Top 20 brands in SG winning hearts through customer experience

With more and more brands looking towards the customer experience in a bid to stay top of mind with consumers. Looking within your own industry and market is no longer enough, brands now need to look outwards on a global level.This is according to Iain Ellwood, chief growth officer of Group XP, a customer experience innovation offer comprising of agencies Brand Union, FITCH, SET and SET Live, in a conversation with Marketing following the launch of its Group XP’s Experience Index 2016. The index aims to help marketers define the customer experience as well as measure its effectiveness to help marketers in better measure their return-on-investment (ROI) on customer outreach.When it comes to quantifying the success each brand has garnered in building its customer experience, Group XP took into account four kinds of measures including Impression, Interaction, Responsiveness and Resilience.Impression refers to how much a brand stands for something unique. Interaction refers to the delivery of the brand on its most important customer needs. Meanwhile, Responsiveness refers to the ability of the brand to have better online services and engaging content. Lastly, Resilience strives to make people’s future lives better through a high brand experience.What do top brands have in common?According to Group XP, what the top brands have in common are high overall scores across all four categories. In a conversation with Marketing, Andrew Crombie, CEO at FITCH Southeast and North Asia, said that while these brands may not seem to have high impact from a high advertising or media spend point of view, they come in strongly for the experience they provide.He explained that the one thing about brand experience is how absolutely "pertinent and frictionless" it has to be for the consumer who is using it.“If they have to put in effort for the experience you are creating barriers for them for the better enjoyment of your brand, product or experience,” Crombie added.Here are Singapore’s top 20 brands when it comes to consumers experience1.       Singapore Airlines2.       Visa3.       Mastercard4.       Shell5.       McDonald’s6.       Singtel7.       PayPal8.       POSB9.       ESSO10.   NTUC Income 11.   DBS12.   OCBC13.   Tiger14.   StarHub15.   Heineken16.   Rolex17.   Great Eastern Life18.   Carlsberg19.   Louis Vuitton20.   Caltex For the case of Singapore Airlines, the Group XP report said that the airline brand is Singapore's global brand, nailing Impression scores as it is unique and identifiable. It came in top for the Impression, Responsiveness and Resilience categories, along with third place for Interaction.“Rather than banking on all the functional dimensions, it chose to pick on the human to human interaction, own it and be known for it,” Crombie explained. He added that Singapore's evolution as a country and the airline is also inextricably linked, coupling the latest technology with beautiful young girls who epitomise service. Singapore Airlines also carried the soft high touch aspects of Asia that everyone aspired to from an Asian culture – especially non-Asian consumers.“Singapore Airlines has that beautiful elegance, with the steely, reliable latest technology,” he added.Meanwhile, brands such as POSB talks to the everyman about everyday financial needs. The bank brand is able to deliver that and make consumers’ lives easier on a day to day basis, hence the high Interaction and Response rates. POSB made the top 10 for the Interaction, Responsiveness and Resilience category, but not in Impressions.Global top 30 brands for experience1.       Pampers2.       Disney3.       Paypal4.       DHL5.       Facebook6.       Apple7.       Google8.       IKEA9.       UPS10.   Visa 11.   Nike12.   Huggies13.   Fedex14.   Southwest15.   Deustche Post16.   Amazon17.   Samsung18.   Sky19.   Ecover20.   Tesla21.   Colgate22.   OMO23.   BMW24.   Bose25.   IBM26.   Adidas27.   Verizon28.   Mercedes29.   Under Armour30.   FerrariThe one thing which unites the Top 30 is resilience, which expands on the brands’ role in consumers’ lives.According to Group XP, these brands recognise the wider themes such as making a connection with consumers and partners, going beyond the functional category.“They understand what the heart of the latent issues is for consumers and really nailed it by working their products and services around that,” Ellwood added. To gather insights, Group XP worked in partnership with Brand Z to access its database. This includes 46 countries and 43,000 brands which were analysed across these markets. More than half a million data-points analysed, consisting of three years of performance data for major global brands.Through the study, the Group XP Experience Index aims to help marketers define what the customer experience as well as measure its effectiveness.