Blurring the line between product design (UX) and brand experience (CX)

The definitions of user experience and customer experience have been converging for some time now, to the point where they are virtually indistinguishable. While this author can barely believe he’s using the word omnichannel in his second sentence, it's the best he’s got to describe the effortless way in which customers and prospects engage with products, services and brands across a variety of channels, offline and online, in a way that suits them, and is contextually sensitive to where they are in the buying cycle and the problem they are trying to solve.

While at the front end (the point of customer interaction) the definitions are broadly irrelevant to customers, at the back end (the processes, culture and systems needed to meet customer expectations), organisations need to work incredibly hard to streamline operations to give customers a joined up and unified experience. The business benefits of getting this right are clear – improved loyalty, increased engagement and retention, sharper competitive advantage – but providing that experience requires clear focus and strong leadership, particularly in larger organisations.

A look at some of the world’s leading digital-first brands offers some helpful clues as to the building blocks which leaders need to put in place when pursuing a more joined up experience for their customers.

Channel consistency

Apple is the master of integrating their retail and online experiences. Research in-store and buy online? Easy. Research online and buy in-store? No problem. The Genius Bar, while not perfect, integrates well with online support. This author sometimes visits Apple as a consumer and sometimes as a business owner, and they consistently provide me with choices which are appropriate to my customer segment. It also comes with two bonuses – one, the Apple aesthetic is an uncompromised constant (what Steve Jobs called taste) and two, it is the only environment in life where I get called either bro or chum, and I am here for it! The lesson for leaders is that they need to include all channels and their integrations when designing processes and experiences for customers.

Service blueprinting

Disney was one of the earliest pioneers of service design, marrying up process with culture. Its work in this area was underpinned by ‘Mickey’s Ten Commandments’, including user-centred (or guest-centred, to use Disney’s parlance) principles such as the following:

• Know your audience
• Wear your guest’s shoes
• Organise the flow of people and ideas
• Communicate with visual literacy
• Avoid overload
• Avoid contradiction

These internal cultural standards were complemented with a focus on guest journeys from pre-visit through ante-visit to post-visit. As far back as the 1950s, Walt and his team were mapping out how their guests would flow through the experience (today we might give that activity a fancy title such as omnichannel experience design or service design blueprinting). If Walt were still alive, he would be encouraging today’s leaders to marry strong user-centred culture with meticulously planned process, expressed through the eyes of the guest.

Resource alignment

Many large organisations face the challenge that their people are more interested in their own careers and fiefdoms than in corporate objectives. Business analysis and technical leaders can have famously tetchy relationships, with one thinking the other is technically incompetent and the other thinking the one knows nothing about business. Mature organisations put proactive measures in place to line up their teams in pursuit of a single goal. Digital transformation has made this an imperative for an organisation like Starbucks, which works hard to align the priorities of baristas, back-office, marketing and technology people to deliver a seamless and integrated experience on-app and in-shop. Several years ago, a friend of mine was collecting her coffee in-store (ordered through the app) and as she collected it, she mentioned to the barista a relatively minor inconvenience she had experienced with the ordering process. The barista asked her for her name and email, and she was surprised to receive an email from the Starbucks product team a few months later to let her know that she was one of a number of customers who had provided this feedback and that they would be testing an improvement in the next iteration of the app. Sure enough, the next version of the app had a more straightforward experience when she came to order. Howard Schultz (interim CEO of Starbucks at the time) would encourage leaders to line up their teams under a unified vision, using the same KPIs and to build cross-functional teams.

Feedback loops and continuous improvement

Amazon is obsessive about baking user insight and feedback into their products and services. As anyone who has bought anything off Amazon will know, you are told when it’s arriving, you are told when it has arrived and you are asked how the delivery went. You also have your order confirmed when you buy it and are asked to rate the product when it is in your hands. What you may not know is that Amazon is also closely monitoring your website interactions and running A/B experiments to give the optimal possible experience. Bezos writes regularly warning against Amazon becoming a “day two” company, which has lost its hunger to improve based on data and insight. All leaders should embrace their adaptability to change, their proactive feedback loops and the space they leave for managed risk and the inevitable failures and successes which comes with it.

