Nordic Companies Need to Understand That “Experience Is the New Product”

Many big Nordic com­pa­nies are doing well when it comes to prod­uct sales. But they could per­form much more strong­ly if they focused on expe­ri­ence above all else – includ­ing the prod­uct itself.

This might sound like a shock­ing state­ment. After all, great prod­ucts have always been the foun­da­tion of great busi­ness­es. While a sol­id prod­uct is still impor­tant, the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence has become the new core of any com­pa­ny that takes dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion seriously.

In the old days, the qual­i­ty of your prod­uct was the focus of your entire cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, as well as all your mar­ket­ing. But today, you don’t buy the iPhone just for the iPhone – you buy it for the whole ecosys­tem around it; the ways it con­nects to every­thing else in your life.

This prin­ci­ple doesn’t just apply to tech­no­log­i­cal prod­ucts like the iPhone, though. No mat­ter what the prod­uct itself is, today’s cus­tomers expect pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences through­out the entire cus­tomer jour­ney, from the ini­tial path to pur­chase, to deliv­ery of the prod­uct, to ongo­ing cus­tomer sup­port and community.

A con­sis­tent­ly pos­i­tive cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is cru­cial because touch­points abound in the mod­ern mar­ket­place. Instead of buy­ing your prod­uct based sole­ly on a cool TV adver­tise­ment, today’s cus­tomers will imme­di­ate­ly go online to check the reviews – and to search for com­plaints on social media.

In short, while man­u­fac­tur­ers can still help shape their product’s image, they no longer con­trol it. That con­trol now lies in the hands of con­sumers around the world. Man­u­fac­tur­er cen­tric­i­ty has been replaced by cus­tomer cen­tric­i­ty.

Adobe Symposium 2016 in Stockholm is all about customer experience

It real­ly doesn’t mat­ter how good your prod­uct is. If your cus­tomers are hav­ing poor expe­ri­ences with your cus­tomer ser­vice, and are shar­ing those expe­ri­ences online. By the same token, some com­pa­nies can sur­vive major qual­i­ty prob­lems – or even a prod­uct recall – because their cus­tomer ser­vice teams have gone the extra mile to give their cus­tomers a great per­son­alised experience.

This is why we’re putting cus­tomer cen­tric­i­ty, and the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, in the spot­light at Adobe Sym­po­sium 2016 in Stock­holm on Octo­ber 5th.

We’ll be using this event as a plat­form to make sure top com­pa­nies in the Nordics start under­stand­ing that cus­tomer expe­ri­ence comes first. The sold-out event will include three tracks, each of them jam-packed with inspi­ra­tional speak­ers on cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, cross chan­nel mar­ket­ing, data dri­ven mar­ket­ing and relat­ed topics.

At the Sym­po­sium, we’ll be hear­ing keynotes from major region­al play­ers like Sca­nia, Pan­do­ra, Best­seller, Clas Ohlson, and Varn­er Retail – all of which are already well on their jour­ney to becom­ing “expe­ri­ence busi­ness­es.” These experts will pro­vide first-hand insights on the areas of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing that are cre­at­ing the great­est impact right now – and in the near future.

Stay tuned to this blog for more details on the Sym­po­sium – includ­ing stream­ing videos and notes on some of the biggest talks.

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it Adobe Sym­po­sium Stock­holm.