Nothing Ruins UX Like Putting a Big $ In Front of It
More and more marketers today are obsessed with UX—or user experience. UX is one of the hottest topics in marketing and technology, fueled by the rapid growth of smartphone, and wireless connectivity that allows us to be online nearly all the time. They spend more of their precious resources—budget, time, personnel—on creating an optimal UX. They hire digital agencies (who often hire UX specialists) to develop smarter/smoother web pages that adapt to any desktop, laptop and/or mobile format, 24/7 customer chat availability, one-click checkout, and other innovations to ensure that you have a great experience when interacting with the brand online.
That is a fantastic goal, and one all marketers should aspire to. But UX did not begin with the iPhone. It didn’t start with wi-fi or broadband or email. Amazon didn’t invent it even though they certainly shaped our modern perception of it. No, UX has existed since the first days of humans making things for other humans. When the wheel was first created and people wanted wheels made for them, you can bet even the most Neanderthal wanted exactly what they bartered their hard-earned crops, pelts, or goats for.
Likewise, despite the increasingly online nature of consumer interaction, UX doesn’t end when the prospect goes offline. That experience continues into the real world. Even when you buy something from an online retailer, that business still has to meet bricks-and-mortar expectations for delivering on its promise for a product or service. Comcast could win every digital UX award by making it seamless and simple for users to sign up for cable and schedule installation in two touches of an iPhone screen. That won’t matter if their real-world UX continues to be so bad it goes viral and begets millions of sarcastic meme reposts.
The online shoe store that walks the UX walk offline
When it comes to online retail, the trade-off for consumers is price and choice vs. looking and trying. You may find that shirt you want cheaper than at any physical retailer, but you won’t know how it looks on you until you rip open the envelope and try it on at home. And it’s always a very disappointing UX when that shirt doesn’t fit or doesn’t look like it did online, no matter how “optimized” the online shopping cart was.
Zappos, one of the smartest marketers around, gets this. They see the “long UX,” from search to purchase to delivery to return. They make it very easy to find what you’re looking for, with pictures of the shoes modeled on real models with actual sizes called out. You can see different colors, different angles, read reviews, everything you need to make an informed decision online.
But where Zappos wins on long UX is realizing that even their nearly flawless online experience will still result in some misses when the product actually reaches the customer. There’s still a strong chance that even the most carefully selected shoe won’t be glass-slipper snug when you slip it on. So Zappos encourages you to buy more and then return what you don’t need. They want to ensure that your UX ends with a pair of shoes you love that fit the way you want, regardless of what it takes to get there.
When User Experience $UX
I’m sad to admit that I am old enough to remember when the UX of flying was a special experience. Airlines really meant it when the pilot said, “Sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.” People actually dressed up to fly, and not just business travelers.
Perhaps no other industry in my lifetime has inverted UX like the airline industry. It used to be that booking a ticket was a rather arduous process – calling (or traveling to) a travel agency to build your trip and pay them a fee to book your flights. The flying itself, though, was usually a good experience, and certainly one of the more luxurious ways to travel. Today, you can shop dozens of airlines and book a ticket between the time you order a cup of coffee and get it served to you, but the UX of actually flying has become a gauntlet of hidden fees and terrible service.
No airline embodies this more that Spirit, whose name often reminds travelers of a haunting they wish they had exorcised. It’s super easy to find a really low fare and book your ticket on Spirit. But that’s where the UX ends and the $UX begins. The term “nickel and dime you” is appropriate here, not because the hidden fees are so small, but because the exorbitant fees they slap on every UX feels like getting hit with a sock full of coins. They charge $35 to put a carry-on in the overhead, and $10 to print your ticket at the airport, among other transaction fees that read like fines for traffic violations. Added to that, Spirit generally could care less about real-world UX. They are there to make it easy to take your money and get you alive to your destination. Everything else, it seems, is outside that UX. They are the epitome of the old adage “cheap, fast, good—pick two,” only “good” has been removed from the equation.
As with Zappos, however, it’s possible for online and real-world UX to work in harmony in the cut-throat world of air travel. Southwest and Virgin Airlines are two good examples. Southwest certainly can put the bus in airbus, but at the same time, they deliver great long UX with no baggage fees and seemingly always-cheerful service. Virgin America also works hard to bring the service back to the flight experience and make you feel welcome when you board one of their planes, even if the purple lighting begs for a velvet, black-light, Led Zeppelin poster on the bulkhead. They pioneered bringing the online UX to the in-flight experience, making their passengers feel both valued and able to customize their entertainment and food experience, even if it costs just a bit extra.
And I don’t mean to just pick on Spirit. You can likely throw a dart at the names of any airline, and have an almost perfect chance of it landing on an airline which has a wonderful digital UX but a miserable long UX.
Putting the Ritz on UX
Another example of real-world UX is the Ritz-Carlton. Of course, this is a brand that can afford to closely manage the long UX. But there are many companies that are far more profitable than Ritz Carlton who don’t manage their UX to the same degree. Here is one of the most recognized luxury brands in the world, one built on (essentially) giving the guest whatever he or she wants. In a recent interview with president and COO Herve Humler in Forbes, Humler talked about how every Ritz-Carlton employee is empowered to fix any guest problem, without asking permission, even if that solution were to cost as much as $2000.
I’m not suggesting that a single other company should employ the Ritz plan. The point is that here’s a company that understands both its brand and the customer experiences that support that brand. Why make a high-rolling guest wait for a staff member to fetch a manager—that’s the real-world version of a BUFFERING screen. Your digital UX firm wouldn’t let that happen. Why is so much time and money being spent on the digital UX but not the long UX?
So how do you create a long UX that optimizes the user experience that happens offline? In the upcoming second part of this blog, I’ll discuss my SIMPLE system for how to train staff and develop processes so you can resolve problems on the spot, give your customers what they expect, and let them enjoy their long UX with no interruptions. After all, LTV is a far more valuable data point for marketers than click through rates.