Sunday, October 28, 2012

If You Had To Pick Only One - The Results

A couple of weeks ago, I asked a simple question here.  Based on some of the recent stuff I've been reading that appears to give the indication that customer experience is an actual, tangible thing that can be made, produced, manufactured, I needed to clarify.  The customer experience can be designed, yes.  But experience is not an input.  Experience is an output, to the right of the equal sign.  I explored this question first in this post a couple of weeks before.

The experience is designed through the design of the inputs that go into creating the experience.  Or, the experience you hope your customer will have.  Because, in the end, the experience is in the eye of the customer.  You can't control the experience.  It's an interpretation of all one's sensory inputs.  So, all a brand can really do is attempt to positively influence it.

With all that background.  I wanted to hear from you what you thought were the key inputs into the customer experience in your industry.  The survey was simple.  Two questions.

1) Which element of your business model impacts your customers' experience the most?
2) What is your industry?

The results:


The "other" category included responses of:
  • Expectations 
  • Punctuality
  • Creativity   

In addition to the responses here, which are represented as a percent of total respondents, other choices which netted zero responses where:
  • Marketing/media
  • Availability (supply chain)
  • Shipping/logistics
  • Billing
Industries represented included:
  •   Consulting
  • Enterprise software
  • Insurance/banking
  • Telecommunications
  • Airlines
This was an intentionally simple survey.  So, the conclusions are neither earth shattering nor statistically relevant.  However, I think I proved my point.  And that is this.  The way we frame conversations influences the conversation.  By framing this topic of customer experience in terms of the inputs to the experience design, rather than as the experience as the input, it's clear that we all understand the causality.   

Experience is the result of the customer's perception of the multitude of components of your business model.  Experience is not something made, inventoried or delivered.

Agree?
Labels: , ,

2 comments:

  1. I absolutely agree.

    Ultimately, it doesn't matter what you think, only what customers think. You can be doing a million things, but if your customers don't see any of those as the "right" thing for them, it means little.

    Customer experience is perception. Understanding what your customers expect, what they want, and what will make you stand out. Get those three right, and with correct pricing, you've got a potential hit on hand.

    ReplyDelete

  2. I agree. I think that the essence of experience is mainly the combination of:

    Product (actual quality good or services)
    Relationship (personal connection with customers)
    Service (positive action for customer needs)

    Although others plan a factor, those three are my trinity of the positive customer experience.

    I say this because, I know of organizations that don't emphasize packaging, store hipness, or some of the other categories mentioned in the "others" but they get the trinity superbly right, each and every time.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)