Eight Percent Growth Trapped in the Customer Experience Gap

Promise (the agency ) has just revealed their European study called The Promise Index measuring the gap between a customer's images of a brand and their customer experience. Lo and behold, Promise found an  average growth rate for brands with negative gaps was 2.8% in the past year, while the average growth rate for brands with positive gaps was 10.5%.

Yes, customer experience really pays and in particular, relative to the impression customers already have for you. The study found BMW, Appole and Tesco has high promise indexes despite already high images. ING Direct, Skype and Travelodge had high indexes despite comparably lower images.

The implication - don't shout too loudly and carry a big customer experience stick. Promise director Clare Fuller sums it up best "'The best-performing brands are those that focus more on customer-centred innovation and less on big advertising campaigns"

Sidebar:
- The average image score across the 110 premium brands involved in the survey this year fell by 6 pe cent, from 6.26 out of 10 to 5.88
- 6 of the top 10 positive experience-image gaps are online brands

Promise Gap by Sector (Image/Experience/Gap):

1.Travel & leisure 5.40 5.63 0.23
2. E-commerce 5.43 5.66 0.23
3. Financial services 5.64 5.61 -0.03
4. Airlines 6.33 6.27 -0.06
5. Phones 5.68 5.57 -0.11
6. Automotive 6.18 6.06 -0.12
7. Supermarkets 6.63 6.38 -0.25
8. Non-food retail 6.16 5.90 -0.26
9. Public sector 5.92 5.61 -0.31

Top Brands By Experience (Image Rating/Last year's rank)

1 Tesco Supermarket 6.98 9
2 AA Financial services 6.93 4
3 Mercedes Automotive 6.88 10
4 Jaguar Automotive 6.81 7
5 BMW Automotive 6.71 1
6 Nokia Phones 6.67 5
7 Toyota Automotive 6.64 43
8 Hilton Travel & leisure 6.63 17
9 Argos Non-food retail 6.62 12
10 eBay E-commerce 6.62 n/a

Top Brands By Image (Image Rating/Last year's rank)
1. BMW Automotive 7.32 2
2. AA Financial services 7.31 8
3. Asda Supermarket 7.25 5
4. Tesco Supermarket 7.15 6
5. Argos Non-food retail 7.05 17
6. Nokia Phones 7.01 9
7. Boots Non-food retail 7.00 3
8. British Airways Travel & leisure 6.99 11
9. Mercedes Automotive 6.96 1
10. Amazon E-commerce 6.95 n/a

Who's Beating Expectations (Positive Promise Index Gap) :

1 More Th>n Financial services 0.99
2 easyJet Airlines 0.78
3 eBookers Travel & leisure 0.73
4 Egg Financial services 0.67
5 Hilton Travel & leisure 0.66
6 eBay E-commerce 0.55
7 Carphone Warehouse Non-food retail 0.54
8 Direct Line Financial services 0.51
9 First Choice Financial services 0.46
10 Marriott Travel & leisure 0.45