Thinking holistically about customer experience

When you look through verbatims of customer satisfaction or NPS surveys you will notice a wide range of feedback. Some will be what you expect — functionality they like or don’t like — but invariably there’s a wide range of feedback covering all sorts of topics; from performance issues to interactions with the customer service person they weren’t happy with.

This is evidence of something which we know logically but seem to lose sight of once in the mire of functionally organised companies where different qualities of the products we ship are the domain of different departments. The truth is:

Customers don’t differentiate when thinking about the experience of your software. It’s all part of a single experience and every qualitative aspect affects their perception.

The most common destructive pattern I have seen in organisations across my career is the ridiculous friction that occurs when departments and teams within organisations vie for their own piece of the puzzle. You need all the pieces but we act like we could complete the jigsaw with just the edges or just the sky pieces.

The energy that goes into this friction could be directed towards more productive things. In my experience, it doesn’t need to be this way.

What can we do about the very tribal human behaviours that contribute to this situation?

Organise the people in your organisation in a way that’s mindful of the incentives and biases.

The skews that pit features versus quality versus performance versus customer service etc. This might be by organising by purpose rather than by function, horizontal practice groups or a range of other approaches.

Set goals which are holistic to the experience

Goals that express the complete effects the experience needs to realise to be successful. This means goals that represent the changes that reflect the areas of the product and services that need to improve and goals or KPIs that reflect the aspects of the experience that need to be sustained. Goals should align different levels of detail to aid understanding of the purpose of the product and how it succeeds. Goals should reflect different timescales so that elements of the experience that can only be achieved by long-term investment can co-exist with those that can be achieved in shorter periods.

Address other incentives which could cause an imbalance of effort towards one aspect of the experience over another.
This could be financial incentives, individual performance management, reporting structures, and many other potential reasons that shape the behaviour of the people building the product and delivering the services.

Does your organisation do any of these above? What are the barriers you see to achieving product experiences which address each of the capabilities and qualities that make them compelling experiences for your users? Share your perspective in the comments.

Originally published at https://wioota.substack.com.