Delivering Effective Customer Experience -- Louis Vuitton
"Effective Experience" is not equal to "Good Experience"

Mr. Sampson Lee, President of GCCRM

Many people are crazy for Louis Vuitton -- a luxury French fashion and leather goods brand. The brand is definitely world famous and is particularly hot in Asia1. When I conduct training and conference in US, Asia and many other countries, I always ask the audience, especially the female groups, if they enjoy the shopping experience in LV. Guess what? Over 90% say it's a bad experience and they don't like it at all. However, if you ask them whether they like the brand, the same dominant say they love it! Why? Because they love the brand image being projected by other marketing communications channels like advertising, public relations, celebrities' events, etc., and of course, the superb product quality. 

What's the trick? How come the bad experience at store level brings such a big contrast to that of other touch-points? I'd like to argue that the unsatisfied (or bad) retail experience is important in delivering Louis Vuitton branded experience?effective but not necessarily good.

Let's take a look on what a general customer (which is likely a middle-class) experience in LV's retail shop. From the feedback I collected from classes, it's the 'attitude' of the shop assistants bothers most - they give you a cold face, no warm greetings, no genuine smile, or in simple term, they don't treat you as a customer. However, this attitude will be totally different if you were a Hollywood star, a celebrity or a rich and famous person. I've been told this is a consistent experience across the globe, not country or region specific. For illustration purpose, I have simplified and put down the Emotion Curves2 of Louis Vuitton retail shop, featuring only five sub-processes3-from entrance of the shop till exit, i.e. 'shop outlook and decoration', 'product', 'price', 'service', and 'prestige feeling' in the following figure.

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Emotion Curves of Louis Vuitton Retail Store--Rich & Famous Vs. Middle-Class

The emotion curve in blue stands for the 'rich & famous', the emotion curve in red represents the 'middle-class'. Louis Vuitton is doing an excellent job in marketing communications to create the luxurious and exclusive image, and the actual in-store experience on shop outlook and decoration, product and prestige feeling are synchronized with the expectations and echoed with the brand values. Both the 'rich & famous' and the 'middle-class' groups should have similar level of emotional feelings, however, the key differences during the experience process of the two groups will be at the perceived price and the way they are being treated.

Kahemann's Peak-End Rule4 said we could remember only the peak and end moments during an experience. Though the 'rich & famous' may have a much better actual experience, the remembered experience of the 'middle-class' could be as positive as, and even more effective than, the 'rich & famous'.

It sounds weird... and you may think I am challenging your logic...

The Paradox of Happiness--We Need More Pain

Carl Jung5 said, "Even a happy life brings some darkness and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not compensated by some sadness." Human beings are comparison animals, whether we feel good or bad and to what extent are largely the products of comparing--our well being in relativity. Examples include: compare against other people, I may feel rich when comparing with the poor Jack, but feel poor when comparing with the rich Bob; compare against other experiences, I may feel happy now when comparing with my sick periods, but I don't feel particularly happy when comparing with my great moments; compare within an experience, flight without meals comparing the efficiency I have on Southwest is not that bad. I would like to name the last one as 'Intra-Experience Anchoring'. Intra-Experience Anchoring suggests that the anchored (biased) experience will replace the actual (unbiased) experience, to determine the perceived pleasure or pain. In other words, what we feel within an experience is in a relative rather than an actual sense, as each moment of experience will affect the overall perceived feeling within an experience.

Let's put this concept into business context. Suppose there are two restaurants which are equally good in food quality, the first one you could go straight and have your seat, and the second one you've to queue up for 15 minutes. In my interpretation, the second restaurant will probably generate you a better perceived food quality (anchored pleasure) as you rationalize your pain (15 minutes wait) to give yourself a good reason to queue up. If I were the boss of the second restaurant and 'quality food' is my predominant brand value, I would rather have my customers wait -- long enough to generate pain but not to drive them away -- as this will eventually deliver a more pleasant experience for the customers (the food here is so great that my wait is worthwhile!)

Sounds unreasonable? Let's think...do you agree that human beings have a tendency to rationalize our behaviours and emotions? Psychologist Daniel Gilbert said6, "The psychological immune system is a defensive system, when experiences make us feel sufficient unhappy, the psychological immune system cooks facts and shifts blame in order to offer us a more positive view." This concept is further supported by research findings7. Significant pains are needed in order to rationalize our suffering for something of great value.

Let's go back to the Louis Vuitton retail shop. How could we know if she is delivering an effective customer experience?

The determining factors of an effective experience are: targeting to your right customers, addressing to their critical needs, delivering your brand values, and after all, the experience has to be remembered positively.

