Designing a Customer Experience
You are probably well aware that the primary focus of any company or organisation should be Customer eXperience (CX). Not convinced yet? Read my previous article on CX. Closely connected to CX is User Experience (UX).
Donald Norman defines UX as: “encompassing all aspects of the end-user interaction with the company, its services and its products.”
User Interface vs User Experience
Many of us don’t understand the difference between UI and UX. Picture your breakfast cereal . The UI is the spoon you use to eat. The actual bowl or plate with cereal and milk or yoghurt is the UX. Additionally, the individual cereal is considered content in marketing, such as articles, videos and other communication methods.
Creating an Experience
Try to remember a likeable and a dislikeable experience you had with a company. That was pretty easy, right? Companies spend time and resources to (micro)design experiences that customers have with brands and organisations.
So why do these experiences matter? An experience is an event that triggers one or more senses. Companies want to achieve a top-of-mind position with their target audience. For example, whenever you crave a hearty healthy breakfast, one of the first brands you think of is Kelloggs cereal.
7 Factors that influence Customer Experience
A pioneer in the UX field, Peter Morvillem states that there are 7 factors that influence UX.
Useful
First of all, a product or service need to have purpose for an audience.
Usable
Usability allows users to effectively and efficiently accomplish their end-objective with a product or service. If it takes too much effort it is less likely that it will remain successful. The usefulness of a product or service can change overtime. Think of AltaVista Search, they have become obsolete due to Google.
Findable
If your audience cannot find your product or service easily, they will not buy it. You need to rock Google and be at least in the top-10 of results. Do you know anyone who looks on page 2 of the results in Google? Precisely, nobody!
In this day of hyper connectivity and the ubiquitous digital and mobile world, it becomes more and more difficult to grab the attention of your audience. Be creative and fresh!
Credible
Nowadays, everyone can check your public profiles and credentials. Real reviews and awards make your brand credible. If you do a Google search for a product and on the results-page, you have option A, with 50 reviews and an average of 4 out of 5 or option B with no reviews, which one do you pick?
You need to have an impeccable track record of service and reviews, otherwise people don’t trust you and rather go to your competitor who is just 1 click or swipe away.
Desirable
When a product or service is desirable, it should be easier to reach an audience. Although a Ferrari might be desirable to a large audience, only a small group can afford to buy one. Desirable products and services often have stellar branding. Those brands often offer a breadth of supplemental offerings. In the case of Ferrari, merchandise strengthens branding and desirability. Desirable brands have a big group of brand advocates who practically sell your product or service for you.
Unfortunately, desirability is not for every product or service. Try to see if you can boost the identity of your brand by paying attention to the aesthetics and emotional design.
Accessible
This is still overlooked due to the idea that the amount of people with any form of disability is relatively small. Do your homework and check your target audience’s level and type of potential disability. Accessibility plays an important role in the digital and online world. What does your online portal look like and does it work for people who are blind or have bad eyes?
Valuable
Last but not least, your product or service must deliver value. Value is a key influencer at the moment of purchase. If it doesn’t deliver enough, it is less likely to be successful.
Takeaways
Think and design the experience that your target audience has with your products and services carefully. In competitive markets, a well-orchestrated Customer Experience wins. Think of Amazon and other brands with which you encounter a memorable experience. Those brands are on top of your mind, which leads to word of mouth advertising.
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Alexis van Dam
is a member of ExperTeasers Group is a Slack.com hosted platform where (non-)similar people meet each other for exchanging ideas, views and insights in the areas of media, marketing, communication, innovation, organization and entrepreneurship. Not only sharing information, but especially the discussions lead to better results. Experteasers Group stimulates dialogue, feeds the conversation and inspires thought formation outside of its own frameworks. Different, better, durable.
