Customers’ were asked to rate the most important areas that companies should focus on in order to provide them the best customer experience in the banking, gaming, mobile phone, retail and travel sectors.

The experience of shopping with a tablet PC is much less satisfying than with your desktop computer. Although the iPad reinvented the tablet computer, unfortunately it appears that the actual surfing experience does not live up to expectations. In a survey of nearly 5,000 people undertaken by Foviance, a global Customer Experience consultancy, it’s clear that the customer experience of tablet computing is relatively poor – customers are up to 18% less happy with their tablet experience compared to their desktop PCs.

The study, which looked at what customers thought of customer experience in the retail, banking, travel and mobile phone markets in the 2nd Annual Customer Experience survey, commissioned by Foviance in association with Econsultancy.

Whilst companies are rushing to create apps on Apple, Android and Nokia stores it seems that they are not delivering for customers. The Apple store now has more than 200,000 apps, far more choice than the 40,000 products in a branch of Tesco but apps are not delivering the experience of their full-blown desktop cousins.

According to the survey, people are looking for efficient customer service (51%) and high-quality products (39%) at a low price (49%). Apps don’t appear to be robustly designed and have service issues. One customer, Muir MacDonald, explained that his new Skype app for iPad2 stopped working when he updated iTunes and he said “I delete a lot of apps that just don’t work as suppliers tend to ignore complaints and don’t fix them”.

Foviance also surveyed 650 companies and asked them about their commitment to customer experience. Only 10% felt that apps were ‘integrated’ with their overall customer experience, as compared to 48% with their website experience.

Companies are also failing to keep pace with the changes in technology. 40% of companies said that the major barrier to improving customer experience was ‘complexity of customer experience’.

Other findings:

1. In general, people seem to be fairly happy with their customer experience, for example, 87% of people thought their overall retailing experience was good or excellent
2. 69% of people will recommend a company based on a good customer experience
3. Customers are increasingly moving online, however, the face to face experience is still important, with the call centres and brochure being relegated to less important ways of buying
4. Mobile customer experiences are generally weaker – even if you’re a mobile phone company!

Download the report from the Foviance website

Only 26% of respondents say their companies have a well-developed strategy in place for improving customer experience, just a slight increase of 4% from last year. The research has also found that ‘complexity of customer experience’ is now seen as the greatest barrier to improving multichannel customer experience, overtaking ‘organisational structure’ since 2010.

To download the whitepaper a valid e-mail address is required, however Foviance will not contact you unless you specifically request it.

This report looks at how a total of nearly 5,000 consumers (spread across five separate surveys) regard their experience with companies in the retail, travel, online banking, mobile phone and gaming (gambling) sectors.
Our consumer research shows that the relative importance of different attributes varies by sector, as does the frequency of overall interaction and use of different channels (including online and offline).

• Customers are increasingly moving online, however, the face to face experience is still important, the call centre and brochure being relegated to less important ways of buying
• Mobile experiences are weak – even if you’re a mobile phone company!

To download the whitepaper a valid e-mail address is required, however Foviance will not contact you unless you specifically request it.

As I was throwing a magazine into the recycling today I came across a perfume sample that was designed differently to other samples I have found. The excitement I got from the little package made me think of insights into human behaviour that appear on Stephen Anderson’s Mental Notes, here are the insights:

• “Surprise – Our brains are aroused by new and unexpected discoveries (within our normal routines)”
• “Delighters – We remember and respond favourably to small, unexpected and playful pleasures”
• “Appropriate Challenges – We delight in challenges, especially ones that strike a balance between overwhelming and boring”

In addition to the emotions produced by this novelty, it must be said that the package has been very well-designed. The outside of the package is a small, rectangular sleeve and the inside is a tiny foil envelope. This manages to contain the scent very efficiently while fitting into the inside of a magazine nicely. The fun element is introduced when operating the sample – a little tab at the top needs to be pulled up, then the middle of the package needs to be squeezed; this produces a mini squirt of perfume.

Who’d have thought a perfume sample could be so emotionally engaging!

PRWeb recently published a fantastic piece about Scottish Friendly boosting online sales by 25% with their new website. We were fortunate enough to be part of this project with Scottish Friendly.

“In particular the website project saw us all working together with one of the UK’s leading usability agencies, Foviance, to produce excellent results.” Ross Laurie, Managing Director of Line

To read the full article published by PRWeb please click here.

Eating fast food is my most dubious habit. To me, it is neither a culinary delight, nor a tolerable source of nutrition. However, every once in a while and especially when I am enjoying my passion for travelling foreign countries and getting immersed into different cultures, the chances are high: I will end up in fast food shop. Most of the times, it will be a chain with stores all over the planet. The names are well known. In situations like that, when it comes down to choosing between exciting foreign cuisine and a trusted but maybe less exciting burger, the burger simply seems to be the most reasonable choice.

This choice of experience is no exceptional case for human nature. Albeit the awareness of possibly missing out on a remarkable experience, I am turning myself to a relationship of trust. Even though it might not be the best experience in the world, I know what to expect. In commercial terms, my need can be described as a customer experience of consistency, which is an important driver for the trust relationship between a customer and a brand.

Not surprisingly, the described experience is a major revenue point for international fast food chains, and the example can be related to almost every service or product. For instance, when deciding to try a completely new device experience, such as a tablet computer. For an appreciator of the functionality of an iPhone, it is straightforward to choose an iPad. Despite the significant monetary investment that it requires, a baseline user experience is shared among the devices. Overall this reduces the possibility of the new purchase to be a technologic gamble as well as a source of frustration.

Generally speaking, consistency within multichannel experiences is a design challenge that concerns a wide variety of brands and services. Multichannel experiences exist simultaneously among several customer touch-points. Online as well as offline, a coherent and integrated customer experience builds up trust by mediating competence and direction as well as generating perceived familiarity. Despite the broadness of the problem space of managing a trusted relationship between customers and services, almost all key issues and design requirements can be determined, investigated and revised. Consistency within multichannel experiences in this case is achieved though the following characteristics.

• Coherent – basic idea of the service is perceived as consistent across channels.

• Complementary – coherent service experience delights with specific benefits within chosen service channel.

• Simultaneous – benefits of service channel can be combined as needed.

• Shiftable – service adapts to customer flexibility and present needs.

• Synchronized – service allows shifting between channels and shared features across service a shared among channel.

Characteristics like these not only ensure that the service delivers consistently among websites, microsites, mail, social media, in-store and even call centre experiences. Familiarity and stability also improve the overall quality of the service beyond the perception of trust and allow design space to delight with innovation and significantly increase adoption rates of new features and services.

This article was originally published by the Customer Experience Magazine