Who are the target customers and what are the brand values of Louis Vuitton? In strict terms, the top 1% and the super-rich are the targets of luxury-goods marketers. However, luxury is defined broadly nowadays and the growing middle-class is buying more and more designer brands. In fact, to fuel the continuous growth demand of a public-listed giant, Louis Vuitton could hardly limit the top 1% only or exclude the emerging middle-class as her target customers. Louis Vuitton's chief executive Yves Carcelles once said: "Our brand is about reliability, quality, style, innovation and authenticity." But that may not complete, according to Richard Wachman of London's The Observer: "Louis Vuitton is also selling a certain idea of France... a brand that represents a mythical France, one of which neither the French nor the outside world can get enough." In short, the essence of a luxury good is its exclusivity, i.e. not everyone could afford, only a small group of people could enjoy, and Louis Vuitton is pushing it to the extreme.

Extreme, but effective. Taking references of the emotion curves of the 'rich & famous' and the 'middle-class' of Louis Vuitton, both of their pleasure peaks are reflected at 'prestige feeling'. Part of this exclusive feeling could be constituted by observing how the 'rich & famous' is being served and how the middle-class is being ignored inside the shop. None of us would like to be ignored, but since the pain is so intense -- the way of how we are being treated is one of our critical needs -- it's strong enough to trigger our psychological immune system to rationalize our suffering for something of great value. In this case, the great value is 'exclusivity', which is one of the most critical needs of Louis Vuitton target customers, and is her key brand value. Based on Intra-Experience Anchoring principle, despite the intense suffering, it may even generate a higher anchored pleasure peak for the middle-class than the rich & famous - due to a larger gap between pleasure and pain peaks - resulting in highly positive memories at the peak and end moments. In this sense, Louis Vuitton is delivering an effective customer experience at her retail shops.

Of course, pain is created for an effective reason rather than for the sake of creating it. I have to stress that pain is a necessary devil in order to raise our happiness - in my term - the anchored or relative pleasure peak via maximizing the pleasure-pain gap. That's how we explain our experience in LV shops - the feeling of being ignored is painful but it may help accelerating the anchored pleasure of exclusivity inside the shop. Also think about the restaurant example I've mentioned before. When food quality is the predominant brand value, it is not only better, but necessary, to lower the performance of other less critical concerns like queue time, service level, price, convenience, decoration, etc. Those pains are not only useful in justifying a higher anchored pleasure, it also releases the constraints of resources so that the restaurant could reallocate the limited resources to what she does the best -- continuously maintain and enhance the food quality, her true differentiator to deliver a higher absolute pleasure and a more memorable experience.

An Experience is Not Effective Unless It is Branded

I believe most of us are familiar with the Importance-Satisfaction Quadrant. The general idea is to maintain the attributes with high importance and high satisfaction, improve those with high importance but low satisfaction, spend less on those with low importance but high satisfaction, and minimize those with low importance and low satisfaction.

It sounds logical, but again, I am challenging it because it is both dangerous and possibly, wrong!

If you conduct satisfaction survey with customers of Southwest, Amazon and Ikea on how to improve their services, they may probably tell you to serve meals, enhance in-flight entertainment, offer help-desks, reduce DIY tasks or improve delivery and installation service etc. In fact, all these may be critical needs (high importance) to their customers but poorly-performed (low satisfaction) areas. Should they follow the voice of customers? Fortunately they do it in their own ways so that they become great brands as of they are today. But they do listen. They listen carefully and out-perform all others by focusing their resources and energies on a limited few critical needs of their target customers -- which are and should be identical to their target brand values -- then relax on the others (less critical, and not representing your brand values), even to a level that their customers have to suffer, to feel pain.

No company could afford to satisfy all the needs of customers, even only the most important needs. Louis Vuitton choose to project prestige, exclusive feeling but not a better service at her retail shops, the 2nd restaurant choose to focus on food quality but not a shorter waiting time to their customers. We have to listen to the voice of customer but we also have to distinguish between what is essential and what is important. Essential in two dimensions: first, the needs must be one of the most important needs of your target customers, and second, by satisfying these needs, you can realize your brand values and fulfil your brand promise to your customers. If you try to meet all your customer needs unanimously, without knowing and excelling your brand values throughout the experience process; you are to a very large extent, wasting your own resources.

Remember, Peak-end Rule dominates what your customers can remember; knowing your customers critical needs directs how your resources should be allocated; finding your brand values means getting your best selling propositions in place. You must know these for designing your own customer experience.

Effective experience is beautiful -- it costs less, it achieves more, both to you and to the customers!


About the author

Sampson Lee, the founder of GCCRM, invents the Branded CEM (Customer Experience Management) Method (U.S. patent-pending). Lee and his international partner team deliver CEM Professional Certificate Program in Asia and the United States, and conduct unconventional experience-centric X-VOC Research.