Data integration

Perhaps more than any other sports brand, Nike has inspired the amateur athlete to be the best that they can be, recognising that the only race any of us ever run is against ourselves. They have embraced new technology since their earliest days in the 1970s, whether shoe design, materials innovation or digital transformation. They have integrated data across website, mobile apps and physical stores to give customers a unified experience, all tied together through its membership program. The data they collect is astonishingly complex, including structured and unstructured, qualitative and quantitative, and data formally collected and informally observed. Nike has had to wrap an entire data practice around that to maximise its efficiency, remain compliant and respect customer privacy. This combination of customer preference, purchase history, fitness activities and browsing behaviour data empowers Nike to provide its customers with a joined-up and personalised fitness and shopping experience across their various touchpoints. The Nike example shows other leaders how mission (in Nike’s case, to inspire and innovate for every athlete in the world) can be supported through data, serving the customer and driving revenue at the same time.

The pursuit of empathy

Airbnb is a perfect example of an organisation whose success depends on the online (quality of app and website, confidence of finding and booking suitable accommodation) and offline (quality of hospitality, accuracy of listing, communication with host) experiences dovetailing closely. There is little to be gained by providing a world-class digital experience only for the traveller to have a poor overnight stay, similarly a stunning beach-front villa and swimming pool is going to be wasted if no-one can find it online. Airbnb’s platform needs to work for both hosts and travellers and so Airbnb needs to empathetically deal with the priorities of each while at the same time manage the inevitable trade-offs which come with that. Airbnb therefore runs its platform from a single source of data truth comprising traveller profiles, host profiles, accommodation information and historic reviews. These are tied together in a best-in-class user interface to allow the business to use its data as a competitive advantage. The lesson for leaders is when everyone sees the same data (albeit from different views, and with business logic wrapped around it) it can foster transparency, assist process and product improvement and show empathy to a disparate range of stakeholders.

Non-creepy personalisation

Somewhere on the spectrum between ‘Hello [ F_NAME ]’ email greeting (email marketers, you know how to make a fellah feel special), and a phone call to a consumer’s mobile when they abandon a cart is the non-creepy personalisation sweet spot.? It’s a line which is difficult to precisely describe, but we all intuitively know when it has been crossed. Spotify does an excellent job of personalising recommendations without it feeling icky. Helping users find music and movies which they will enjoy based on their tastes, listening behaviours and those of their friends is a classic UX problem and both Spotify and Apple Music are pursuing its solution with real focus. With Spotify Radio, Discover Weekly, Release Radar, Spotify lets users know it can help, while keeping the user in control of the interactions. The lesson for leaders is clear, give users the option of a personal or enhanced experience, give them teasers outlining what that is like, but always offer them choice around acceptance.

Proactive customer support and engagement

Done right, proactive customer support and engagement allows organisations to build customer relationships so close, that customers can become co-designers of the experience. LEGO, a master at pretty much everything to do with brand, product and marketing, shows this in action with its LEGO Ideas platform. The platform encourages the whole world to play together, inviting users to submit designs for community voting, with particularly popular designs making it to production. Community-designed models include Women of NASA, Central Perk Coffee Shop (from Friends) and The Beatles Yellow Submarine. Ole Kirk Christiansen, inventor of LEGO, would encourage today’s leaders to stay close to customers – if you invest in the relationship, keep them close and involve them in the product design process, they will give you valuable clues as to what other customers will value. There is a thin line between proactive support and surveillance, and customers need to trust you for this to work.

The line between UX and CX probably doesn’t exist in the mind of most users. They are unlikely to know the terms, much less care, and just want you to look after them, regardless of the channel they choose to interact with you on. Integrating UX and CX is therefore simultaneously straightforward (it’s self-evident that it needs to be done) and challenging (it requires focused leadership to put all the building blocks in place). However, as our exemplars illustrate, when effective leaders align process, culture and data, there is a world of business benefits to be reaped.

?