Brands must think about their end-to-end experience
OK I admit this title is misleading.
What do we mean when we say end-to-end experience? At a time when everyone is talking about Customer Experience design and Service design, the term end-to-end is used to signify the whole experience a user can have with your brand.
But what is the End Experience? Is there a point where one can launch a product and say “Well, that’s it. I’m done with my brand experience and I’ve achieved everything I set out to do.”
Building a great experience is a life-long journey for any brand and as we now know, it transcends digital and physical touch points.
Great (brand) expectations
Think of great digital products you use in your day-to-day life. The reason you enjoy a product is not only because it offers a great service that you want, or need. Of course that is the baseline of what people expect from any company, and brands who claim deep meaningful connections with their customers without having the great product to back it up are not telling the full story.
Users have service expectations from a brand, for example accessibility or a smooth customer service, but they also have expectations about the brand experience — what can it offer them that’s authentic, relatable and is different from the competition?
The reason users prefer to use some products over others is because of the meaningful experiences they have throughout the customer journey.
In the brand eco-system a customer journey is not linear with trackable touch points as previously thought, but a sum of all experiences a user can have. They can be digital or physical and across multiple channels, but always underpinned by the brand’s strategy and with the user in the driver’s seat.
Meaningful experiences
In building meaningful experiences, the most important thing is to identify which parts of the experience really matter to your audience and define what they need to deliver. Is the goal to engage customers and grow loyalty or a way to gain attention and increase awareness?
Next you need to identify the touch points and channels through which you can reach your customers. These touch points need to be tailored for the right people at the right time. For example an existing user will respond to different cues and need different things than a new user who’s just getting acquainted with your brand. Same goes when thinking about your employer brand and targeting potential and current employees.
People respond to small actions that have a meaningful intent in a big way.
On top of the baseline experience, successful brands find the right moments to delight their customers in unexpected ways. People respond to small actions that have a meaningful intent in a big way. On the other hand, a bad experience is enough for a user to move to a competitor.
To navigate this complex eco-system a strategy needs to be in place for the brand to be able to stay on course and remain true to what truly makes it unique. Based on that, it can set out to explore experiences beyond the traditional media.
Digital and Physical
Digital brands can’t afford to remain just digital. An experience doesn’t happen only when the user is sharing some screen time with your product — it’s the total amount of connected engagement with your product or brand that although might be digital, is also deeply immersed in the physical world.
Digital brands such as Airbnb, Bumble and Mailchimp are using their data to offer experiences to their users that reach far beyond screen interaction. They are putting forward a human personality and prioritise emotional impact and connection over product advances — those happen too but that’s a basic expectation for today’s top brands. They also invest in their physical presence to leverage digital experience.
We need to stop thinking about digital vs physical and find ways to improve the customer experience wherever that may be. And when using data we need to make sure we look at it through a human lens.
Immersive Experiences
Amplifying a digital brand experience into other touch points is what all brands should be aiming for and the most common examples are immersive experiences which are designed specifically to provide additional meaning to customers.
Immersive experiences, whether they are aimed for customers or employees, have to be designed as an extension of the brand into the physical world. All sensory cues need to be considered in strengthening the brand narrative and communicating its purpose.
Casual Business
This month we are launching Casual Business, a creative consultancy and studio, focusing on branding and meaningful events. Our goal is to help brands think beyond their visual identity or a one-off marketing campaign.
We create unique brand experiences to engage customers and employees alike, designing and connecting every single touchpoint, physical or digital, part of a product launch or a marketing campaign. We specialise in events because they are the best physical interpretation of your brand and can turn into memorable and effective experiences.
Designing an end-to-end experience is important for any brand and for us, having a successful launch is not where an experience ends. That’s where it begins.
