In Brands We Trust – My Customer-Experience Journey at Panera Bread

I recently asked my CMO network group on LinkedIn to answer the following question: "What matters more: customer satisfaction, customer loyalty or customer referral?" It was kind of a trick question to assess what and how executives think about important customer metrics in today's dynamic and digital world. The majority of responses concurred that without customer service or satisfaction, there is no loyalty or referral. While this may be true for customers who are just starting out on their customer-experience journey with a new brand, a totally different dynamic comes into play when dealing with existing brands.

The correct answer (at least from my viewpoint) is that it’s not an either/or proposition. Customer service, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and customer referral—they all matter, however, at different stages in the customer-experience journey. The customer experience is the sum total of rational and emotional experiences before, during and after an event (e.g., buying a cup of coffee) and aggregated across multiple such events over a customer’s lifecycle with the brand. Please refer to the chart that indicates the 10 different stages of the customer experience.

Even for a small event like buying a cup of coffee at a local shop, we typically go through a series of customer experiences. This may range from getting to the business’s location, ambience, standing in line, ordering, paying the cashier, preparing the coffee, adding the cup/lid, drinking the beverage (including the coffee’s taste, smell and temperature), seating, technology (e.g., WIFI) and so on. Here is one of my previous posts that maps out the customer-experience journey in the travel industry using KAYAK's mobile app as an example.

When someone asks about our experience with something, the answer may not be as simple and straightforward as expressing the net sentiment as positive, negative or neutral. Let me illustrate this point further by sharing my recent experience with Panera Bread.

On a quiet Sunday night, my family and I decided to do a carryout dinner from Panera Bread. For the sake of simplicity, I am dividing my total experience into six stages as listed below.

  1. Commuting – I have a Panera Bread location that’s literally a five-minute drive from my home. So, my experience of getting to Panera was between "functional" and "efficient."
  2. Parking – Finding parking at this Panera location is always a challenge, especially during busy hours. However, considering that it was late evening on a Sunday with 20 minutes left before store closing, parking was not an issue. So my experience here was "average."
  3. Ordering – I ordered several sandwiches, soups and salads. The person taking the order was courteous and advised that I have a “MyPanera” loyalty reward worth $2. Who doesn't like savings? However, during the order process, I was told that they have run out of tomato basil bread, so I have to order my sandwiches with some other bread (I picked asiago focaccia bread). Later I was told that they can only make one sandwich with asiago focaccia bread and that I have to pick different bread for my other sandwich. I also requested French baguette bread as a side order for all of my items. In summary, my order experience gradually dwindled from "enjoyable" to "ugh!" in just a few minutes.
  4. Eating – When I came home and opened the order, we learned that there were no side orders included with any of our items. We also realized that one of the sandwiches was not properly prepared. When I called the store, I was promptly told that the store is now closed with all systems shut down. At this point, I was at the "not again" customer-experience stage since Panera has now failed to deliver on several fronts.
  5. Sharing (Feedback) – I shared this experience on Panera's online feedback system. The feedback system was easy and intuitive, and within a few hours, Marianne Schulze (Customer Relations Manager) at Panera Bread reached out to me with a sincere apology for my experience. She also mentioned that she had discussed the matter with the district manager of that location and asked them to address this issue with their management team and staff immediately. She then offered to make up for their shortcomings by sending me a gift card. The fact that Panera actively listened to my concerns and promptly acted to correct the situation restored my trust in them. So within a day, I went from the "not again" stage to the "loyalty" stage of the customer experience.
  6. Planning – Just a few days after my Panera incident, Urquhart (Urko) Wood, President of Strategy Innovations, Inc., contacted me for a business lunch meeting. Despite the recent experience, Panera Bread was the first restaurant that came to my mind for our lunch. Our lunch meeting was on May 21, 2014, and we had an absolutely enjoyable experience at Panera Bread.

Attached is a graphical depiction of my customer-experience journey with Panera Bread.

Despite the roller-coaster nature of my customer experience with Panera Bread, I was able to persevere during this journey because Panera has been good to me in the past, and they have always stepped up to address any issues. My most recent experience with Panera has only renewed my trust and faith in them, resulting in an even stronger emotional bond between us.

Whether you are a B2C or B2B brand, your customers don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. They expect to be treated like a real person and expect you to emotionally engage and delight them—one customer experience at a time. Going back to our original query of "what matters more?" the answer is people and relationships. It’s about treating your customers like real people; genuinely caring for them and connecting with them on a personal and emotional basis.

The attached opening video from HubSpot’s INBOUND 2013 conference pretty much sums up the essence of what to consider in the customer-experience journey. (A special “thank you” goes to Tony Eades of CMO network for bringing this video to my attention.)

What are some of your favorite restaurants and/or brands, and why do they matter to you? Can you share examples of your unique customer-experience journey with them? What were some of the key drivers of a positive or negative experience?

Daniel A.

Senior Leader, Product Management | MBA, PMP, CPM, CBAP

9y

This is a must read. Thanks Sanjiv Karani

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Oliver Meek

Senior Account Executive

9y

This just reaffirms that the Glengarry Glen Ross model of sales is no longer effective. Modern day buyers in both B2C and B2B are too savvy and informed to be bowled over by cheap sale stactics but they're also mindful that mistakes can happen and will be forgiven if customer goodwill has been built. You're never going to sell something because you have better features than the other guy, everything's too commoditized. You sell because you're able to connect with the buyer, earn their trust, repay that trust when mistakes are made, and ultimately solve a problem for them. Whether that pain is hunger, or an IT infrastructure problem!

Jim Bass, CCXP CX-PRO

Creating fresh new music with an old school feel

9y

Great article and I love the visual, too. I share your experience in that having a chance to be heard and then seeing action taken to resolve the problem can turn me around quickly... if it is a restaurant where I like the food. If this were a hospital or healthcare company, for instance, the listening and action would not generate the same loyalty turn around. They would not get a second chance if I had a choice. I like to go to restaurants and stores where the staff remembers me, tries to connect with me, and helps me to solutions or new enjoyable experiences.

Zaheer Gilani

Director Strategy and Consulting at Genesys UKI, Co-Founder: CXBrainstorm.com, Author: Journey Mapping Workbooks, MBA

9y

Great article Sanjiv - I like the way you have laid out the Panera journey. How would you capture the same for a multi channel brand (nowadays, i think we may struggle to find a single organization / person offering a single channel to its customers)? To add further complexity - how would you capture the cross-channel behavior of customer (where customers uses more than one channel to achieve/ reach the desired/intended goals)?

Urquhart (Urko) Wood

I help companies differentiate, innovate, and grow without guesswork by revealing unique customer insights that competitors don’t know about. Expert in the "Jobs-to-Be-Done" innovation approach.

9y

Thanks, Sanjiv, for laying this out for us. I would invite you to consider that the 10 "stages of the customer experience" is really more accurately described as a rating scale of the customers reaction to their experience with a provider, e.g., ugh!, I really like this, etc. You rated your reaction to the experience Panera delivered across six steps. What providers like Panera (and you and I) really need to know in order to deliver superior value and a great customer experience, however, is to determine what it will take to drive customers to make referrals, to have the most favorable reaction? The trick is to discovering what it is that customers want to accomplish, experience, and feel with an offering and the criteria they use for measuring success. That's what I help my clients figure out.

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