Customer Experience

Infographic displaying results from the Multichannel Customer Experience Report – Consumer Survey.

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.

Recently, many businesses are starting to wonder “what good looks like” for the multichannel customer experience. Of course the answer is slightly different for every company, depending on the sector, customers and strategy, but I’ve developed these ten indicators of multichannel performance which have proven reliable in most situations:

1. AVAILABILITY – Give customers a choice of channel based on their preferences.
2. AWARENESS – Make customers aware of all channels available, with channels promoted from other channels.
3. PULL - To drive channel shift, the channel shifting ‘to’ needs to have a better customer experience.
4. CONSISTENCY - Provide a consistent experience across channels, whilst utilising the benefits of each channel.
5. UNDERSTANDING - Regardless of channel choice, make sure customers gain the understanding they need to effectively engage with the products.
6. ENGAGEMENT - Pull customers into deeper engagement within their preferred channel.
7. OPTIMISATION - Optimise the customer experience of each channel.
8. INTEGRATION - Each channel is aware of previous customer interactions, regardless of channel.
9. PRODUCTS - Produce quality products which meet customer expectations and requirements.
10. MEASUREMENT - Get the right customer experience measures in place.

The following 8 minute video with Key Account Director, Sven Krause, explains some of the key benefits of measuring emotional engagement and the research techniques used to capture unconcious reactions of consumers. Ultimately increase customer engagement and experience and lead to increased revenue.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1ZaDZo0z1I&feature=player_embedded

There has been speculation that Amazon is gearing up to launch a mobile handset next year. If true, this represents an interesting evolution in the aims of this e-commerce giant. So, is a mobile phone as good a match for Amazon’s business model as a content consumption tablet like the Kindle Fire.

Why Amazon won’t make a phone.

• Consumption: tablets are a great match for Amazon’s business, as they are geared up for content consumption. Mobile handsets are used to read books and watch videos, but it isn’t as rich an experience.
• It’s still a phone: the “phone” aspects of a handset sit well outside Amazon’s core business. Android provides this functionality as standard, but it still needs to sit within Amazon’s customised Android experience. An Amazon phone would still have to be good at calls, messages, email and critical third party integration like Twitter and Facebook. Reviews of the Kindle Fire suggest that the email client isn’t amazing. Given the goals of the tablet, this is an annoyance, but on a phone it could be a deal breaker.
• They’re there already: Amazon is already well embedded on mobile phones. They have their own appstore and custom apps. Do they really need to take the next step? They can’t use a mobile handset as a technology demonstrator in the same style as Google’s Nexus phones. Amazon have to push volume for this to be a worthwhile endeavour.
• Competition: the tablet space was much easier to enter, as there was no dominant Android tablet at the same price point. A phone at the rumoured price of $180-$200 will be up against every other Android handset. It will have to be very good to compete.

Why Amazon might make a phone.

• Customer experience: owning the whole customer experience could be very valuable. Mobile allows Amazon an even greater opportunity to build relationships with customers. For example, imagine a phone that is dedicated to shopping. Seamless product comparison and price matching (using a well implemented barcode scanner) in retail stores, together with Amazon’s great fulfilment process could be quite disruptive.
• Music: for many people, mobile phones have replaced iPods. A mobile handset would be a great match for Amazon’s music services.
• Platform: Amazon might need to have a mobile platform to avoid getting left behind. If the Facebook phone happens and has mass appeal, there is a risk that Amazon could be cut out, or find themselves having to reach customers through a Facebook experience. It would be much better to be the one in control.
• Appstore: a mobile handset would certainly help Amazon to expand their appstore and sell more apps.
• Data: if allowed to, Amazon could collect even more data about their customer’s shopping habits, down to the location level. Time and location based product recommendations, it’s certainly a possibility. If Amazon knows I’m more likely to purchase in a certain place at a certain time, you can bet they’d like to take advantage of that.

The Kindle Fire was a very logical step for Amazon. A mobile phone is a bit more of a reach. There are certainly ways in which it could support their core business and allow them to embed themselves further into the lives of their customers. However, I would argue that for a phone to be a success it will have to be really well thought through and executed. Given that Amazon tend to evolve products, rather than nail them first time out, this may make a phone success less likely. That said, they certainly have the scale and the vision to make the attempt.

This year, Amazon.com has brought Black Friday over the Atlantic to introduce rapid-fire bargains to our green and pleasant .co.uk domain.

