Customer experience

What does customer experience mean?

Customer experience August 22, 2021

I was chatting with my friend’s mom when she asked me, “what do you do?”

And then I was, hmmm… That would take some time to explain.

“I am a management consultant. I work in customer experience,” I said.

She looked at me with a perplexed look that tells me what does that even mean.

I guess so many people don’t know what does customer experience really means. Is it customer service? Marketing? Sales? Strategy? Operations? Wait… Designer?

And no, it’s none of the above, and yet we do touch upon all of the above.

Wait, what?

Is Customer Experience the same as Customer Service?

Customer experience August 14, 2021

I am often asked if Customer Experience is the same as Customer Service when I tell people what I do.

The short answer is: No. They are not the same.

Customer service is only one aspect of the customer experience. It’s one interaction with the customer. Customer experience, however, is everything the customer goes through when interacting with a brand.

23 Market research questions to know your customer

Consumer Marketing Customer experience May 15, 2020 2 Comments

Market research is one of the most important steps before you do a lot of work for your business.

“Know your customer.”

It’s one of the most fundamental requirements and yet many still miss out on.

7 Reasons to conduct usability testing

Customer experience Product design Service design May 6, 2020

In one of my previous posts, 6 Dimensions to measure usability, I explained what is usability and why it’s important to measure.

But…

More often than not, the budget wouldn’t allow it or the project timeline is just too tight.

Usability testing then is put in a second priority. Worse, it could be forgotten.

… and so, I have decided to share with you 7 reasons you should conduct usability testing.

6 Dimensions to measure usability

Customer experience Product design Service design May 5, 2020 1 Comment

Usability is one of the user experience design disciplines. Other disciplines include visual design, information architecture, and interaction design.

Ignore it, and good luck having users “use” your product, whether that is a website, a mobile app, a system, or a device.

What is usability?

In simple words, usability is how easy it is to use an interactive device, system, or website.

When you decide to design a product, you are trying to solve your customer’s problem. You want to provide your customer with a functional product that is easy to use, and therefore useful.

3 Product design principles that work for every customer

Customer experience Product design Service design May 4, 2020

Emotions drive our decisions.

They shape our pains, our joyful moments. If they are good, we keep using the same products or services, and if they are not, we simply stop and walk away.

There is no doubt that customer (or “user”) research is an essential activity to design products and services that truly meet your customer needs.

We want to understand the challenges that our customers face in order to design products and services that deem helpful to them.

If we don’t understand what jobs they are trying to do, what challenges they are facing, and what contributes to a better day for them, then what are we doing?

What is experience design? Service design? What is the difference?

Customer experience Service design May 1, 2020

What is experience design? Service design? What's the difference?

What is experience design? Service design? What is the difference? And what does your boyfriend has to do with it?

I will tell you.

You say experience design, they think of user experience (UX). They think about designing a new app, a new website.

You say service design, they think the same, but that’s not it.

A lot of people ask what is experience design, what is service design, and how are they different?

Discover how to use the power of memory to keep your customers coming back

Consumer Behavior Customer experience December 25, 2019

Elevate your customers’ ‘state’ of mind and you will keep them coming back.

One of the 4 steps of the FAST method mentioned by Jim Kwik to remember ANYTHING is the “State” step, which is basically your state of mind when you are ‘learning’.

How are you feeling? Are you bored? Are you excited? Are you surprised? Are you amused?

I wanted to contemplate at that step - that “State” one, and how we can use it to enhance the memorability of customers to a specific experience…

… and so I stopped for a moment and tried to remember which restaurants I have been to that delivered an elevated emotional state - that made my experience so memorable and kept it always on top of mind.

Hmm…

Do food ordering apps help gain or lose customers?

Customer experience December 23, 2019

I guess when it comes to ordering food, we don’t want to think much. All we want is to get our food as soon as possible, like right now, at this exact moment, especially when we are hungry.

Before online food ordering apps or websites, we used to order by calling a phone number, and so the popular chains started to create a shorter version of that number so it’s more memorable to its customers.

Now, I, like many others rely on food ordering apps. In fact, I don’t want to come near the phone at any point for my order. I am a millennial and I guess it became part of how our generation likes to order food. We weren’t brought up using the app, but we sure as hell got used to it.

So here is a food ordering story from today…

Exceptional customer experience starts with the discovery – Ingredients restaurant

Customer experience December 21, 2019

Exceptional customer experience starts with the discovery
Exceptional customer experience is relative to what the customer’s baseline and expectations are.

The same exact experience could be truly exceptional to one customer, while more or less average to another customer who might have different previous experiences.

And, so the same applies to me as a customer. I have dined in restaurants a lot in the past few years, and some of my outings, especially when it’s a big group, could end-up in a buffet. I know that buffets are even more popular during the month of Ramadan, where practically everyone gets to eat at the same exact time.
This week, I was part of a work workshop, which also happened to be in a Hotel, Anantara Eastern Mangroves Abu Dhabi.

We had lunch there in a place called Ingredients, and the restaurant offered a buffet lunch.

My experience was a bit different than the buffets I have been used to. I was at some point surprised, pleasantly surprised, and so I want to walk you through my thought process, as a customer for my restaurant customer experience with Ingredients.