Sales

Historically in off-line business, building a great customer experience has always been one way for firms to differentiate themselves. Firms like Nordstrom’s department stores, USAA insurance company, and SouthWest Airlines are examples. They each provide a great customer experience to build customer loyalty. But in these and other off-line companies, a good customer experience has never been the definitive driver of success.

Sometimes it’s not sensible or possible for customers to choose a company with the best customer experience, because the off-line industry does have switching costs. Unlike the Web, off-line commerce has high switching costs. Consider these switching costs in
off-line businesses:

These switching costs are irrelevant online. Store location and hours are the same on any ecommerce site. Aesthetic “feel” is hardly a consideration, given the limitations of the medium. And truly personal relationships are non-existent in a fully-automated experience. Even differentiators like product selection and price are increasingly irrelevant on the Internet, as products sold online become commoditized and most sites offer the same choices.

The only meaningful way to differentiate a site, and reliably bring users back to it, is to build a great customer experience.

This is not to suggest that brand is no longer important online; to the contrary, brand is especially important to a site’s success. Customers become more loyal to sites that they like and trust – i.e., customers are loyal to “good brands.”

But what creates a good brand online? What is it about a site that determines whether the customer likes and trusts it? In other words, what creates the brand online? The answer is, of course, the customer experience. If customers can accomplish their goals on a site quickly and easily, they’ll like the site. If the experience is comfortable and non-threatening, as discussed above, the customer will trust the site.

On the Web, the brand is the customer experience. The only meaningful way to differentiate a site, and reliably bring users back to it, is to build a great customer experience.