Tag Archives: customer experience
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.
Motorola, VW, and Chrysler scored with critics and viewers in the Super Bowl advertising game. Yet, in the weeks following the game, they’ve missed (and are still missing) opportunities to convert viewers into customers through their online channels. These three brands all replay their ads on their sites, but that is not enough. Advertisers in the Super Bowl — and other big events like the Oscars — must create online experiences that get viewers more deeply involved with their products and the brand. That’s what pays off the huge advertising investments.
VW’s endearing “Darth Vader” spot speaks to affluent parents who are the primary market for the Passat. When those viewers visit VW.com, however, the most easily found content for the new Passat a snarky but flat-footed video, “VW Academy with Bill Hader.” The video’s sarcasm seems off-key compared to “Darth Vader” and more akin to a Bud Light commercial. Plus, the video is slow to communicate a handful of the model’s key features. It risks diffusing the goodwill earned by “Darth Vader.”
Worse, there is little information on the new Passat anywhere on VW.com. If you click on Passat, under the Models menu on the home page, you get information on the current model. The lack of details on the new Passat is a huge missed opportunity for VW to keep potential customers engaged and feed their curiosity about the new model.
Motorola does a better job following up on its “Empower the People” spot for the Xoom tablet. After viewers find their way to the Motorola Mobility consumer site, the Xoom is featured on the home page. The Xoom product page leads with a replay of the TV ad, but it’s easy to skip the ad and get to an overview of the Xoom.
After the daring TV ad however, the product page is a let down. The Xoom ad, like it’s 1984 inspiration, promises change, but visitors get a typical, staid list of specs and features. The Xoom page could have related tech specs and features to human needs and situations. Read More
In a previous post we touched on the findings from Forrester’s recent 2011 Customer Experience Index Report. It essentially underscores a major problem plaguing brands today: poor customer experiences. If you don’t have the time or inclination to actually read the 20-page study, one need only scan the results for the Twitter hashtag #fail to come to the same brutal, yet not surprising conclusion: there are not many brands doing it well.
The extremely low Customer Experience Index (CxPi) scores and plethora of rants against brands signal a wake-up call for marketers increasingly challenged by fickle consumers, a multitude of options and dwindling brand loyalty. Though it seems logical if not obvious, many forget that the best experiences (whether online or offline) are customer-in.
To help marketers increase their scores and improve relationships with customers, we’ve created a marketer’s checklist, “7 Principles of Extraordinary Customer Experiences.”
I just finished reading the results of this year’s Customer Experience Index (log in required for full access) published by Forrester Research. Each year, Forrester asks a few thousand U.S. consumers to rate the experiences they have with companies when buying everyday things like clothing, cars, cell phone service and health insurance. Forrester tallies the scores, ranking 154 brands and 13 industries on a scale from “excellent” to “very poor” based on the customer experiences they deliver. The results are eye opening. Just one-third of companies scored high enough to be considered “good” or better. The rest earned scores of “okay,” “poor,” and “very poor.” According to the report, consumers are generally not satisfied with the experiences they have with companies they patronize.
Looking over the list, the question “why” kept coming to mind. Why, with all the focus on the value of customer experience, with all the attention the business press heaps on this experience-based economy, do two-thirds of companies persist in turning in such poor performances? Forrester’s own research “shows that improving customer experience can have an enormous positive impact on a firm’s bottom line.” Didn’t these folks get the memo?
Extraordinary experiences come in a variety of forms, from the awe-inspiring Web site to a reminder of why you love your job. As a community moderator, my latest brush with an extraordinary social media experience was the latter. I was moved from blind-rage to placid-graciousness by one man and a Twitter handle. The story is one of Twitter customer service; at the end of the day, a well-served customer will shout your name from a mountain.
Flashback to Wednesday, Jan 12:
It all started with a call from an anonymous 800 number during my evening commute. It’s always jarring for anyone to get a call from a collections agency, but for someone who was taught to guard her credit with the same force as her purity, it’s especially disheartening. I was told that I owed $33 for a $25 modem that had been returned my senior year of college. Senior year: a lifetime ago, or 2.5 years, depending on how long your life is. Something felt off about this.
Flash forward through 2 hours of cell phone minutes later:
Feeling myself turn into an unpleasant person–and that’s generous–I removed myself from helpline purgatory and turned to Social Media. I had an “oh yeah!” moment on the consumer side of the Twitter customer service equation. Just when I needed someone to cut the crap, the 140-character limit came to my rescue.
One bitter tweet later:
Thinking I could get a reaction with the following tweet
“Oh hey UW grads, remember how terrible @Charter was? Still are. 2.5 years later – they decided that I lost a modem & billed me for it.”
I waited. Along came a Charter Communications representative, who used four Twitter consumer-relations tactics to neutralize the brand hater (i.e. me).
On October 14, this IA embarked on a journey somewhat outside her comfort zone- a design conference. But this wasn’t just any design conference, this was the Gain Conference hosted by AIGA. In the introduction, Debbie Millman said, “Design is being called upon to solve the world’s problems.” This idea echoed throughout the next couple of days I sat and listened to speaker after speaker with an occasional panel. Here is a summary of the conference, from an IA’s perspective.
Different “Experiences”
For an IA, user/customer experience means the user’s needs come first and is what our practice is based on. I found it interesting at this conference that this idea was somehow regarded as a novel and new approach to design. It made me think about how those of us in strategy design view “experience” a bit differently from those in creative design. For an IA, experience design means creating experiences for which they may interact while for a creative, it means creating an experience to which a user can react.
One example of this difference was revealed by JetBlue’s Fionna Morrison (Brand & Advertising) who discussed the importance of having the customer experience first and foremost when considering design. She said design should be, “Nice, Fresh, Smart, Stylish, Witty” – providing examples from a brand perspective as opposed to a user experience perspective. The examples given were about, “Hey, you come have fun with our brand” as opposed to “This is going to make booking and flying with us much easier for you.” Final tagline for JetBlue: You above all.
