When it comes to customer experience, an unstoppable trend is developing that some experts describe as horizontal. The Horizontal Experience is about the great experience that customers have with one company and consequently have the same expectations of another company. This should also be able to cover the previously experienced outstanding customer experience, no matter how much these companies differ in their industry or service. The future trend of horizontal experience is examined in more detail in this blog post.
Horizontal experience refers to the phenomenon that customers have a certain perception and experience of a company’s service quality and transfer this expectation to other companies. If customers experience an outstanding customer experience, they automatically tend to compare it, demand it and regard it as a higher standard – regardless of the sector.
As a result, customers have less and less patience for a company. For companies that cannot serve these new customer needs, this can mean that customers switch to another company after already having a bad experience. This was already indicated by the respondents in a study by Acquia. About 76% of respondents tend to switch to a competitor if they have only had a bad experience with a brand or company, even though they actually like it.
Unfortunately, many companies still think in vertical categories or only take the direct competition as a benchmark for their own service quality. But that has long since ceased to be the standard. Due to the increasingly networked world and growing digitalisation, processes are becoming faster and faster and patterns can be recognised more quickly than average. People recognise these patterns, convert them into predictions and finally transfer them into their own expectations – quite unconsciously into the so-called horizontal. Accordingly, it is more than possible that the favourite online sneaker shop is the new service benchmark for ISP customer service.
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The Horizontal Experience raises the benchmark in customer service to a new level. Consequently, companies are not only competing with their direct competitors, but also indirectly with companies from other sectors. Increasing (horizontal) expectations of customers and a low tolerance level should not bring those responsible in customer service to the brink of despair. Rather, the Horizontal Experience should be seen as a wonderful opportunity to drive the business forward, optimising customer service to make it even better than it already is.
The Horizontal Experience is changing the way companies deliver their products, services and customer service and compete in the marketplace. It is no longer enough to rely on a Unique Selling Point (USP). After all, there are numerous other brands, companies and service providers in the near competition. The opportunities to quickly switch to the competition have never been so easy. If you evaluate your customer service horizontally, you can look at the practices of all your competitors and get a comprehensive overview of what the current highest level of customer experience is.
