Building customer loyalty is never a simple task, although some might say that Costa Sunglasses makes it look easy. Al Perkinson, VP of Marketing for Costa Sunglasses, recently spoke at the 2015 Engagement & Experience Expo in a session titled, “The Lens of CX-An Optical Perspective on Building Communities and Customer Experience from the Ground Floor.”
Perkinson and Diana Helfinstine, VP of Customer Experience at Essilor, provided insight into how their companies are building customer engagement by taking a simpler approach to customer interaction.
Rather than developing technology to operate automated call centers, Perkinson told attendees that Costa is headed in the opposite direction.
“You will never get an answering machine [when calling Costa]; you will always speak to a real person within 60 seconds,” Perkinson said.
This drive to connect customers with real people comes as a result of a philosophy drawn from pre-Industrial Revolution commerce.
“Back in the day, you made everything that you used,” Perkinson said. “And if you didn’t make it, you could walk down the street to the butcher or the candlestick maker, and you could buy it from them. You knew who they were, and you knew who to talk to if it needed to be fixed. Life was tough back then, but it was real, and you were connected to everything in your life.”
Perkinson shared that Costa’s marketing strategy is based on one simple word: Authenticity. One way to achieve this transparency is through a principle that he calls “higher calling.”
“Customers want to know that you, as a brand, stand for something bigger than making a buck,” Perkinson said. “They want to know that you’re trying to make this world a better place.”
In an industry as focused as Costa’s, entering the market needs to be a delicate and precise process. Rather than thinking in terms of targeting a particular market segment, Perkinson said that the company is merely trying to join in with a community. Instead of blasting a message promoting the company’s accolades and sales figures, Costa is listening to what customers are talking about and connecting with them on a personal level.
The brand’s unique approach to marketing extends to its presence at community gatherings.
“Your job is to get to an event and simply make it better,” Perkinson said. “You’ll be appreciated much more for that than for paying too much attention to ROI and seeing how much you can sell at the event.”
Costa, Perkinson said, believes in finding a cause within its communities and working to further the movement. The company has created a program called Kick Plastic, which promotes ways that customers can conserve plastic and reduce ocean pollution.
“It’s super appreciated by customers, because what you’re doing is protecting the community and allowing it to continue” Perkinson added.
Helfinstine discussed how these engagement strategies can be achieved from an internal perspective.
Helfinstine noted that, as a B2B company, it can be difficult to gather candid insight from customers. Many eye care professionals work with Essilor on a daily basis, and this partnership may skew customer insights.
“What we find is that because it’s such a relationship-driven industry, we really need to dig deep to get beyond the false positive results in surveys,” Helfinstine said. “The real gold we find is in our verbatim responses.”
Finally, as an advocate of the customer, Helfinstine finds it useful to simply place herself on the other side of the interaction.
“What I do is focus on how we can be an easier company to work with,” Helfinstine added. “If I can make us a company that’s easy to work with, that also makes my own job easier as a result.”