The Best Customer Experience and What Startups Can Learn
Today, customer experience is supreme. From website through purchase, making the customer feel good is the ultimate goal for creating loyalty. This is a great example.
In my house coffee is a religion. My partner, who is French and a former pastry chef, is a coffee connoisseur and he is never without a coffee in his hand. (Referred to here on out as “Frenchy”.)
For years, we swore by the Keurig but became increasingly concerned about the impact all these pods had on the environment. We used 3–4 per day going straight to the landfill from our home alone. Shocking to think about it. That is until Frenchy discovered a company that made compatible pods that are also compositable and, frankly, the coffee was fresher. This gave us some relief each morning as we considered our carbon footprint.
However, everything changed the night we had dinner at the home of some good friends.
Following Italian takeout, we were offered coffee to accompany the takeout tiramisu. Mugs were placed under the machine and the coffee began. Frenchy sniffed the air and wandered over to watch the machine in wonder. He smiled with delight after the first sip.
He was even more happy when our friends announced that they had two machines and were giving us one to take home with some coffee.
The machine was a Nespresso. George Clooney’s commercials could not communicate thoroughly the Nespresso experience. For a Frenchman it was like coming home. The quality, density, flavor and consistency brought back memories of Parisian cafes and many a restaurant in which he worked.
Once home he quickly unpacked the Nespresso and went into set up mode. Later, before bed it was information gathering of all things Nespresso. It can be tough to “wow” a chef, but it was done.
Not only would this to become our new morning ritual of delight, but we would soon immerse ourselves in the luxury coffee experience of Nespresso.
The Experience
Just before we were set to run out of the pods our friends provided for us, Frenchy went to the Nespresso store at Nordstrom’s on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue. He brought home $200 worth of coffee and some freebies — new glass mugs.
The next morning, we watched the Nespresso at work in our new glass mugs as each layer of coffee its own color was brewed perfectly. It was…artistry. Stirring the cream and sugar in anticipation I took a sip. This is how everyone should start their day.
With the pandemic, and limited outings, we needed something to look forward to each day.
In a home of coffee lovers, we have a lot of fun and cute coffee mugs, but we now have little use for them. You see, after this experience, we can no longer drink Nespresso out of our World’s Best Dad mug or even the souvenir mug from our amazing beach vacation. No, not these crappy mugs. No, no, we must now use the glass mugs. We’ve become…coffee snobs.
Each time we reload on coffee we get more freebies. We currently have enough glass mugs for up to six people to enjoy, we purchased small, espresso glasses for after dinner with guests and don’t leave the house without using one of the many travel mugs we’ve received, for free.
This, plus the hands-on customer service to help with cleaning our machine, just wowed us.
But this was just the beginning for this marketer.
A Great Brand Story Told Consistently
Frenchy is one those people who is really hard to shop for. I mean really difficult. He doesn’t need much and doesn’t really want much. I suppose you can also say that he is content and that’s a positive, unless it comes to the holidays or his birthday — which also falls on a holiday.
This all makes shopping for a gift challenging, but I have fortunately found that original foods from France, and some sweet treats, and now coffee are the best, easiest gifts. Whether you’re on the Nespresso website or in-store, the luxury brand experience is translated perfectly. The story told eloquently. The purchase and delivery flawless.
This. Is. Coffee. And it is completely worth the expense.
Frenchy has now become in charge of morning coffee, including the “coffee station” where each Nespresso flavor has its own glass jar. He gets new product and fixes me a beautiful glass mug each morning. All I do is drop off pods (we’ll get to that).
The first time I had the opportunity to go into a Nespresso store was my day to drop off pods, which I usually drop elsewhere. This day, since I was near the store I popped in and my jaw dropped.
The lighting. The displays. The checkout. Everything here was brilliantly thought out in this relatively small corner store with glass windows on two sides. Right down to the pod bar display with each pod and the flavor. You could read about each and pick the flavors you desire. Each Nespresso machine elegantly displayed among dark wood cabinets on lit shelving.
It is difficult to describe, so go visit a store. Look around. Smell. Get the experience of how to tell a story of luxury and then provide a matching customer experience from start to finish.
What I can tell you is that I left this store giddy. I wanted to keep the secret to myself, but we tell everyone who comes to our house so it’s with excitement I write and share this story.
Niche Execution
I often have this conversation with clients who believe that they need to quickly develop and sell more skus/products for their company. The reason is trade shows. A buyer for a major big box likes your product but they need more skus to sell in store or online. This is true and not necessarily true.
What I remind my clients is that before spending too much money in development, a minimum viable product, molds and inventory, which can run more than $100,000, that they focus on what they do well and do it really, really well.
Nespresso is smart. They could offer a hundred different flavors, but they don’t. They have smartly limited the number of flavors available year-round and then promote new flavors for a limited time — a great reason to communicate to customers and encourage them to buy something new — as well as offer bonus “sleeves” of specific, pre-determined flavors. Terrific example of promotional boost.
After all, the coffee is where they earn their revenue.
The company, does, however, have a machine for just about any preference, and this is where one can really nerd out on Nespresso “technology”. Again, shopping for a Nespresso at this price should be an experience itself. You’re not running into Target for a $30 coffeemaker. The machine is what creates an existential awakening each morning.
Limiting offerings can, again, help a company focus on what it is they do and do it really well — master their brand story, how and where they tell it, even through experience — and not rush unnecessary and expensive growth.
When you get too far away from your company’s original mission, a company can go off the rails. I’ve seen it happen. Companies lose their way, and they cannot make it back, financially. Watch Shark Tank.
Now, most startups to small enterprises don’t have the Nespresso marketing budget, so limiting your offerings to ensure that you master story telling and brand experience is critical to success and getting funding.
Buyers really care about sell through. Meaning: sell through the product and put in another order. If you don’t take the time to be thoughtful about your product/brand story and the customer experience, I’m afraid to say that you will not make it far.
This is why Nespresso is such a great experiential brand that startups can learn from.
From my perspective, they’ve clearly taken a page out of the Louis Vuitton playbook by offering an in-store experience worth the price of admission. But instead of champagne, they offer a freshly brewed cup of delicious coffee that will change you.
A Conscience Company
One of the first things that we learned about Nespresso was that the company is committed to recycling in a big way. Unlike others, the Nespresso pods are made of aluminum which keeps the coffee inside fresh, but they are easier to recycle.
Upon purchase of coffee, customers are provided with a return postage-paid bag to send used pods back to the company. Simply fill and drop them off at any UPS store, as I did, or the Nespresso store. Easy and brilliant.
A question, that only momentarily came up in conversation at our house, was what happened when the pods are recycled. But mostly we just felt better about knowing they are being recycled, which makes each coffee taste that much better. We figured the company is pretty smart and responsible. We trust that they are responsibly doing good for the planet.
Last week, Frenchy came home with a new batch of coffee sleeves and since it seems we’ve received all of the available free gifts, they threw in a long, thin box clearly made of recycled paper. This was new. What lay inside answered our questions and pleasantly surprised and delighted all of us — it was a box of pencils made using the pods.
The pencil and lead contain coffee while the colored tip is actually the aluminum from the pods. If you hold them under your nose, you get a gentle whiff of coffee.
This was such an incredible surprise and our nine-year-old couldn’t wait to be the first to use one. These are now officially his pencils.
And like that we’re became coffee snobs and prolific proselytizers.
