Customer Experience Satisfaction, Loyalty and Advocacy Questions

19 Feb, 2012 in Customer Experience by

When measuring your customer experience, there are three questions that you may ask your customer that will give you insight into their satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.

The standard “How satisfied are you with…” is always good way to measure basic satisfaction. When compared to “How much do you value…” – you gain tremendous insight. If we know that they are satisfied with, but do not value, a particular task or feature of your service or product than you should stop dedicating time and resources to it. In contrast, if there is a task or feature that they value and are unsatisfied with then you should address it.

To measure advocacy, there is the always the Net Promoter question, “How likely are you to recommend us.” The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is an industry standard to provide you insight into your “promoters” – your advocates. For companies that have a mature customer experience program, this is the score that they pay the most attention to.

Knowing all these scores will help you focus your energy on the right task or feature of your customer experience to increasing customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.

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Customer Experience, Brand and that Emotional Connection

12 Feb, 2012 in Books, Brand, Customer Experience, Emotional Design by

“Where does your brand begin and end? Where does your marketing stop and delivering online start? With cloud computing, online purchases, SAAS use, and live support in social forums, can you even define where your product experience begins and ends? These days you cannot and should not even try. Successful companies have prospered in response to these mega trends by taking the holistic approach”

—Daniel Rosenberg, SVP Product UX, SAP, The Customer Experience Revolution

The customer experience is the sum total of all interactions a person has with a company and its brand. The best brand experiences deliberately evoke strong emotions: attraction, trust, fun. Experiences with a strong emotional connection can create long-lasting customer relationships and fanatical advocates.

The emotional connection that customers make with a company’s products and services is just as important, or more important, than making an efficient product or delivering an effective service. The emotional connection shapes peoples’ perceptions of the company, its products, services, and brand. People make purchase decisions about how they feel about things. And if the feeling is strong enough, they will justify their decisions to support their emotional connection.

If a company consistently delivers a better experience than its competition, then customers will develop a high level of trust with the company and the brand. If the company consistently delivers a great experience, then the company has won a long-lasting customer and advocate who will likely tell other potential customers.

Your brand can either draw your customer towards your products and services or away from it. A great customer experience can elevate a purchase from a need to a desire. Smart companies are building relationships with their brand to create long-term value. They are developing endur­ing emotional connections with their customers to secure their brand and trust.

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Companies that delight their customers outperform their peers

5 Feb, 2012 in Books, Customer Experience, Experience Design by

According to Larry Tesler, “Companies that delight their customers outperform their peers.” We should listen to Larry because he knows what he is talking about. Larry was one of the researchers at PARC (Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated) back in the 70’s. PARC, if you didn’t know, has been responsible for such well known and important developments as laser printing, Ethernet, the modern personal computer, graphical user interface (GUI), object-oriented programming, ubiquitous computing, amorphous silicon (a-Si) applications, and advancing very-large-scale-integration (VLSI) for semiconductors – just to name a few. And if that is not impressive enough, Larry spent the 80’s and 90’s at Apple – most notable as “Vice President and Chief Scientist” – you got ask yourself, “What do you have to do for Steve Jobs to make you his VP and Chief Scientist?”

Larry was also the VP of Shopping Experience at Amazon in the early part of this century and later the VP User Experience & Design and Research Fellow at Yahoo! So Larry really knows this Customer Experience thing…

What does Larry recommend for people to understand how to delight customers and out perform peers? Larry says that The Customer Experience Revolution is the “guidebook tells us why and how they do it in industries as diverse as retailing, smartphones, food service and driver education. I highly recommended it to anyone building a customer-focused business or refocusing an existing business on the experience of the customer.”

Thanks Larry!

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The Customer Experience Revolution is Textbook for #5 Business School

29 Jan, 2012 in Uncategorized by

The Cal State Fullerton’s Mihaylo College of Business, the #5 business school in the US, User Experience and Usability Certificate program textbook is The Customer Experience Revolution. Jeof and I will be guest lectures February 18th. I hope those students are ready for us.

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TechBiz Connection Website Usability LIVE this January18th in Irvine, CA

15 Jan, 2012 in Books, Customer Experience, Event, Uncategorized by

Please join Jeofrey Bean, Dr. Joely Gardner and me this Wednesday, January 18th for the TechBiz Connection Website Usability LIVE in Irvine, California:

YOU GOT THEM TO YOUR SITE, BUT THEN WHAT?
Live Site Reviews to Improve User Experience.

It is surprising to find out about what both web designers and marketers often miss, which are key ingredients of what your audience can see and not see on the website. This can make or break your website.

TechBiz Connection has assembled a world-class panel of usability experts to review and critique your websites LIVE. Our panel will provide fair and honest feedback so that you can start improving your website immediately.

The expert panel will cover:

• What are the most important usability considerations?
• How are visitors getting lost or confused on your website?
• What are some of the best ways to find and understand your offer?
• How do you apply design-based thinking into your website?

Register early, this event is likely to sell out.

Jeof and I will be signing copies of The Customer Experience Revolution after the event. Please bring your copy or purchase one at the event.

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Customer Experience Special Interest Group 2012 Calendar

17 Dec, 2011 in Uncategorized by

The Customer Experience Special Interest Group‘s  2012 calendar has been posted! The calendar is subject to change – so you may want to join their email list to receive the latest meeting announcement.

It looks like there will be some interesting organizations sharing how they determine, develop and deliver their customer experience:

January: JoynIn
February: rippoll
March: SwoopThat
April: Pro Flowers
May: Barefoot Solutions
June: RCSB Protein Data Bank
July: Sony Store
August: First Allied Securities
September: ProMedia Telecom
October: Sunddenly Smart
November & December: Off for the holidays

One more thing… The Customer Experience Revolution is out! Buy your copies now for the holidays.

