Illusion of Labour-A hack to improve your Customer Satisfaction Score

Imagine being served a fancy restaurant entrée within 27 seconds of ordering.

What would you think?

You’d probably doubt its quality and feel ripped off for a precooked dish

This is the Labor Illusion in action.

Customers value things more when we see the effort put into them, even if that effort doesn’t improve the result.

This works for digital stuff too.

Kayak, the flight search tool, found users were more likely to buy a ticket if the search results took longer to appear. It gave the illusion of a thorough search.

We implemented the same with the Merlin Mobile app. During onboarding user sees a screen where we ask the user to wait while we personalize the app for them after asking a couple of questions. The mere feeling of delaying the onboarding for a few seconds makes users like the app more

Crazy, right? Usually, we think faster is better.

You can also leverage the labor illusion in your content

You can use this trick in your content too. People will value your content more if you show how much work went into making it

Agencies working with high-net-worth clients do this all the time

People will take your content more seriously and value it more when you lead with the amount of work it took to create it:

This makes people think: “If this took 3 days, it must be worth my time.”

So they’re more likely to read it, and they’ll value it more.

Dyson also leverages the labor illusion. It took James Dyson 5,127 tries to perfect the design of his vacuum. The James Dyson Foundation created a piece of evergreen content that continues to market the labor behind his designs.

In short, experiment with showing users the amount of time and effort that goes into your final output to increase its perceived value

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