Roland-Garros and Customer Experience: an unlikely parallelism!

Written by Sonal Jaiswal | Evangelist, Customer Guru

The French Open 2015 has just concluded, and a new champions have been crowned! With Rafael Nadal, the “King of clay”, crashing out very early, it was really end of an era. There is no denying that there is an aura surrounding this Grand Slam that is not compared with any other.

Here are a few analogies that can be drawn between Roland-Garros and Customer Experience.

1. There is something missing in your achievements until you have it.

We do know that Roland-Garros is not everyone’s cup of tea and the crown has eluded a lot of champions. The likes of John McEnroe, Pete Sampras, Martina Hingis and Novak Djokovic have never won the singles title, and world-class players like Roger Federer and Andre Agassi have won it only once. And it is a fact that unless you win the French Open, there is definitely a feather (a very beautiful one) missing in your cap. Similarly, if customer experience is not a key focus of an organisation it is losing on one of the most important ‘turfs’ of business.

2. It is demanding. But it is worth it!

The slow-playing clay surface coupled with  the five-set men’s singles matches without a tiebreak in the final set makes it one of the most demanding tournaments. Retaining the crown is even more arduous. It is the same with Customer Experience – it tests your endurance, but it is worth the time and effort.

3. It has its cult following and followers swear by it.

The French Open followers swear by it, and for them, no other Grand Slam would come close to it. It is the same with CX – those who follow it, know that there is no better way to gain customer loyalty other than improving customer experience.

We would like to congratulate the newly crowned Roland-Garros champions, and, just like winning over customer experience for businesses, it will be their ongoing endeavour to retain that position.