It’s Always about the Human Experience
Over the past few blogs, I’ve delved into the changing consumer attitudes in green as well as the power of customer experience in digital media (websites, mobile, television, et al). Sometimes it helps to take a step back and revisit the reason why I continuously advocate and proselytize meaningful, statistically reliable and predictive “direct communication” with your customers. The following real story provides a marvelous backdrop to understanding why I believe the elements involved in real customer experience success® are the missing links in today’s chain of developing metric systems.
The setting: a room full of 3,000 plus individuals listening to a very charismatic speaker regarding strategic planning for today’s world. The story below was told to the audience and while I have attempted to produce it here as closely as possible to how it was told, I elected NOT to include the name of the offending company.
“This past month, my wife took a look at the suit I was wearing and remarked, ‘honey, I believe it’s time for you to consider replacing or expanding your wardrobe again. You need to go shopping this weekend.’ Now, it’s not that shopping for a new suit or dress wardrobe is that unusual, however it is unusual to get the blessing of my wife to have time to myself on a weekend to reinforce my wardrobe, so I jumped at the opportunity.
I headed to (retailer), from whom I had bought suits, shirts, and ties in the past. I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing; had the day to myself for some casual shopping for something I really enjoyed shopping for plus, I was only going because my wife forced me into it so I was totally guilt free and looking forward to a great experience.
I have shopped at (retailer) several times in the past and each time it was a wonderful experience. They stocked the styles and names that I liked of course but what I really enjoyed was how their salespeople made the whole experience just so amazingly perfect. It almost seemed their salespeople knew more about what I liked and what looked best on me than I did.
So, I walked into the store with great expectations, thinking it was going to be a wonderful way to spend the afternoon!
As usual, shortly after stepping through the door of (retailer), I was approached by one of their associates to assist me in my endeavors. Only this time, it was completely different from what usually happened with (retailer).
I mean, from the suits to the shirts to the ties this associate presented to me as options, it became quickly obvious he not only had no clue how to pick things I liked, but he was not able to interpret my words telling him what I liked and didn’t like and reflect them in the various options he was bringing to me for consideration.
I know it’s not fair, but my comparison standard was a seamless, enjoyable time spent in the past where the sales associate literally brought me clothing to consider that really struck home with my sense of style, which may not be much compared to others in the audience, but for me, it is MY sense of style. As this current shopping trip continued to play out, my memory continued to strike me as to how little I had had to even think during the previous shopping experiences.
As time drug on, I realized the only way I was going to leave there with any new clothing was to find it myself. The look on the sales associates face appeared to get longer and longer each time I told him what he was bringing to me was not “quite what I was thinking of.”
It got to where I sent him off on phantom errands just so I had some time to find something I actually liked and preserve the day of shopping. After awhile I settled on some shirts, a couple of ties, two new suits and a dress jacket. What I noticed though was, while I found clothes I liked and would wear, I felt like something was missing.
I felt a little cheated in a way. You see, you can buy clothing anywhere, even online if you want nowadays. I realized, this thing we call shopping was creating a different expectation and meeting a different need than it has in the past.
In the past, I’m sure people were more than happy to even have a store that offered them clothing to buy. But that’s not today. I realized I had arrived at this retailer expecting an “experience.” Something that made it worthwhile to spend the few extra dollars I’m sure I was spending on the type of clothing I was buying. When that didn’t happen, I felt cheated somehow. Even though I found what I eventually wanted, I didn’t feel good about the money I was going to spend on the items.
Now you might think the story ends here . . . but it doesn’t. I still had to pay for the clothes.
I handed my card over to the associate thinking, ‘well, at least nothing can go wrong with this.’ I was wrong!
Evidently, the machine that swipes the cards in that store was not working that day. As the associate keyed in my number, he repeatedly got the numbers wrong – I could tell from where I was standing. Each time he would turn to me to tell me that the card had been rejected I had to point out to him that of course it had, the number he punched in was wrong and would not map to my zip code or to me.