For those of us who, like me, have never heard of Black Friday, Amazon explain that the name might come from retailers seeing their balance sheets move into the black in the final quarter of trading.  Whatever the history, as far as online retail is concerned it’s all about the search for bargains.

The reason that Amazon are at the forefront of the Black Friday buzz is that they have turned the hunt for deals into a race.

Their site counts down to the start of each new deal to whet your appetite.  Only when the timer hits zero is the percentage discount revealed.  Stocks are limited and with some expensive electronics discounted at over 50% off, the competition is fierce.

A comment on one news article suggests that some customers have gone so far as to download a bleeding edge developer version of the Chrome browser to shave extra milliseconds off of the page load times.  Every little helps when you and your mouseclicking trigger finger are in a duel to the death.

As the shopping experience migrates more and more to the online realm, retailers know that their sites sink or swim based on their checkout process.  The old maxim ‘make it easy for the customer to buy’ is all about the design and usability of a sites product and checkout pages.

Amazon however, are taking this to the next level.  They’re asking their customers to race each other for the privilege of buying!  If that’s the game they’re going to ask their customers to play then the checkout process had better be slick, intuitive and problem free.  Alternatively, those bargains had better be as good as the hype from America would have us believe.

I’ve been thinking about this for a little while and it seems to me that, love it or hate it, Apple and more specifically the iPhone has fundamentally changed the user experience (UX) industry. In this case I’m not talking about the shift to a more mobile device way of thinking, but more to the shift in perception it caused towards the user experience of products. As an industry we’ve never looked back.

Late 2006…

Before the iPhone, the smartphone was a very capable device in terms of functionality, yet the user experience of interacting with these phones was often somewhat poor. Considering that phones like the Nokia N95 or the Blackberry Pearl were thought to be the pinnacle of mobile devices. Perfectly functional phones, but try using one today after using a modern touchscreen.

At the same time, the web user experience was advancing, but it was always a hard battle for the benefits of UX to be acknowledged. We spent so much time justifying why UX was important and when allowed to help were often limited in what we could alter.

To us as practitioners, the benefits of UX are obvious, but the problem is when talking to engineers or decision makers the benefits are distant and abstract. If the solution you have works, why spend the time to make it vastly better?

I now have an iPhone in my hand

However, if you’ve experienced a great user experience, you start to see why it’s so important. The exclusivity of the iPhone to one network operator and the reluctance of corporate IT to let it be used in enterprise slowed its penetration into business, but once decision makers had experienced a well thought through and seamless user experience (iTunes aside), the case for UX became so much easier to make.

First the iPhone, then Android, which sought to reflect what made the iPhone so successful. Android then put an average to good user experience (version and handset manufacturer dependent) into the mass market, raising the bar for interaction expectation. Today, terms like user experience and usability are common in product reviews. The tech press has got the message and even some of the mainstream press. Now that we’re surrounded by better user experiences, people won’t settle for good enough and businesses cannot rest on their laurels.

But what if there hadn’t been an iPhone?

The big question is, would someone else have created something as good? Let’s take a look:

The then market leader Nokia had never managed to master the end to end experience (Ovi desktop applications were painful to use and not in any way integrated). They were also in thrall to the carriers who imposed their own, sub-par, handset customisations in the hope of creating/enforcing customer loyalty. Generally this tended to undo any of Nokia’s good work in creating a clean and usable UI. Nokia’s touchscreen attempts were average, but perhaps when capacitive touch came along they may have created something as smooth as an iPhone or top end Android phone (in reality it took them 3 years to even come close). Of everyone at the time, they had the vision and the research and development capacity to make it happen. I really hope things pick up for them.

If not Nokia, then perhaps a major internet leader might have stepped in. So, without the iPhone would Google have created Android? Probably. Supposedly Android was already in development when the iPhone came out. How much its eventual form owes to the iPhone is a great question (although it is interesting to see Apple borrowing Android style notifications, it’s not all one way traffic). Based on Google’s track record it wouldn’t have been a slick and painless experience though. Mass market is what we’d be aiming for, to get a great user experience in everybody’s hand. The trouble is, Google designs for techies, not consumers. The current version of Android is pretty good, but earlier versions were not so solid. The reason it sells well is because it’s good enough and it’s not as expensive as an Apple product. As an aside, it’s interesting to see how we think so much less about technical specifications of handsets and more about the software they run and the experience they provide. We’re not free of jargon by a long way, but I’m gratified to see that we talk more now about capabilities than processors. Based on their adverts though, Google still hasn’t totally got this.

