If you have ever been to a new place and your stomach started to crumble. You know now it’s time to eat, so if you are like most people, you will check if there are nearby restaurants where you can have some food.
When you don’t know any of the restaurants, you find yourself inclined to enter the one with the most crowd and dismiss the ones that don’t have many customers. You don’t think, and you just find yourself checking the menu of that crowded restaurant.
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You can spend a lot of time designing a perfectly curated customer experience for your customers, but sometimes, things don’t go as planned.
At some point, you will screw up, and your customers will be mad at you. It’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when.
The question is: Are you prepared for when that happens?
One time I was flying back from Riyadh to Dubai on Saudi Airlines, and the lady sitting next to me ordered coffee. I guess that’s a pretty common request to have on the plane.
What was not common, though, was her finding a fly in her coffee.
Ughh.
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If your customers have a bad experience with your brand, they will call customer service. And if your customer service can’t help, say goodbye to having repeat customers.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say you applied for a specific service.
There is a waiting period for you to get it approved and processed.
They come back to you via your preferred method of communication, email, to let you know that there are some missing documents or information to process your application.
You proactively update all the information and send it back.
Then you wait.
Nothing happens.
You start wondering, Did they see my update? What happens now?
You exercise your patience.
Until one day, you have had it.
And so you recheck your email to see any sign to communicate back with them.
The email they sent you is a “No-Reply” email so when you try to reply and ask about the progress, the email delivery fails.
You notice that there is a note that tells you, “If you require assistance, please contact X.”
Then you find no mention to X’s email or any contact information.
You get frustrated.
Then, you pick up the phone and call customer service.
…
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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?
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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…
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