The key differentiator of customer experience excellence is how quickly organisations can detect and respond to customer expectations. This is the conclusion of the annual customer experience excellence report released by KPMG Nunwood. The study ranks the Top 100 companies mentioned by UK consumers. As usual the list doesn’t include any sport and leisure businesses. This is partly a reflection of scale, given First Direct were top and a business the size of Tesco scraped through in 97th.

How to improve customer experience in sport & leisure

But that doesn’t mean the sport and leisure industry can’t learn from the study. There are some great pearls of wisdom relevant to all organisations in this sector. David Conway a director at KPMG Nunwood explains. “There is a bit of a disconnect between what customers expect and brands getting to a point where they can implement those changes. It’s all about speed and pace and responsiveness. It’s how quickly these businesses are able to detect a change and react to it that makes a difference.”
 
“Organisations need to get much closer to customers. They need to understand what customers want and anticipate what customers need so they get there first.”
 
Conway continues “Organisations need to get much closer to customers. They need to understand what customers want and anticipate what customers need so they get there first. Companies need to have the internal organisation structured to be able to action their customer knowledge very quickly. Being able to get into the market much more quickly with something that is new and relevant to the customer is going to become one of the distinguishing factors for competition going forward.”

Faster customer insight requires internal adjustments

Speeding up the process of collecting, analysing and sharing customer insights is a great start. But it’s not a magic wand. Other parts of the business need to adapt too: 
  • Product design needs to evolve to a test & learn approach. New programmes or formats are already designed using the available customer insights. Pilots are then supported by a fast feedback loop. Different options are tested and improved quickly before a full roll-out takes place.
  • Funders need to evolve their expectations about what’s delivered. Delivery plans should evolve as more is learned about customer needs and how to meet them.
The sport and leisure industry is quickly adapting to the new opportunities for getting fast customer insights. To turn insight into impact, we must also focus on using insight to improve customer experience. Maybe next year, we’ll even see consumers reporting examples of customer experience excellence.