Officials at SharkNinja, a leading innovator in the housewares industry and creator of the popular Shark and Ninja brands, want to capitalize on the awareness, consumer trust, and success of each brand to establish one unified identity.
An outstanding, identifiable corporate practice is that SharkNinja representatives read every single online review and use customer engagement on a daily basis to interact with their loyal patrons.
Loyalty360 caught up with SharkNinja President Mark Barrocas to discuss this unique customer experience/customer engagement approach
Can you talk about SharkNinja’s customer service approach, specifically, how it reads and responds to every online customer review?
SharkNinja is unlike any other business. Throughout the years, we’ve come to understand what it takes to flourish as an innovator in the consumer product space. The main thing is balance–an even distribution of cutting-edge technology and practical, easy-to-use products that improve the lives of our customers. We keep our customers at the heart of every product we develop and that is something that will never change. As part of that commitment, we’ve developed a unique approach to customer experience. We make it a priority to read each and every online review–that’s tens of thousands of consumer generated content annually!
While everyone at SharkNinja owns the customer experience, our Marketing Team directly engages with our customers to obtain their feedback and help find a solution. While the products we produce need to be great, the customers’ experience with those products is what really matters. We aren’t happy until they are happy, so if that means upping our direct communication to deliver a 5-star experience, we’re going to do that.
Since the company has done this, what has the impact been on customer engagement/customer loyalty?
The great thing about the online world is that it provides a platform for the voice of the customer to be at the forefront. Organizations can spend their time trying to reduce the noise, or they can embrace the possibilities that come with being “real” with their customers. We have found that the latter works best for us. We celebrate successes, but we also take accountability for what needs to be improved–and the customers are taking notice. We’ve been rated “Highest in Customer Satisfaction with Upright Vacuums” by J.D. Power two years and our market share continues to grow. We are striving to building a brand of repeat customers and that all starts with building a relationship and gaining their trust.
How important is listening to customers for SharkNinja?
As mentioned, we operate with a customer-first mindset in all things we do. We think in terms of leaving no customer behind. If you have taken the time to give us feedback about something that has disappointed you, our goal is to make it right. While there may not always be a solution to the problem, we will do our absolute best to find an answer and let the consumer know that they’ve been heard. But we also get a lot of positive feedback, too! Customers will share feedback on the things they like, which helps us shape both future products and update existing ones. This kind of feedback contributes just as much to our advancement and success as the negative feedback does, so listening to and acknowledging both is a vital part of our strategy.
What does customer loyalty mean to SharkNinja and has that definition changed or evolved in recent years?
Loyalty drives repurchase, higher spend, and impacts intent to recommend. Like most organizations, we are very focused on this metric. How we have evolved is in our ability to deep dive on all the elements that are driving success from a brand and interaction perspective. In addition to being relentlessly focused on bringing 5-star products to market, we strive to deliver 5-star experiences at every touch point. This focus allows us to quickly isolate opportunities and correlating factors that make it easy to implement improvements. Our ability to embrace possibility and reinvent on-demand makes this a key differentiator for us.
Simplicity was one of the main themes at our Loyalty Expo Conference in April. How does SharkNinja simplify its customer relationships to enhance brand loyalty?
Consumers expect that interactions with the brand at all touch points should be made easy. There is a direct correlation between the amount of effort the customer expends to solve their issue and their loyalty to the brand. Think about it this way: If a customer has to endure multiple contacts to get what they need, then a positive outcome is not enough. Customers will remember how they’ve been made to feel throughout the process, so making it easy and comfortable for them is key to gaining their respect and loyalty.
Marketers are tasked to be more data-centric than ever before, yet the challenge of creating actionable insight from data is more challenging than before. What is your advice for marketers?
On one hand, the big data movement has opened doors to capturing more insight than ever before, but quite frankly, the data at times can be overwhelming and requires a real frame of reference applied to it. As a result, we leverage data as a pathway to defining the possibilities in front of us. We rely on a combination of analytics and customer validation to create context and actionable insight. The data can provide the map, but cross-referencing with our customers is how we get the directions. This serves as the framework for our strategy and decision making.
Can you give us a high level overview of your customer philosophy and share how this perspective helps drive more effective engagement and, therefore, better marketing outcomes?
Everything we do is with the lens of positively impacting people lives every day, in every home around the world. For example, with our Ninja Brand, the definition of success extends well beyond product performance and marketability. We think about it in terms of enabling consumers to up their game in the kitchen by setting them up for success. On our website, we’ve made it a point to share recipes that are simple, healthy and delicious (three major priorities for our demographic) for our customers to replicate. We don’t do this to be preachy about health, we just believe in taking that extra step to guarantee our customers have a fulfilling, 5-star experience with our products.
In a move toward customer-centricity, if you could give one piece of advice to a brand to help them increase loyalty and engagement with their customers, what would it be?
Be where your customers are and keep listening. Don’t rationalize away a concern based on numbers–the customer voice is what’s most important. They need to feel heard, get their point-of-view first-hand and backtrack from there.