Tag Archives: customer experience
I’ve spent the past few weeks using a Samsung Windows 7 phone. As an iPhone user since 2007, I was somewhat skeptical but curious to give Windows’ approach to mobile a try. After a few weeks with the Windows Phone 7, I was genuinely surprised by the great mobile experience Microsoft has created. 
The good
The tile interface. The Android/Apple cold war has lead to a similar UX for the two largest smartphone platforms. On Windows Phone 7, my Facebook, Twitter and other social accounts are all aggregated into my People tile. No need to flip through separate apps for all of my separate social networks. Emails and upcoming meetings are even previewed on tiles so I do not need to dig into an app to review my information- they’re all consolidated into one experience. The concept behind this was to connect you to information as quickly as possible, getting you in and out of your phone in a few gestures so you can go back to your life without missing a beat. Very cool.
Attention to detail. The interface elements, scrolling and subtle animations that guide the interface are intuitive, snappy, and just plain fun. I love how updates flip through to my home screen as they happen. No need to check individual apps as the newest news is pushed to me directly. Even the system fonts tout a polished design that looks crisp onscreen and has a subtle hipness to it. You won’t find Times New Roman here.
The bad
Camera experience. The software is clunky and the Samsung camera is slow, although overall image quality is pretty good. This will disappoint iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S users but could be on par with midrange Android and older iPhones. No doubt your mileage will vary depending on your particular phone, but the laggy response and clunky UI were somewhat disappointing.
Disjointed Syncing Experience. Much to my surprise, nothing happened when I plugged in the WIndows Phone 7 to my Mac. There was no included documentation on connecting my device either. After a Google search, I was directed to a file on Microsoft.com for a Mac-compatible Windows Phone 7 media manager. Unfortunately, the file was a 4kb text document that contained a link to the “real” URL in the Mac App Store. Very lame but easy to fix.
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Happy New Year! Our teams are back from holiday time with their families and ready for an exciting year ahead. But before we welcome 2012, we thought it might be fun to look back on some of our favorite stories of 2011. It seemed fitting to pick 11.
Here you have a list of eleven posts from across our offices, spanning topics from customer experience and branding to measurement and mobile. It’s a great overview of trends and technologies that shaped the past year of digital marketing.
We thank you for continuing to read Experience Matters and are looking forward to bringing you another year of timely and compelling points of view.
On September 29th, 2011, Bank of America disclosed plans to collect a fee for standard checking accounts. The fee sparked an outcry among Americans threatening to close their bank accounts and move to other institutions.
Americans rallied together for November 5th, Bank Transfer Day (BTD), as an opportune time to make the switch. Community banks and credit unions capitalized by encouraging customers to move their money to the institutions that don’t charge such fees.
In the final week of October leading up to BTD, eight major financial institutions one-by-one decided not to charge debit card fees, falling to the threats made by consumers.
We’ve seen the power of Americans rallying together to stand up and protect their financial needs. When consumers stand as one, even some of the most powerful corporations in the world will listen.
Consumers stood as one on Bank Transfer Day. In the aftermath, Credit Unions picked up 650,000 new customers – more than all of 2010 combined – totaling $4.5 billion in deposits. Big banks stand to lose more. Their reputation is so thoroughly tarnished among the masses that the ten biggest US banks could collectively lose $185 billion in deposits over the next year if they don’t do more to please their customers.
A Changing World: Consumers Gain Control
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A prior post on this blog discussed the digital experience delivery process with a focus on the practice of optimization. This post focuses on the steps that lead from awareness through to Action/Conversion, with an emphasis on the importance of properly understanding the drivers of digital conversions.
The Awareness Challenge
Most businesses understand that the notion “if you build it they will come” is not actually true when it comes to the web. The web is a big place with many options for consumers, so getting attention for the experience you’re offering is a critical component of the digital experience delivery process.
The job of generating awareness and thus (relevant) traffic to your website typically belongs to online advertising and SEO teams, who utilize search engines for organic and paid appearances and distribute display ads across the web. Increasingly, social media is also being utilized as a channel for driving traffic to websites.
In the ideal process, your awareness generation efforts bring people into a destination designed and optimized to meet their needs, and their visit ultimately results in a mutually beneficial transaction.
A focus on the experience of digital engagement means a focus on the consumer; specifically their motivations and objectives in engaging with a brand in a website, social or mobile environment. Digital communications done right offers the opportunity to optimize engagement with consumers to deliver the most relevant experience possible.
Aligning Customer and Business Objectives
Consumers come to a digital interface – website, social network page, mobile app – with an objective in mind. That objective may be to shop, but it may also be to gather information, or to share a good or bad experience.
Businesses have their own objectives for digital engagement, with a sale in some venue as the ultimate goal, and with intermediate goals that facilitate those sales, retain existing customers and grow market share.
The best digital experiences occur when businesses can consistently match their objectives to their consumers’ objectives. The process for making this happen is outlined in the diagram above.
Research, Strategy and Development
This objectives setting leads to the next step: conducting research to understand who customers are, what it is they’re looking for, and to clarify their objectives and motivations. This stage also helps businesses understand their competitors and the market conditions that can impact their relationship with consumers.
With the advent of social media, it has never been easier for consumers to interact with companies. An Experience Matters post a few weeks ago by Jeana Anderson showed how a couple simple tweets turned into an extraordinary experience. However, companies must be careful when using social media, because while good personal interactions can become extraordinary, bad personal interactions can become disastrous.
Curious’ recent research using our online community ShopTalk touched on why people choose to boycott companies. We found that boycotts which stem from bad personal interactions with companies are far more powerful than boycotts that arise from social or political scandals, as the case with BP or Nike.
About half of our members boycotted a company based on the company’s social practices or political views. Members talked about boycotting companies like Wal-Mart, based on their employment practices or Citgo-gas because of its ownership by “enemy of America” Venezuela. The other half boycotted a company based on a bad personal experience, such as terrible customer service. It was the first time I’d heard of Denny’s, Barnes and Noble, and Suave being boycotted.
