In games that look more like shows, stamped on hundreds of celebrities’ clothes and one of the best-known acronyms in the sports world, the NBA is a true brand and experience phenomenon. The North American basketball league, the largest in the world, focuses on interacting with its audience – which it calls fans.
But this has an explanation. According to the company, much better than having a customer, is having a fan of your brand. There is a subtlety in this positioning that causes a real “sweep” – a term used in the NBA when one team eliminates the other without great difficulties – in competitiveness in the field of customer experience.
That’s because the NBA truly looks at who that fan is at the center of it all. It’s about making sure that the contents and journeys are designed for the fan to interact with the brand when and how they prefer. And the result is about 45 million Brazilians who declare themselves fans of the brand.
If you also want to have fans of your brand, some strategies can be fundamental, such as:
1 – Know your customer’s journey.
Fans want to be recognized by the brand, not just one of millions of customers. The only way to treat them as they expect is to know their preferences and needs. It is not surprising that 99% of them in Brazil want to be treated in a personalized way and would spend more on the brand to have this treatment, as pointed out by the CX Trends 2022 study. Investing in research and data analysis to support business and marketing decisions is among the NBA’s strategies to get to know the fan as an individual and be able to offer them unique experiences.
2 – Be present when and where he needs you.
Without a physical presence in stores, bank branches and supermarkets during the pandemic, the care to be present when and where the customer needs it gains even more strength. If we think back a few decades, the role has been reversed, and today brands need to go to the customer and need to give them the power of choice. The NBA does this by thinking about the formats, times and devices that the fan wants to receive the stories and news of the brand.
Another data from the study showed that 99% of customers would also pay more to have a range of channels available to choose where and when to be served, such as chat and social media apps, in addition to wanting to have the option to solve the problem. on their own, without having to talk to a service channel. Therefore, it is important to invest so that the channels and resources for the customer to choose are integrated.
3 – Be the same brand on any channel
Taking the NBA again as an example, there is an emphasis on making the experience of each of the league’s 30 branded teams with their fans consistent. In the case of the Chicago Bulls, regardless of where the team is hosting an event, the person who incorporates the Benny the Bull mascot travels with the team so that the customer has the same experience with the brand, wherever they go. When interacting with a customer digitally, it’s equally important that the customer service represents your brand in the same way in every interaction.
4 – Open channels to chat with your audience.
CX Trends 2022 showed that 70% of customers expect to chat with brands via messaging channels such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Chat and social media. If in the past we had to wait days to have an email answered or fill in long forms to wait for a contact from the company, today we expect immediate responses that can be resumed at any point. No wonder, WhatsApp, which has become the most popular of these channels in Brazil, grew about 370% in searches for service in the last year.
5 – Invest in customer-oriented culture and training
For brands to be effective with a good customer experience, the CX culture needs to be part of the entire decision-making chain, starting from the leaders. Today, despite 73% of leaders stating to CX Trends 2022 that there is a direct relationship between customer service and business performance, 40% say that it is still not a priority for the board. Without a CX culture permeating the entire organization, brands run the risk of areas working in silos when it comes to the customer and service teams not having the training or technologies necessary to be efficient.
With the NBA in Brazil, there is a project to train 10,000 physical education teachers by coaches and specialists from the USA, in order to invest in qualification for the sport with the next generations. It is believed that 2 million children have already been impacted by the program. If we turn our gaze to the service teams, only 30% of the teams that responded to the survey feel empowered to do their jobs well, indicating a need for investments and care with the front line in customer relations.
And these are just some of the pillars for the company to establish its CX strategies and turn its customers into fans. And of course, in the case of the NBA, in addition to investments in service and connection with fans, they also have the stars on the court to provide an exceptional customer (or fan) experience.
Fernando Migrone, Zendesk Vice President of Marketing in Latin America
Image: Freepik
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