Then of course there is the other software behemoth, Microsoft. They had already produced their own mobile OS, which could be found on a number of different handset models (most successfully HTCs). However, Windows Mobile was stylus dependent, somewhat slow and had an extremely painful web browsing experience. Everything I’ve read about Microsoft suggests that they would have happily continued down the stylus route, unless provided with a good reason to change.

If we couldn’t count on the software makers, would any of the hardware manufacturers have created anything compelling? Samsung and HTC are the obvious candidates here. HTC has been very good at customising others’ operating systems and Samsung have been pressing ahead with their Bada platform. It’s possible, but looking at their handsets pre-iPhone, they weren’t heading in that direction all that quickly.

Finally, we shouldn’t forget the network operators, who have so much power when it comes to actually getting products into consumers’ hands. Critically Apple wrested control of the experience from them. This was a pivotal moment, as traditionally the carriers have been somewhat lacking when it comes to developing software and UIs. I can’t be certain, but I suspect that without this, we would not have seen a great mobile phone experience, as it would always have been disjointed. Vodafone was probably the most progressive in this regard, but could never totally nail it.

So where would we have been?

Without a great user experience in most people’s hands, expectations would be lower for both consumers and businesses (I know mine were), the case for change would be that much harder to make and we would be putting together slideshows about the ROI of Usability. We’d still have been there, we’d still have been making things better, but let’s face it, it’s much easier when you don’t have to push on the door, but are instead welcomed in.

Thank you Apple. You aren’t right all the time, but looking back, it’s clear just how much of a game changer the iPhone was.

Recent talk in the blogsphere suggests that the debate about user experience (UX) and creativity rumbles on. As a UX Researcher who believes strongly in good design, I thought I’d pitch in with my thoughts.

What I want to establish is that UX is not a hindrance to innovation or creativity, but something that should complement these pursuits. The problem seems to be that there is extreme polarisation in some quarters regarding a user centric approach. Some believe it to be the solution to everything, in effect giving the user the pen and asking them to draw the solution. Others believe it to be the antithesis of everything design and a complete block to creativity. In reality it should be neither, the key is to choose the right research for the right situation.

When working to enhance an existing concept or creating the next version of a product or service, traditional user centred design (UCD) works superbly. It’s what it’s designed for after all. Understand the current marketplace, understand business needs, understand user needs, create, evaluate, refine, repeat, launch and continually evolve. This is the bulk of what most organisations need from their UX engagements. It is of course a little more complex than this is practice as we must consider all channels a customer might engage with and ensure the best possible end to end experience, which inevitably involves some level of organisational change as well. However, the UCD method holds true throughout this.

Where things are a little more challenging is when UX meets innovation. Great innovators, like Steve Jobs or James Dyson, would contend that research with users does not lead to innovation. There is some truth to this; a focus group would have been unlikely to have designed an iPad or Dyson AirBlade. A survey wouldn’t have identified the need for Facebook. What you see with each of these products is where someone with uncanny insight addresses a latent need. Be it the ability to surf the web in an eminently immersive and pleasurable fashion, the ability to pursue a greater level of social connectedness or even the ability to experience dry hands after using a public toilet.

The trouble is that even for great innovators, these moments of great insight are rare. Mark Zuckerberg has arguably only had the one good idea, but executed and evolved it extremely well. James Dyson has created two or three revolutionary products. Steve Jobs’ genius was to take existing ideas and through an exemplary focus on the end to end user experience turn them into something so much better. What you’ll notice is that all of these extremely successful innovators relied upon insight, their own insight and their own empathy for users of their products. I salute their success, they’ve changed the way we experience the world, which is quite amazing.

However, for every other organisation this approach does rather rely on being fortunate enough to employ an amazing designer who completely understands their audience, has correctly guessed what they want and is prepared to tailor his creativity to suit their needs. This is where UX Research comes in. Contextual research methods such as ethnography or well facilitated creative workshops can lend great insight into users’ needs and provide designers with the information they need to create innovative products and services. And once they’ve created these products, we’ll be there to help them evolve and refine them. We’ll even help them to determine the emotional impact their products have.

We’re in this together. UX professionals are here to empower creative people and user focused organisations to deliver excellent experiences that delight their customers.

Friday, 04 November 2011

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