Xavier Klingenfus

Xavier's bio

Xavier Klingenfus graduated in Human Computer Interaction and holds an undergraduate diploma in computer sciences. He brings to the Foviance team strong analytical skills, and is competent in cognitive psychology. Specialising in data visualisation techniques and mobile applications, he has worked on cutting edge projects for some of the leading brands including Dell, Nokia, Barclays and Epson. He has also become an expert in coordinating international studies, which has taken him to France and India.

"Foviance is simply brilliant: you get to work in great facilities, you work on exciting projects and you're surrounded by great colleagues who know exactly how to balance fun with seriousness. Moreover, the company is dynamic and ambitious, and it just makes you proud of being part of it"

A few weeks ago, Foviance was commissioned by a major UK retail bank to conduct user testing sessions on online application processes. The main objective of the research was to compare the newly designed process with the current one. And from there, stemmed a finding that challenges one of the most profound customer experience beliefs: the simplest way is not always the best. (more…)

Does emotional attachment to a brand prevail over the online customer experience for Internet-based companies? (more…)

Can a bad customer experience with one brand affect another brand?

Holiday season; I excitedly went online to Expedia, found decent fares for my flight to Thailand and proceeded to the booking page. Everything went smoothly until I reached the confirmation page: instead of getting the much anticipated confirmation number, I received a sad “Sorry, we were unable to make your reservation” message. Ok, fair enough; I told myself that I must have had mistyped my bank details and decided to try again. (more…)

Very often, when users encounter difficulties operating on digital systems, be it on a mobile or when browsing a website, they start to blame themselves for a lack of attention or carefulness. But when something goes really wrong, it can’t be anybody’s fault but the system designers.

Once upon a time…Well, on a business trip to Paris last week, I arrived late at the hotel and before retiring for the night, wanted to check e-mails and entertain my mind before switching off. The only available option to connect to the Internet was a local pay per use WiFi network (not controlled by the hotel). Just like in airports, you connect to the Wifi network, reach a portal page, buy your credits, go back to the portal with your given login details and eventually start surfing. Sounds straightforward…

So, off I went: I connected to that network, accessed the portal page, found the link to the credit purchase page, selected my deal, typed in my credit cards details and email address and reached the confirmation page. And it read that my login details had been sent to the email address I provided them with. This would have worked out assuming I was connected to the internet, but five seconds later, I got redirected from the page back to the portal: “Please enter your login details to connect to the Internet”… I may have sworn at this point.

This left me dismayed and seriously annoyed. So, on the verge of believing I was a complete idiot as I MUST have missed something, I went down to the reception asking for help. They explained that there were many others before me who’d encountered the same problem and they were kind enough to let me use their computer to check my emails. This slightly brightened up my overall experience but certainly did not solve the core of the problem.

How can such a conceptual flaw be? When there is a serious and consistently reported fault, why has not been fixed yet? Who is to be blamed: the hotel for not doing anything or the provider for delivering a bad user experience? What impact must this issue have on the customers’ perception of the hotel (they all surely don’t separate the Internet provider from the hotel)? So many questions that prevented me from “living happily ever after”…

What makes a successful careers site? Plethora of corporate information, attractive role descriptions and of course a powerful job search engine? Well, these were what I believed to be the key assets of careers sections before I boarded on my last project.

I began by carrying out some preliminary research to arm myself on the matter. I was principally looking at best practice in job search and application processes. These actually turned out to be out of the required scope.

Priorities weren’t so much focused on jobs search processes; the career website wanted to find out how to evolve the status of their site visitors from “simple users” to “potential candidates”. And suddenly a whole new world appeared to me. I realised that careers sections shouldn’t be about information bombardment and endless application processes. Focus shouldn’t be set on the jobs but rather on the potential candidates. Currently, many careers sites seem to have somehow neglected this aspect.

Usability is often present in a website’s lifecycle but doesn’t always guarantee a good customer experience (which a site achieves by living up to the users expectations- and beyond). Most of the careers sites out there are possibly decently usable, however only a few are designed smartly enough to accommodate a prospect’s needs.

More than just providing a pleasurable customer experience, the sites should deliver a real “candidate experience”. From a candidate perspective, this means guidance to access the right information in order to best inform decisions. From a brand point of view, this involves seducing the applicants with the company’s values and work style in an engaging and thrilling way.

In other words, successful careers sites aim at providing the right information to the right person in the right way. Good usability ensures applicants easily find jobs; good customer experience ensures they find the right ones.

The Mobile Internet is probably one of the most talked about areas in the digital world. The reason being that we, as consumers, have discovered this ubiquitous need to quench our Internet thirst. This obviously delights content providers, mobile operators and phone manufacturers who release new devices and platforms at unequalled pace. So, what is tomorrow going to be like: a 3rd generation iPhone, Google OS Android version 2 or the Nokia Morph device…

If we only consider the gadget aspect of the “Web on the go”, we may not be looking in the right direction to find out what the future will resemble. With the coming of the Internet on mobiles, it’s a whole new channel that settles down in our pockets. So far, we only deem it as a luxury complement to making calls and sending texts. But this is exactly what sending texts was in relation to making calls when it was first integrated on mobiles in the early nineties. And it has now become equally important. Potentially, the Mobile Internet will meet a similar fate. Recreational activities such as writing emails and checking the latest news will become more secondary tasks and the ultimate force of the Mobile Internet will be unleashed via a more grown up use of the facility. The iPhone’s GPS is the pioneer of this new range of services that will make phones even more pervasive. It uses the Internet through Googlemap, (but soon through a proper application) as a communication channel rather than to access websites. And there is more to come.

To get a clearer view on what is likely to happen over the next few years, we should start by looking at a mobile market that is more mature, more evolved and more advanced than ours: the Japanese market. Japanese mobile surfers are the savviest and most experienced community of mobile phone users in the world. One of the reasons for this is that a lot of them spend hours commuting each day and are therefore more prone to using their devices. Phone operators sensed the opportunity very early on, and as a result, have come up with a state-of-the-art environment combining technologies and services with perfection.

The ability for Japanese mobile users to check a bus’ arrival time by scanning a barcode with their phone at the bus stop is one example among many others. Likewise, Japanese users can instantly request the address of the closest sushi bar to be sent to their device. And, if this wasn’t enough, they are now using their phones to pay wirelessly for consumption items. This is getting so big that the Jibun Bank Corporation now provides cashless accounts for customers opting for mobile-based payments. Europe saw similar projects come to life recently, but is still far behind the country of the rising sun where these practices are already fully integrated in the society.

Obviously, the Japanese culture is sensibly different from that of the Western world and everything happening there may not materialise on the European or American soils, but it is nevertheless a good trend predictor. So, if you fancy glancing at the future of the Mobile Internet, book your flight to the Far East!