EMBA的小眼睛

Customer service and luxury

If your Chanel bag wears out, don't expect the same response you might find if you have trouble with something from LL Bean or Lands End. Luxury brands have long assumed that if you can afford to buy it, you can afford to replace it.

That's changing.

The mass brand leaders in most markets have figured out how to deliver extraordinary promises at scale. Note the high end guys. The mass ones. They do this by realizing that the cost of making the customer happy is tiny compared to the cost of leaving her unhappy.

[Hint: if you think that there's any chance at all that people consider what you sell a luxury good, the answer is, they probably do.]

Go to a McDonalds. Buy a Big Mac and a chocolate milkshake. Drink half the milkshake. Eat half the Big Mac. Put the rest of the Big Mac into the milkshake, walk up to the counter and say, "I can't drink this milkshake, there's a Big Mac in it." You'll get a refund. (Please don't try this, but yes, it works).

It's cheaper to just say, "here's a refund," than it is to start a debate.

How is a luxury brand going to compete? Is part of the story of why you pay extra because of the service you'll get? Lexus did groundbreaking work on this (compare the Lexus service story/truth to the way Porsche or Jaguar owners used to be treated).

Luxury buyers who see that they're getting lesser service feel stupid, and stupid is the brand killer.

If you're going to sell luxury, you probably need to figure out how to use some of the premium you charge to deliver even better service than your lower-priced competition.