4 ways to create game-changing customer experiences

Being a customer-led game changer isn’t just about doing something really big and changing the entire course of a company or country, it can mean taking small, incremental steps that build rapidly, Sportsbet’s chief operating officer and executive director claims.

Speaking at ADMA’s Data Day in Sydney, Luke Rattigan revealed the Australian gaming company has experience strong revenue and profit growth in the past few years, hitting just over $4 billion digital turnover, with a profit growing north of $100 million.

So how did the brand achieve this? For Rattigan, there were four key ways it’s transformed customer experiences.

Discover your greater purpose

The first is articulating and acting on the group’s greater purpose.

“In 2012, the leadership team asked us some really deep questions,” he said. “What is our purpose? What is our reason for being? Now in gambling, that is a challenging question. We had to consider whether we are there just to make money, or whether we had some other greater purpose.”

Sportsbet decided its purpose was to add excitement to life. From an internal perspective, this allowed Sportsbet’s team to unite around a common purpose, Rattigan said.

“Now that sets the true foundation for collaboration,” he claimed. “And externally, it sends a positive message about what we stand for to our customers and to society at large. It’s a simple, positive and aspirational purpose that really resonates.”

Embrace a clear strategy

At Sportsbet, Rattigan said its strategy to boost customer experience is based on four key differentiators.

“The first is customer experience - we want to build the most simple, fastest and safest customer experience as possible,” he explained. “Secondly, we want to have the most intuitive app in the marketplace. Third, we want to build original and compelling sports products and unique betting products. For instance, we recently launched a product called Punter’s Club that allows you to bet with your mates.

“Fourth, we want to have our customers engage with our brand and experiences. We want to be known as being fun, fast and fair.”

Nurture the right talent with robust leadership

If Sportsbet wanted to be one of the strongest e-commerce businesses in Australia, it also needed to focus on its leadership capabilities.

“We needed to focus on our team effectiveness and performance,” Rattigan said. “I did a whole range of leadership diagnostics to see certain behaviours that I have which might be impacting other individuals.”

Discovering his love of mentoring and coaching, Rattigan said he wanted to ensure staff could look back on their career at Sportsbet and think that was the place they developed the most.

“As a leader at Sportsbet, my role is to inspire, align and empower that talent to ensure our objective becomes a reality,” he said. “I want to have authentic conversations that can unleash the potential in individuals.”

Sportsbet’s pool of talent has expanded rapidly in recent years from 150 to 700 people.

“Hiring data scientists and analysts are a key component of that talent mix,” he added. “We have about 50 of them, some in product and marketing and some in risk and pricing.”

Keep things simple for customers

To keep things simple for online customers, Rattigan suggested ensuring activation, entry and use of an online app is as easy yet secure as possible, so they use it much more frequently.

“We released a product called Cash Out about a year ago, which we believe is a game changing product for betting,” he said. “It allows customers to be empowered to trade or cash in their bet at any point in time between they make it and the game is over, which our customers love. In fact, we have had over $100 million traded in Cash Out, so it has been a real game changer for customers.”

Read more about Sportsbet's marketing strategy:

• Sportsbet taps into World Cup digital momentum with social marketing blitz
• CMO50 #7: Barni Evans, Sportsbet

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