounts or credits on service, offers for performance driving courses or classes, but the potential is obscured and under-realized.

Other personal examples:

• Promo mailers for service about cars no longer owned.
• Financing offers on cars purchased outright.
• Knowing (far) more about a new model than dealership staff.
• BMW loaner cars only being given after purchasing a new BMW, and not after used BMW car purchases with higher mileage and in need of trade-in (even though my husband has restored and/or bought about 50 BMWs).  
• Dealerships not knowing about or understanding European delivery (no longer offered), even though it is/was one of the highest forms of brand love and (fantastic) immersive brand experience.
• When asked to test drive a manual (stick shift) car, the sales reps replied, “Oh you don’t want that, it’s a lot of work”, even though I brought up the BMW ‘art of motoring’ brand narrative.

What’s the fix? The brilliant basics, but across and inclusive of all touchpoint silos internally and externally. This means: thorough content audit and customer journey mapping, and in particular – aligning your data into a cohesive data lake with a well thought our analytics / AI model. This takes: a champion with visibility and ideally governance across silos, capabilities, and Cx engagement planning inclusive of content execution and ongoing optimization.

Look, I love this brand and even almost worked there so I could tackle these challenges.  Consumer goods customers should in theory never expect to know more about a product offering than the front-line sales representatives.  Looping back to the patient perspective, patients don’t generally expect to know more about products and conditions than physicians or pharma co’s, so we have to work much harder as an industry to help them and to connect the dots to all the value we can provide beyond the product itself.