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Experience Design Meeting Guidelines

5 Dec, 2011 in Career Advice, Experience Design by

 

  1. Set the stage – describe the role (and the persona if it relevant to the design) and the scenario with a focus on the goal. DON’T explain the design or the rationale – let the design speak for itself – if folks have questions then that is a sign that there is an opportunity to improve the experience.
  2. Start at the top – describe the top of the design and move to the bottom from left to right  so everyone understand the overall information architecture and *context* of the content. DON’T use superlatives – just the facts – let the design speak for itself
  3. Move slowly through the design – give the audience time to absorb the idea
  4. Pause *often* – for folks to ask questions and make comments
  5. Listen carefully to the feedback – acknowledge others’ point of view and *take the emotion out of the discussion* – focus on what can make the design better
  6. Ask questions – to make sure everyone understand what is being shared
  7. Summarize – to validate understanding and agreement

 

Tips

  • Say We rather than I
  • Being experts does not always make us right. Good ideas can come from anyone and anywhere. Being humble enough to accept other ideas is paramount to our success.
  • Even if you disagree with a point someone else has made, acknowledge their point with “Yes” then follow that up by stating your rationale and idea- the act of saying Yes makes others less defensive and more apt to hear your perspective.
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Look at What People are saying about The Customer Experience Revolution

27 Nov, 2011 in Books by

 “The Customer Experience Revolution is a book that everyone who wants to succeed in business must read.”
— Todd Robinson, Founder and Former Chairman, LPL Financial

“Companies that delight their customers outperform their peers. This guidebook tells us why and how they do it in industries as diverse as retailing, Smartphone, food service and driver education. I highly recommended it to anyone building a customer-focused business or refocusing an existing business on the experience of the customer.”
— Larry Tesler, Larry Tesler Consulting, Former Vice President and Chief Scientist, Apple Computer

“We’ve all heard about great companies like Starbucks, Apple, and Intuit, and we enjoy great experiences with them every day. However, few of us can truly articulate what it is that each of these experiences does for us, much less how we might replicate the experience in our own companies. The Customer Experience Revolution provides us with a great framework of understanding those experiences. It is a mustread for leaders who want to drive great customer experiences within their own organizations.”
— Steve Albee, Senior Vice President, Union Bank

“Where does your brand begin and end? Where does your marketing stop and delivering online start? With cloud computing, online purchases, SAAS use, and live support in social forums, can you even define where your product experience begins and ends? These days you cannot and should not even try. Successful companies have prospered in response to these mega trends by taking the holistic approach described in The Customer Experience Revolution by Jeofrey Bean and Sean Van Tyne. This book is a must-read for anyone in the product delivery value chain. I fully recommend it.”
— Daniel Rosenberg, SVP Product UX, SAP

“This is the best business book in years! Bean and Van Tyne do a brilliant job of analyzing what winners do to create a world-class customer experience. They spell out the winning steps so you can implement them in your business. If you want to increase sales and customer satisfaction and, at the same time, cut your costs, follow the advice in this book.”
— Joely Gardner, Ph.D., Instructor, User Experience and Usability Certificate program,California State University Fullerton, and Founder, Human Factors Research

Its official release is January 2012 but you can pre-order it here – http://www.raphel.com/osc_catalog/product_info.php?products_id=62 – and can get advance copies in December. If you use the code “CX” you will get free shipping.

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At the Heart of Experience Design are the Designers and Testing

20 Nov, 2011 in Experience Design by

If you are designing experiences for services then you will need service designers. If it is a space or counter experience then it may include training, architecture, interior design, display design, wayfinding and more.

If you are designing experience for a product and that product is a device then you may include industrial designers and human factor engineers. If it is software then you may include information architects, graphic designers, human-computer interaction designers, and more. If it is a consumer product then you may include package designers, textile designers, and more depending on the product.

For all Experience Design, the process comes down to Research, Design, and Test. Get out and observe your audience interacting with their current experience, analyze what that experience is like for them now and identify opportunities for improvement. Then create prototypes and test, test, test until you get it right. Apple does more testing then anyone in their industry. Dyson did 5127 prototypes over five years to prefect their vacuum cleaner.

Some testing is better than none. Spend as much time as you can. Your return on investment is directly proportional to your investment. It is obvious what the experience leaders do – if you want to compete than you need to join the customer experience revolution.

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Using Games to Improve Performance and Result

13 Nov, 2011 in articles by

Sue Baechler, Learning Product Strategist, Game Designer and Founder and CEO of Originaliti Media Inc., shares that games and game-based approaches are transforming the way people work and learn.

Michael P Carter, Ph.D., Principal, Twin Learning LL, has found that when people learn through gamming they “enter a simulated environment that prompts them to make choices, solve puzzles and generate original solutions. All the while they are tackling the challenges as if they were real. The value-add to a real situation is the license to fail, the no-fault nature of game play — it’s great to win but not really fatal to make a mistake, which, after all, is one of the best ways to learn something so you’ll never forget it.”

Steven Kowalski, Founder and President of Creative License™ Consulting, states that researchers know play increases positive mood, reduces stress, increases risk-taking and changes the mental set. “When your brain is stuck, play has the ability to reassemble the associations that form ideas so that you can break through to innovation.” Playfulness at work increased job performance, innovation and satisfaction.

Games focus attention on the experience itself, not on what we’re going to get out of it. Studies have found that intrinsically interested people are continuously interested in the work they are doing.

To learn more, read Using Games to Improve Performance and Result

 

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