The document discusses the importance of holistic customer experience. It provides quotes from CEOs of Amazon and Zappos emphasizing how customer service should involve the entire company. The presentation notes that internal collaboration and understanding customer needs are essential for a good experience. It suggests developing customer personas and scenarios to understand different customer types. The key message is that prioritizing customer experience leads to greater customer satisfaction, loyalty and financial success for the business.
Customers are demanding more from businesses. Businesses that have increased their investment in the customer experience over the past three years report higher customer referral rates and greater customer satisfaction. Customers turn into advocates. Customer experience is the sum of all experiences a customer has with a supplier of goods or services, over the duration of their relationship with that supplier.
A 2011 study with consumers revealed that 89% will pay more for a better customer experience! As a matter of fact, Zappos is a great example of that since there shoes in particular are generally full price; more than what they might be at a dept. store sale. The customer experience is terrific, so it trumps a lower price.
: ForrresterBettercustomer experience can be worth millions in annual revenue. To provide great customer experience with al touch points requires internal collaboration and a process. Bruce Temkin of Forrester has developed these competencies as being a part of that process; and all stakeholders within each area of expertise must collaborate with each other.
Forrester Consumer Survey 2011: “Thinking of your interactions with these firms over the past 90 days…”
The people who would answer the 3 questions, your customers, are not all alike. There is no one size fits all approach, however that has been the standard. The concept of the Peppers & Rogers 1to1 Marketing, that is understanding the unique attributes of your customer, has been building since the 90’s. Yet so many of us don’t take the time to differentiate. Even if not a big brand company, as a smaller biz owner you can do the research.
So your customer may not be who you think they are, or your product development team or others in your organization. Surveys, usability studies, other user research can provide insight into their preferences, needs, behaviors
Each persona is based on a fictional character whose profile gathers up the features of an existing social group. In this way the personas assume the attributes of the groups they represent: from their social and demographic characteristics, to their own needs, desires, habits and cultural backgrounds.
The use cases are traditionally used in the interaction design projects for the development of the interaction flows. They are a means of roughing out the functionality of a product or of a service. You can do this even with a consulting service…try it! Map the flow of a typical customer using your service, from how they acquire it to actual use.
In my world, we call engaging customers “user centered design” and that means exactly this: engaging customers drives design decisions whether it is an application, a service, a website.
RightNow and Harris Interactive Customer Experience Report 2011who shared complaints about poor customerexperience online had their complaints ignored.
Let’s go back to process that I mentioned up front: you need an established process to deal with customer input, complaints, suggestions, even praise. Here is an example from Ari Weinzweig of Zingerman’s
of consumers began doing businesswith a competitor following a poorcustomer experience.
So you don’t want your potential customers to go elsewhere, and chances are one of the first exposures they may have to you is your website. Even if you meet them, let’s say networking, a part of duel diligence is to check-out your website. You don’t want a website from hell! So let’s have a little fun with a few examples…
I know none of you would do this!
Yep, this is the opening screen of a website, faint coloration of text,scrolling sentences that keep repeating unless you happen to see the subtle “engage site” link……
And, even major brands have provide user experiences on their websites….Can you possibly know at a glance what company this is? The top navigation bar is barely discernable AND when you type in the search box, the font is a charcoal….charcoal on black, like the nav bar buttons….. When US consumers can’t complete a goal online, the vast majority switch to more expensive channels,most often the phone. Others give up and go to a competitor, while still others abandon their goals entirely.Simple return on investment modeling shows that for an average retailer, the result is millions of dollars inlost revenue and unnecessary costs. (See the February 17, 2010, “Web Sites That Don’t Support Customers’Goals Waste Millions” report).
When someone leaves you may not be aware why if it is a website, social, or other anonymous experience. This is a famous story about a singular button on a retail website. Designers thought that by adding a “register” button at the point of purchase would be convenient. They had no idea how much animosity it created with customers, who left. Another UX consultant, Jared Spool happened to be called in to do research on the site in general and when talking to users in actual buying situations learned how much the “register” button infuriated them. They recommended that it be changed from “register” to “continue”. The net result was that over a year’s time the retail sales of that company increased $300,000,000!
By the way, the CEO of that major retailer called the UX consultant and said “Your my man” and you can only guess that he is their sole-source user research supplier to this day!
When you’ve done your part in putting the customer first you’ve researched how they discover, evaluate, buy, access, use you product or service; you’ve unified your message across all channels and touch points and you’ve checked in with customers to learn what is working or not, then you have a great customer experience story to tell.
To do this, we must develop deep empathy.We have to let go of our assumptions and reframe our thinking.We need to collaborate across our silos to design for, prototype, and deliver the experiences we hope to invoke.We must think about and explicitly design for every point of contact, every customer interaction (whether that interaction is with the product, website, service, content, employee, message, call center…) We must weave together disparate interactions into a coherent whole.Delivering a holistic customer experience means ensuring everyone in an organization has a deep understanding of the customer, the desired customer experience, and is empowered to act on it.And then we have to let go. Observe. Listen. Engage in a dialog. Learn. Iterate. Intervene. Evolve.Because every intervention, every point of contact, every message, every piece of content, every conversation has an impact on the experience.