A Taste Of Customer Experience. What is it and how is it beneficial for businesses?

I finished my morning coffee and went into my bank’s app. It’s been three days since I’ve transferred the renting fee to my landlord, and still the transfer isn’t showing in my account. Stressed that I might be late on my rent, I’ve sent a message to my online banker just to discover that they take two days to respond. The next day, in the middle of an intense workday, I get a notification that they answered. I open the bank’s app again, just to be disappointed by these words: “There is no record of this activity. The request was dismissed”. I’m thinking, why should I stay in a terrible, outdated, dysfunctional bank? It’s time to switch. 

Eventually the money was transferred, but my hatred towards the bank was still raging. What had happened here? This bank has advanced digital services, just like any other leading bank. The app worked smoothly. The banker attained the request within his time limit. To make a long story short – the procedure was successful, yet the patient died.  

This everyday situation describes a single touch point of a single client with a service provider. It’s not a UX/UI default or a branding problem. This is a classic issue of Customer Experience (CX), a design domain that refers to how costumers perceive, feel and behave at the business-customers touch points. 

My negative experience was established through multiple negative interactions. For example, every month I need to retype my landlord’s account number which I hate doing. Every other month I have to re-enter my password, but I can’t remember it so the app gets locked. Don’t even get me started talking about the unnecessary notifications I get for things I already knew. I ALREADY KNOW THAT, OK? 

These are all examples of negative outcomes from business-costumers touch points. The business believes it gave the best service possible while overlooking the experience, needs and feelings of the costumer. The most significant aspect of Client Experience is that the process identifies blind spots and addresses them. That way the business can maximise its value chain, at every single touch point. 

Why is CX Important to Businesses? 

1.Experience creates perception, and perception creates experience 

The separation between UXUI and Branding has become redundant. Businesses today have to hold both sides of the stick – the idea and the execution, the emotional and the functional. At many cases business only see half of the picture. There are endless examples of big corporations that waste their brand investment over wrong UXUI, or startups that have amazing interfaces and no differentiation from their competitors. If customers can’t relate to the brand’s idea they won’t stay for long, even if the interface is incredible. 

However, some businesses get it right and Tinder is a great example for that. The core idea revolves around freedom and endless possibilities. The main feature of the app is the swipe, and Tinder turned that into the lifestyle of an entire ‘swipe’ generation. Without excellent UXUI, that reflects on a deep understanding of what users are actually looking for, Tinder would be just like OKcupid and the rest. The experience created the perception of easy, available opportunities, and the perceptions enhanced the experience, making users open the app again and again even when there’s no one new around. 

 2. A good CX increases costumers’ satisfaction, loyalty and word of mouth (WoM) 

 “Consumers don’t need many things from your company —they just need one thing from your company. You may want them to need everything from your company but guess what: consumers don’t care what you want.” 

Andy dunn, Co-Founder of Bonobos  

At these times when brand loyaly is crashing, businesses spend more money on recruiting and preserving clients. More money is spent on persuading clients to stay rather than creating an experience they won’t leave. To invest in creating better touch points is to deal with the problem and not with the symptoms. It will not only contribute to the satisfaction and loyalty of costumers, but also increase their will to recommend, which is a powerful business catalysator. 

Are you familiar with ‘Bonobos’? It’s a clothing brand that has one of the best CX, both in the physical and the digital dimensions. The brand’s estimated NPS score is 75 out of 100, which is way above prestigious brands such as Louis Vitton or Ralf Lauren, and even higher above major retail empires such as EBay and Target. Bonobos’s secret is their focus on just one costumer need. They make clothes that fit perfectly, and that’s it. If my bank was doing that, delivering perfectly on my most important need, I wouldn’t want to leave. 

*Estimated NPS scores on the E-commerce category. Source – Costumer Guru 

2. CX process is bridging between different departments and increasing their synchronization and collaboration 

 “IT or digitalization today is at the heart of the relationship with the customer… We learned that if you want your front-end employees to be very good at the relationship with their clients, then the core of the company has to be very good with the front.” 

Françoise Mercadal-Delasalles, CEO of Crédit du Nord, Société Générale 

A huge part of a CX process is to learn about the business. What’s the strategy and vision? How the training is being conducted? What is the atmosphere and organizational culture? Every department from IT to marketing is a part of the value chain. Understanding the challenges of each and every department is key because these challenges are being translated in the end to flews and miscommunications with costumers. 

Société Générale is a French investment bank that improved its CX by internal processes. They worked to create better communication between service providers and backend departments, to ensure that clients are getting the best service possible. It a good example of how sometimes the blind spots of the value chain are IT or HR problems. My banker’s mistake might have been completely technical – maybe his interface never showed mu transferred. Or maybe he wasn’t trained properly. I was more forgiving if he had apologized for my inconvenient, but instead I was left with a bad experience and a ton of resentment.  

CX Process – How Does it Work 

CX is a holistic process. It starts from the bottom and goes up, then continues from the top down. What do we mean? 

The first stage of the process starts at how the client is using the service or the product. After that comes an analysis of all the different touch points. The main tool for this stage is the Costumer Journey method. You get into the costumers’ head and follow each and every step their doing on their way to get what they need. The Costumer Journey has to be thorough as the goal is to deconstruct complex procedures into the simplest actions. 

An example of the reversed process in stage two. Touch points are redesigned to reflect the strategy 

At stage 2 the value chain is reconstructed. If needed, adjustments are made to the brand strategy, following a top-down process to implement it. The goal is to become a more customer-centric business, and to reflect that in the touchpoints. A combined effort by all departments is required to create a better fit between what the business offers (the value chain) and the costumers.  

CX Process - An Essential Tool for Businesses 

CX is a new design domain with high potential. Costumers interactions are only getting more frequent and demanding. Managing CX with empathy, creativity, thoroughness and strong business logic makes it a winning tool.