An effective customer experience strategy involves careful planning, a data-driven approach, understanding your customers and using the right tools to execute the strategy flawlessly. It also involves learning from popular culture to understand evolving customer wants. Game of Thrones, one of the most popular sagas of our times has come to an end, leaving viewers craving for more. We discuss a few of the lessons we learned.

Spoiler alert: If you haven’t yet watched Season 8, now’s your chance to stop reading this.

The battle for the Iron Throne has culminated and the seven six kingdoms have found their ruler in Bran Stark, with Sansa Stark taking over the North as an independent kingdom. There was a lot of furor over many events, with more than a million fans, signing a petition to remake the final season. Let’s understand why this season drew heavy criticism from fans and decrypt lessons from significant events that could help you create an effective customer experience strategy.

We look at four aspects that disappointed viewers and share our musings on what not to do to retain loyal customers.

Customer Experience Strategy Lessons from the GoT Finale

1. Customer is ‘King’ and Context is ‘Queen’

Time and again marketers find it challenging to balance context and content. While well researched, well-crafted content can do wonders, but is powerless without context.

Take, for example, Daenerys character curve and her ‘crazy’ decision to burn down what she stood for.

Daenerys Targaryen zealously fought throughout the show and established herself as the front-runner for the Iron Throne. While many could have predicted her descent into becoming ‘mad-queen’ owing to her Targaryen genes. Her ill-conceived character arc and death failed to establish context. If more time was spent on building instances, it could be portrayed as a strategic (not necessarily, moral) decision for her to achieve supremacy; her actions and the eventual end would have had viewers swooning over the twist.

Lesson Learned:

To meet customer expectations, you have to deliver relevant information at the right place and right time. Context ensures continuity in customer experience. Addressing the ‘why’ behind your actions, helps customers trust and value you.

Learn More: Customer Experience Best Practices: Should CX be Contextual or Consistent?

2. No Daenerys, No Iron Throne

While context is important, understanding the customer journey to deliver exceptional experiences is paramount.

The Iron Throne was what key characters in the show set out to conquer. For marketers, it is the customer experience – the Iron Throne, that can set you apart from the competition.

Daenerys understood the people’s needs, listened to the voice of the people, and rose to the occasion. But Drogon burning down the Iron Throne symbolized that, if there is no focus on learning about your customers and understanding their needs, there will be no Iron Throne to strive for.

Lesson Learned:

Focusing on the customer journey to personalize experiences, being responsive to their needs, connecting to them on a personal level, and discerning what your competitors are doing will eventually help you deliver outstanding customer experiences and get your customers to root for you.

Learn More: How Can Relationship Marketing Impact Customer Experience?

3. If you can’t ‘Warg’, You can’t Rule

To succeed, you must ‘know’ your customers and be proactive while addressing their problems. You could work tirelessly on creating content, gathering data, and devising customer experience strategies, but if you can’t glean actionable insights from customer data and customer interactions, you can’t win at customer experience.

Many fans were dismayed with Bran being ‘voted’ as the king. To us, King Bran may very well be a perfect choice, as he can ‘warg’ into the minds of people to get instantaneous insights and his knowledge of past mistakes can help him make informed decisions. Bran baited the Night King into a situation where Arya Stark could kill him and his knowledge that he would be offered the crown, all suggest that he was foresighted! Predictive algorithms at work, eh!

Lesson Learned:

Creating a 360-degree view of your customers, analyzing their behavior and preferences and gaining insights into their requirements and expectations can help you carve out relevant and customized experiences for your customers. With the help of predictive analysis, you can combine hard work with smart decisions to have a winning customer experience strategy.

Learn More: Top 5 B2B Customer Experience (CX) Best Practices for 2020!

4. Never Forget What You Are

A brand evolves and matures, when it stays true to its values, consistently delivers customer experiences and lives up to promises. It’s easy for marketers to lose sight of the brand image in the conquest of conversions and ROI, but you must remember customers respond to authenticity and quality.

Game of Thrones has become a global cult for its compelling plots, heartbreaking twists, meticulous character development, and skillful storytelling. No climax could have filled the void in a GoT’s fan life, but what angered them most was the rushed plots, poor execution, sloppy writing and, of course, the coffee cups and water bottles. Viewers were upset, as they invested a lot of time and emotion over eight years with the show. Though GoT will be irreplaceable as the fan favorite for a long time to come, the amateurish execution of Season 8 left a bad aftertaste.

Lesson Learned:

Even if you ‘think’ you are winning with your customer experience strategy, you cannot rest. Your customer experience strategy needs to be carefully planned and meticulously executed with ownership from every member of your organization.

Learn More:  Customer Service Vs Customer Experience (CX): Key Differences And Similarities

Final Takeaways for Marketers

Jon Snow assuming the Iron Throne, would have given us our fairy-tale ending; instead, we learned a lesson or two on how things would work:

• Given Jon Snow’s lineage, a Targaryen would once again become king, paving the way for future generations, and so the wheel would never end.

You have to ‘Break-the-Wheel’ and keep innovating and evolving to stay at the top.

• Although Jon Snow made all the difficult decisions and sacrifices, he never showed any desire to sit on the throne.

Well, to stay at the top, you have to step up your game and be passionate about your goals. Be prepared to lose before you win and make tough decisions that will complement your efforts in the long run.

We may not be content with how GoT ended, but as marketers, you can script your own customer experience success stories, by designing a holistic strategy – gathering, understanding, and acting on customers’ needs, staying true to your brand values, and continually, consistently striving to deliver memorable customer experiences.

Do tell us your key takeaways from the GoT series conclusion on Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook; we’re always listening!