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Report: Simplicity Leads to Loyalty

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By: Wise Marketer Staff |

Posted on January 25, 2016

Conventional wisdom holds that delivering a great customer experience is integral to building long-term, profitable customer relationships. What we don’t agree on, however, is what a “great customer experience” means. Is it best defined by your digital experience, or CX? Is it defined by your store layout, customer service, and product selection? Is it all of these things at once? The latest iteration of a customer experience survey from brand strategy firm Siegel+Gale argues that the most important aspect of the customer experience is “simplicity” – in other words, the easier and less time-consuming it is to navigate the experience, the more loyalty you’ll drive. Which brands come out on top?
By Wise Marketer Staff

The seventh annual Global Brand Simplicity Index, released in January of this year and based on an online survey of more than 14,000 respondents across nine countries, ranks 857 brands on their perceived simplicity. The data collected are used to generate two scores: An Industry Simplicity Score and a Brand Simplicity Score.

The Brand Simplicity Score rates each brand on its perceived simplicity. It evaluates each brand on the simplicity/complexity of its products, services, interactions and communications in relation to industry peers. The score takes into consideration the consistency of responses, the difference between user and non-user perceptions and the simplicity score for the brand’s industry.

Key findings from this year’s survey include:

  1. Simplicity earns a premium: 64 percent of consumers are willing to pay more for simpler experiences.
  2. Simplicity builds loyalty: 61 percent of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand because it’s simple.
  3. Complexity costs: Brands that don’t provide simple experiences are leaving an estimated share of $86 billion on the table.
  4. Simplicity performs: A stock portfolio of the simplest global brands outperforms the major indexes by 330 percent.
  5. Simplicity inspires: 62 percent of employees at simple companies are brand champions—versus only 20 percent of employees at complex companies.

The 2017 Global Brand Simplicity Index top 10 brands include:

  • ALDI
  • Lidl
  • Google
  • Netflix
  • IKEA
  • Amazon
  • KFC
  • YouTube
  • McDonald’s
  • SUBWAY

It’s an interesting mix of brands, and certainly there’s room for debate; with its one-click ordering, personalized recommendations, and speed of delivery, Amazon would probably rank highly in simplicity by most of its customers, while anyone who has become lost inside an IKEA maze might wonder at the survey’s definition of “simple.” Still, the theory behind the survey is a sound one – that one of the most effective ways to reward customers is to save them time by making the experience as frictionless as possible. You’ll find very few customers who argue with that premise.

Download the report here.