Is your packaging the 'whole deal?'

By Mark Blezard

I've spoken a lot about the importance of packaging. Getting your outer wrap right can outperform the best sales executive on the shop floor. Packaging can create desire, unrecognised needs, product envy, want.

However, you are selling yourself short if you stop at the box. This blog is a short message of inspiration about one of the masters in this game, Nespresso. Nespresso has what I call the 'whole packaging deal.'

Think about it, if getting the product wrap right can see customers reaching for your products over a competitor's, why stop there? As I said in a previous blog, 'think outside of the box.' Packaging can be how you wrap your entire customer experience up.

Nespresso seems to apply this philosophy to every move they make. Their shops, their machines, website, accessories, direct mailers, recycling scheme, even the Christmas gift that I received in the post last year. Nothing seems to slip past this company.

And what does this mean? The world of coffee is a fiercely competitive one. Winning new customers takes a lot of effort, prizing them from alternative brands even greater, so client retention becomes especially important. By packaging up your entire customer experience, as per Nespresso, creates a customer following. We are no longer just coffee drinkers, we become part of the family. If anyone questions a taste you point them towards one of their stores and say, 'How can that be? You're wrong.'

If you don't like the taste of your morning shot, you don't jump ship, you return to Nespresso for help in a new selection. Why? Because you've migrated from being a customer to a member of the club.

Sure. You have to have good coffee, but this is not enough. Taking your customer on a journey – that never ends – and wrapping them in your corporate cloak, that's what it takes. I call it 'customer touch-points,' every moment a customer has contact with anyone, anything, in your corporation. Make a list, it will be a long one. And then consider if any of them are missing your wrap.

Customer touch-points are every single points of contact your clients have with your organisation, online, instore, to home delivery. Each one is as important as the other. Each one can sell, encourage, retain your new family.