Customer Experience: The road less traveled.

Customer Experience isn't a term that is new to the industry. It has existed since the inception of the businesses, transactions, and delivery of values. In the early 14th Century, during the Renaissance when capitalism was setting its foot, Russian merchants and ship traders needed an organized way to handle their cash flow with the Eastern Countries. With the innovation of the shipping of money, came the need for the concept of banking. This organized way to handle cash flow is nothing but the flawless experience they were looking for. Hence, the concept of bookkeeping was invented.

With time, the definition, understanding, parameters of customer experiences has evolved but at its core, the understanding is clear which is to deliver smooth end to end experience. What we fail to understand is a bad customer experience can push our business by not just a few years back but it can cost us millions too.

As per peak-end rule by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, people judge an experience mainly based on how they felt at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.

Yesterday, I came across how a small gesture can bring a big difference to the scale of remembrance when my friends and I had driven to the Shopping Mall, and while waiting in parking queue we noticed that the security guards greet you with folded hands and smile before they request you to for the vehicle search. This initiated a conversation on how important customer experience is and how it stays with the customer if they had a bad one. As one of my friends remembered one such experience at an electronics store where his requirement was not valued as a customer resultant loss of business.  

Quoting another incident as an example, a while ago, I was dining at a fancy restaurant that served amazing food. While interacting with the manager, we causally mentioned how much we liked their cupcakes on our previous visit. As we walked out of the restaurant, the manager gave us a parcel box full of cupcakes for my friend. This created an everlasting impact on us. Maybe after some time, we won't remember the order that we placed that evening but surely will remember that box of cupcakes and the sweet gesture of the manager.

Even a small, but an unforgettable experience at the end of the journey creates better chances of recalling the events than the other.

We live in an era where consumers have a plethora of options to opt for. They have more choices than ever. Companies are switching from the product-centric to customer-centric. I am a firm believer in the customer-centric approach. Apart from the effective product, customer experience is the biggest competitive leverage a business could use to win the market.

Ever considered why Google stays ahead of all other search engines, why Uber and Ola have taken the taxi market or why One Plus has become one of the most valuable and demanding phone in India? The only reason is that they believe in the data and try and eliminate the negative experience at every stage of their interactions with the customers.

 People remember bad experiences more vividly than positive ones. Moments of confusion and frustration also act as "peaks" in the peak-end rule — they are emotionally charged and have a substantial effect on the impression that users will later recall. We, as human beings tend to create and live in moments or highlights. We have our own cognitive biases towards the way we want to remember events. Our memory cannot recall the details of every interaction it had and thus we create several touchpoints to remember those.

The new advancements in technology with the intervention of big data, AI, Machine learning has helped organizations to deep dive and dig more on the available data to analyze customer behavior. This could be capitalized and later monetized by companies to prevent undesirable behavior or to incentivize positive behaviors. Increased usage of Customer Journey maps, empathy mapping, pain-point analysis, brainstorming, and problem finding techniques are helping designers, engineers, and problem-solvers to understand their end consumers more deeply and deliver effective solutions to their problems.

Conclusion

As I explicitly mentioned, our minds are efficient and economical with how they store information. We remember the incidents in bits and focus on the points of impact and the last impression of an event. Understanding with attention to details around the touch-points of the customer journey, with particular emphasis on the last step, delivering impactful experiences is going to be the key to the market survival in this VUCA world. This would allow the brand to build experiences that are worth remembering.

References:

1. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/peak-end-rule/
2. https://positivepsychology.com/what-is-peak-end-theory/
3. https://uxplanet.org/how-to-run-a-customer-experience-design-workshop-in-your-organization-f70af760ac89
4. https://medium.com/landbot-io/frictionless-customer-experience-the-new-business-competitive-advantage-e4381d74e0b1