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The birds and the bees of customer experience design

Meeting customer expectations has changed, forever. Meantime, corporate initiatives can take a long time to implement and poorly executed inititives can really challenge the return on investment.

November 24, 2015 by Lyle Bunn — Strategy Architect, BUNN

Meeting customer expectations has changed, forever. These changes were examined during the recent ICX symposium hosted by the Interactive Customer Experience Association, which connects business to consumer brands to technologies that elevate the customer experrience.

“The ‘handrails’ guiding business along their path are technology advancements and changing customer expectations,”  noted Daniel Steere during the event. That means meeting customer expectations is becoming harder as the consumer exposure to products and services continuously improves and heightens expectations. The expereince with one brand causes higher expectations on others and consumers are fully aware of their buying power and options.

Meantime, corporate initiatives can take a long time to implement and poorly executed inititives can really challenge the return on investment.

The ICX symposium presenters offered good advice to brands and retailers:
 

• Focus on what customers really, really desire. In food services this may go beyond fuel and refreshment into rest and restoration. Brands must help their customers answer the big question “what can I achieve through this brand?” For example, fitness shoes may be fitness shoes, but they are a key part of the path to better health, a higher quality of life, a longer happier life and possibly even new friends. Shoes are more than shoes.

• Make investments that offer incremental improvements because these can often be implemented quickly and show rapid returns. Test and assess outcomes, running multiple options of similar solutions to determine what appraoch is best suited to broader implementation. In store or branch of the future initiatives, the widest application of viable technologies should be built into the facility in order that new insights be gathered and organzational experience be gained. On these initiatives, outside counsel can get the brand to a better destination faster and often with less cost and risk.

• Think beyond the incremental, where business models such as multi-channel, Amazon, Uber and data-leasing can assure ongoing brand success and valuation improvement.

The business boneyard is populated by brands that failed to see or respond to the technology-enabled consumer experience. Polaroid missed digital cameras, Kodak missed Instagram and other photo-related services and service organziations are missing the ‘Uber; model which organizes the use of assets that are owned by others.

Many retailers are missing the power of the core ;Amazon;  business model. In 1998  Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos declared this when he said “If we have 4.5 million customers we don’t want one store and 4.5 million customers, we want 4.5 million stores.”

Meeeting customer expectations is getting harder.   

Consumer expectations increase with every exposure to any brand experience. They naturally think that if X brand can do something well, other brands should equally be able to.

At the same time, corporate initiatives that improve the customer experience can take a long time to implement. Many people within the eneterprise and other stakeholders are typically involved and the ‘herding of cats’ can be a logistical and organziational challenge even after the project champion has been idetified.

Technology continues to march forward. It is the role of technology to overcome in-efficiencies and to enable the end user. Incremental and breakthrough innovations require end users have ways that assure their “technology intelligence.”

“In business today the paradigm has changed through technology enablement” said Ravi Sirigineedi, with the Internet of Things Division at Intel during the ICX event. “It is not about the big fish eating the small fish, it is about the fast fish eating the slow fish.” He said “technologies want to deliver the perfectly personalized shopping experience.”

The industrial innovator Henry Ford once explained the dilemma well in stating that “if I asked customers what they wanted, they would ask for faster horses!”

Media columnist Stuart Elliott has advised brands and their agencies to focus equally on IQ, EQ and TQ, linking intellect and emotional intelligence while strengthening their technology intelligence because digital technology is changing so rapidly. “Every screen has its own role,” said Elliott, adding “the capabilities of each, in particular place-based media, are evolving faster than any media we have seen in history.”

“Customer experience,” noted Richard Dirstein, principal and EVP, design and innovation at Shikatani Lacroix Design, “is about capturing the “purchase moment” and brands “must define the engagement model in each element of attract, transact, engage and retain.” One imagined him describing a chain with its weakest link defining the overall strength.

In closing the ICX Symposium, Ed King and Laura Davis Taylor of Atlanta-based MaxMedia noted that in 2005 47 retailers closed 6,000 stores. They described the current and emerging mindset and urged brands to realize:

• Consumers consider their mobile device to be one of their limbs.

• The five “Ts” should govern planning including taste, touch, talk, try-on and try-out.

• The expereince should be comfortable, easy, novel, tactile, engaging and rewarding.

“In many ways,” said King, “brands are selling to the unconscnscious brain as humans have been “hard-wired to certain stimuli and behaviors.” Input from the senses evoke memories and align the brain for decision-making.

Cooking classes can sell housewares, treadmills can sell running shoes and a climbing wall can sell apparel better than any display rack.

Digital media is providing corporate value in data capture, messaging and target audience experience. Elements of design are protecting and exploiting data assets.

Through this, the forward-thinking enterprise is recognizing the potential impact of digital media on brand equity and corporate valuation.

The next ICX Symposium is planned for February 15 to 16, 2016 in Phoenix and will focus on the ROI of immersive experiences. Plan to attend.
 

Lyle Bunn is an analyst, advisor and educator in the digital media industry focused on owned media and its convergence with paid and earned in the media model for patron, shopper, traveler, staff and student communications.