"Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realise it themselves."

So said Steve Jobs. In other words: companies can find the future in the present, if they can understand their customers on careful and profound terms.

Building a full customer context

Traditionally, companies have focused on their own slice of their consumers' lives and wallets—what customers bought directly, via loyalty programmes, or on discount—and used that information to improve campaigns and engagement. Today, however, opportunities are to be found when broader aspects of customers' lives are understood, such as their travel, purchasing, browsing, and watching habits—as well as the company they keep on social networks.

Indeed, companies that capture more and better data, and extract real insights from it, can get a precise and up-to-the-minute understanding of their customers.

Both Apple and Google, for example, have had great success in the smartphone business, from which they have gained a huge advantage in being able to reconstruct the contexts of their customers' lives, given that so much happens on these devices. Such companies have thus been able to get ahead of the curve in a marketing shift: no longer are products pushed at customers, but customers are pulled into new experiences and offerings. The challenge, naturally, is being the first to know what will attract customers.

The lives and desires of Luxembourg consumers

How well is this approach working in Luxembourg? We wanted to take a closer look at Luxembourg's retail B2C market to see how the Grand Duchy is doing in customer experience, in what ways its customers are unique, and which trends are gaining traction down the road. The first-ever Luxembourg Customer Experience Excellence study is the result.

The study drew on methodology developed by KPMG, namely its six pillars of customer experience: personalisation, integrity, expectations, resolution, time/effort, and empathy.

Overall, Luxembourg businesses have risen to the challenge, excelling particularly in personalisation and in time/effort. However, unlike their counterparts in the US and UK, Luxembourg brands have yet to fully embrace customer obsession, being generally at the level of customer awareness instead. Seeking inspiration from places west of here may be helpful in this area.

Ernster, LuxairTours, and LALUX take the crown

KPMG surveyed over 1,000 customers for the Luxembourg report, covering 80 brands across 10 sectors. Scoring exceptionally highly on integrity, Ernster topped the table, with LuxairTours and LALUX in second and third places respectively. With regards to sector performance, financial services (e.g. banks and insurance companies) came out on top with an average score of 7.14 (out of 10), 6% above the national average.

Read the full report here.

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