My day of slowly growing to a boil in frustration turned to ending very quickly in total frustration and disgust. By now the manager was involved. Within seconds, he was able to verify that yes; the card was mine and was able to handle the charges. In those few seconds, came the infamous question regarding ‘how was your shopping experience today?’ I felt I had to share my frustration with the entire experience with this manager. He had to know the absolute ineptness of his staff within that store.
My this point also, I had had it. The day was shot for me and this experience was over. I asked for my card back, told them not to worry about it – through gritted teeth, trying to preserve some dignity myself – left the clothes on the counter and turned to leave.
The manager caught up to me and asked that question you almost hate to hear as a customer, ‘is there anything we can do to make this right with you?’ As I looked past the manager to the forlorn face of the sales associate, I realized it would take too much time to explain and they would not really care anyway, what this experience was supposed to have meant to me.
I looked the manager in the eye and said, ‘no, there’s nothing you can do about it,’ turned and left the store.”
There are several things to learn within this story.
The obvious learnings apply to every b2c company in the world, but two umbrella concepts in particular struck me as I sat in the audience taking copious notes regarding this speaker’s experience. First is how online has given every customer’s experience in lack of meeting or exceeding their expectation a new platform.
While this speaker was able to share his story about this retail experience with 3,000 or so strangers – and, we all left thinking twice about going to that particular retailer in the future – the online world allows this type of message to go out to literally tens of thousands of people.
The principle involved is not new at all. Using traditional research methods of the past we deduced that a “great” experience was shared with two to three close friends or relatives. A “less than good” experience was shared with 18 to 20 people including strangers. A terrible experience was shared with up to 50 people, the vast majority of which being strangers to the person sharing the story.
The digital world has simply put these percentages on steroids. The distribution is forever tilted enormously. The delta between impact of positive and negative impressions from customers and clients of all ilk; b2c, b2b, and b2g, has broadened into a great chasm.
The current method of trying to tease this information from survey data comes in the form of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) which focuses on analysis of only one question to gain understanding into a company’s potential for growth success. While this method has serious flaws, addressed in my downloadable paper The Myth of Customer Satisfaction, it is quite telling that many businesses have embraced the process of NPS and so-called “Voice of the Customer” programs wholeheartedly. Such was not the case even a few short years ago.
Secondly, I was reminded of the customer experience brand impact we found in our Brand Engagement™ study (see Brand Engagement™ Report). In this study we determined that a pure online originated company held a branding advantage of 11 to 23 percent over an offline originated company’s online efforts. In that study we refined what we discovered in the ‘90’s relative to all self-service offerings; ATM’s, self-service checkout lines, etc – the new definition of service components IS self-service requirements. Hence the gap between online and offline originated companies and branding.
Does that mean online originated companies get it right? Do web analytics, defined as measuring machine output such as time spent, unique visitors, bounce rate, etc, equate to guaranteed success for a company in the digital world? After all, the web is the most measurable and measured medium the world has ever seen, surely we’re not allowing this type of experience to take place online, right?
Wrong! For two main reasons:
1) web analytics are ALL backward looking statistics. They only show where and what happened on predetermined paths of action. They can NEVER tell you why it happened so you can affect a strategic shift in corporate culture and eventually design to better meet a consumer’s needs. In the case of the story above, which happens very frequently on numerous websites and digital interactions, web analytics would miss this entire interaction and its impact on the company.
2) digital creations, whether for online, mobile or in the future, the television space are designed and implemented by humans. Much like some sales associates are better than others, the same principle applies to the world of digital designers and developers. Alignment with a poor design and development firm will create the same end-user response as illustrated in the retail shopping experience story above, only MORE so.
In the end, it’s ALWAYS about the human experience, even when the experience appears to be mechanically enhanced through technology. And for that human experience, you have to hold meaningful, statistically reliable and actionable discussions.
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Perfecting the Customer Experience 