The world’s most customer-centric brands

The shortlist celebrates brands that are delighting customers by making brave decisions to evolve alongside their target audiences while remaining focused on long-term strategies.

For the 19^th year, Interbrand released its Best Global Brands of 2018 shortlist. In the release, it highlighted that the brands growing the quickest: “intuitively understand their customers and make brave, iconic moves that delight and deliver in new ways.”

Voice of the customer

The common attributes that unite these leaders include the following:

• Positive utility: The strongest growth is enjoyed by brands that focus on providing products and services that go beyond gimmicks and actually provide relief for customer problems.

• Subscription mindset: As highlighted by Oracle’s Emmanuel Obadia in CX Network’s 2019 predictions report access trumps ownership, the power of the subscription model is growing. Brands are adjusting to supply frictionless access points to products and services that can be tailored according to the user.

• Consistency: The leading brands maintain a strong level of continuity across various touchpoints and channels.

• Customer-centric models: The Interbrand report acknowledged that, yes, strong branding is influential to customer buying decisions, but so is relevance. To ensure they remain aligned to customer needs, market trailblazers are engraving the voice of the customer into everyday operations and then adapting accordingly.

Best Global Brands of 2018

Apple and Google retained their top spots from 2017. However, Amazon climbed two places to third displacing Microsoft and CocaCola. McDonalds also rose by two places. After surging through the ranks in previous years, Facebook dropped down by one place.

1. Apple

2. Google

3. Amazon

4. Microsoft

5. Cocacola

6. Samsung

7. Toyota

8. Mercedes Benz

9. Facebook

10. McDonalds

Here is what our network had to say about the brands on this list.

• Apple has a good single view of the customer and customer design-led thinking to fuel its strategies for different channels.

• Amazon excels when it comes to personalized automation. Clients feel like a valued customer even if they never speak to a human being. Intuitive user interfaces and easy experiences - it all just works.

• Samsung has different strategies for different channels but a single view of the customer.

• The Walt Disney Company (appearing in 14^th) makes customers feel special at every interaction

• Adidas (50^th) is available when needed, quick to respond, has good personalization, meets high expectations, is easy to deal with and has great service.