The Irony of Customer Experience Research

The importance of ensuring that customers are having a good experience interacting with a company is key to its success. The internet today allows customers to share their views on companies loud and proud and it is up to that company to manage their customers experiences to make sure it’s a positive one. To do this they need to understand what their customers are thinking so the uptake of user research in the last decade has been huge. Techniques such as interviews, usability testing, focus groups and surveys are very common now and can generate great feedback from users. All in all it’s fantastic that  businesses are becoming so much more user focused. ‘Hooray!’ us user centred people say.

However, an experience I had last week made me understand the potential for this research to be negatively affecting the customers experience itself.

I went into a well known High Street store to buy a few things, I asked the location of a product I  couldn’t find and the staff member I spoke to was friendly and quickly helped me to find what I needed. I paid for my items, which was a speedy and efficient process, and overall I had had a great customer experience.

As I was given my receipt the member of staff also asked me to fill in an online survey. Clutching onto the other side of the bit of paper and standing slightly too close to me, he explained with a (quite scarily) desperate expression and in a pleading tone, that his bonus depended on me filling out this online form. This conversation made me feel uncomfortable and on the spot and it instantly reduced my opinion of a company that was causing their members of staff to feel that way. This exchange shattered my opinion of my overall experience in the shop that day.

This one off experience will not stop me from shopping there, however a customer’s opinion is built up from every interaction they have with a company. For this reason I think it is very important for companies to be making sure that in their efforts to conduct research to understand and improve a customer’s experience of a service they are not ironically ruining the experience that they are trying to improve.