Why Customer Experience Must Be the 8th P of Marketing
Everyone has heard about the classic textbook 4 P’s of marketing mix (Product, Price, Promotion, Place) which have been around since the 1960’s. These are the tools that are controlled by marketing professionals to influence consumers to buy the company’s products. As the marketing profession continued to stay relevant, it received a boost two decades later in 1981 by Bernard Booms and Mary Bitner. Three more P’s (People, Place, Physical Evidence) were added to the originally 4 P’s specifically for services marketing. The 7 P’s have been accepted as the new marketing mix by marketing professionals.
Fast forward to today, it has been 40+ years since the last modifications to the marketing mix. The world has drastically changed. In many respects, it was much simpler for marketers in 1981. There were no internet or websites. The 7 P’s was relevant back then. With the birth of the internet and the information age, everything has changed for the marketing function. Marketers had to learn about Search Engine Optimization and click through rates. Today, social media is incorporated in practically every marketer’s toolbox. The sizzle of traditional advertising on television and magazines has fizzled.
There is now a push for an 8th P’s in today's new environment. Many bright minded individuals are starting to write on this topic. A google search of “the 8th P of marketing” yield over 63 million results. As a customer experience professional who came up through the ranks of the marketing function, I am here to build a case that the 8th P should be customer experience or “xP” as the acronym.
Customer Experience is Already Embedded in All 7 P’s of Marketing
If you examine the current 7 P’s, customer experience is intertwined in all 7 P’s. A great product that does wonders is not all that great if consumers find it difficult to use. Consumers will not pay high prices for products with challenging customer experiences. Consumers love promotions but if your rebate process is long and arduous, your brand will suffer. Distribution is important because if consumers have to drive far away to purchase your product, that will contribute to a bad customer experience.
Bernard Booms and Mary Bitner’s 3 p’s (People, Process, and Physical Evidence) is an implicit acknowledgement that a customer’s perception of a company’s brand goes beyond just the product. A customer’s interaction with the company’s “People” must be taken into consideration by the marketing professional. How well or not is the customer treated becomes a factor. A company’s “processes” must also be examined by the astute marketer. How difficult do you make your customers buy and pay for your products and services? If customers want to leave, do you make it complicated just to save a buck or two? A customer experience driven organization will make it easy for customers to buy and leave. They do not use complicated services to shackle customers. Have you ever tried to cancel a product or service and they make it almost impossible for you to leave? How did it make you feel? More importantly, will you ever buy another product or service from the company again? “Physical evidence” is anything that is used to deliver the goods or service. Hotels are a great example. Physical evidence can be the parking lot, the lobby, the front desk staff, the rooms and furniture, the cleanliness, how it smells etc. Any one flaw could destroy the physical evidence experience.
I propose that we add customer experience as an 8th P as “xP” of marketing to ensure that the embedded customer experience within the current 7 P’s is always taken into consideration by marketers.
Marketers Must Now Make Customer Journey Their Business
Most classically trained consumer package goods marketers focus on the product, digital advertising, and promotions. But the astute marketers are starting to figure out that it is not enough. You can have the most wonderful product and promote it at the right price, only to have all your efforts derailed by a bad customer service experience or a complicated promotion rebate process. It never ceases to amaze me that some companies purposely make rebate processes complex to reduce percentage redeemed and keep costs down. In a similar fashion, I have also seen customer service departments purposely hiding their contact numbers and burying them deep in the company’s websites to keep customers from easily calling them. These are the new realities that a marketer is dealing with.
The best marketers whether it is B2B or B2C educate themselves on the customer journeys as part of their role. They know precisely all the steps and interactions that the customer takes when researching, considering, buying, consuming, calling and repurchasing their marketed product. Not only do they know the steps, but they also know the major pain points and work collaboratively to reduce or eliminate them. This is to ensure that their marketing efforts are not derailed or diminished.
To ensure that customer journeys are part of a marketer’s role, I propose that we add an 8th P of marketing for customer experience or “xP” as the acronym.
Customer Experience or “xP”, the 8th P is Appearing in Unlikely Places
Customer experience as a discipline saw a rapid adoption in the financial and technology industries over the years. It is not surprising that the customer experience leaders in these industries already see their marketing counterparts take interest and notice what they do. While only time will tell how the marketing and customer experience functions will merge or coexist, the best in class companies are already seeing marketing and customer experience professionals sitting side by side to solve customer issues and generate more long term revenue for the organization.
Based on my personal experience working as a marketing professional in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, I can make the argument that these are most complex and challenging environments to conduct a marketing profession. There are many reasons for my bold statement. The pharmaceutical or medical device industries are in part B2B because doctors write prescriptions. They are also B2C if you look at all the prescription advertising on television today. They are B2B2C because doctors recommend, and patients buy. Throw all the government regulations on top of that, and you have a hot mess. Unlike consumer marketing industries, you are limited in your creativity and what you can say or cannot say to doctors and patients alike. You don’t want to be called into your company’s legal office for a misstep.
Given the shackles that the pharmaceutical or medical device marketing professionals work under, it is not surprising that they are always looking for other means to enhance or beef up their toolkit. Yes, you guessed it – customer experience or in the industry terms, patient experience. The marketers in the pharmaceutical or medical device industries who are thought leaders are beginning to use patient journey as a marketing tool. They have adopted the customer journey mapping best practices from the customer experience discipline to learn the exact sequential steps that a patient takes from onset of disease, diagnosis, and treatment. They know the stakeholders who interact with the patients and which steps are moments that matter. They even take it a step farther by learning the major pain points along the patient journey. Even if those pain points are not within the marketers’ sphere of control or influence, they still offer support using marketing materials.
While looking at customer journeys is now basic in many industries, I am pleasantly surprised that it has shown up in unlikely places, the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. Customer experience in the United States has already infiltrated the health insurance industry. But I have yet seen it in any major way within the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. Chief Customer Officers or VP of Customer Experience roles do not really exist in these companies yet. In spite of this, it is the marketing professionals who are taking the lead to adopting customer experience best practices into their organizations.
My Final Thoughts
Given that customer experience is already embedded in the current marketing 7 P’s and marketing professionals are adopting customer journeys in their tool kits, I propose that we make the 8th P as customer experience or “xP” as the acronym. Formally incorporating it into the marketing mix will be good for both marketing professionals and customer experience professionals. Thought?
Photo by Hussain Badshah on Unsplash