Total Experience- Beyond A Noble Goal, the Key to Successful Business Transformation. Part 2: Customer Experience

A few weeks ago, I started to unpack the concept of the Total Experience, comprised of both the Employee Experience AND the Customer Experience. This read focuses on just the Customer Experience, which again, is highly impacted by a positive and good employee experience. Over the years I’ve heard more talk about Customer Service turning into talk about Customer Experience. Not sure when this transformation happened, however I’m thinking that everything in our world has become more about the “experience” versus just the transaction. If you think about how much technology and retail has transformed in the last 10 years, especially with Amazon completely disrupting how we select, order, purchase and have commodities delivered, it’s not a big wonder that we want the Amazon-like experience as the norm. We want the customer experience to be a great one from beginning to end. The experience becoming more of a journey. One that ends with a smile…enough times.

As consumers we want the journey to start with ease of access to our options (the catalog of services), generally starting in the palm of our hands, through a smartphone app, or a browser url. Gone are the days when we have no choice but to go to a retail store or call a retailer to order as the only way to complete the transaction. Then we want to hear not what the salesperson wants us to hear, we hear what other buyers are saying through their reviews. The reviews and the ratings have a lot to do with influencing our choices, even when we don’t know anything about who it is that wrote them. Imagine the amount of collective trust we have in our human population! We know how much it (the item) is going to cost, when it will arrive (even having a choice of how quickly or slowly it gets there) and finally how to pay for it (up to and including installments.) What makes the Amazon experience ideal? It’s that it’s a great overall customer experience. It is 3 things- simple, solid, and scalable.

Simple- Why do consumers crave a customer experience that is simple? Because the world has become so complex, and time has become our most precious commodity, so the simpler the transaction, the less time and effort it takes. This means the consumer has more consuming to do. Think about the iphone, and how many devices it has replaced. It’s simply easier to use the calculator feature on the phone than to go searching for a physical one. It’s simpler to snag photos with it than to lug around a digital camera. It’s simpler to email and text a friend on it than to use a computer and a pager (hoping all my readers actually know what the latter is.) Simple also means that the average person can figure out how to work with the product and/or request the service on their own. The iphone again is a great example of that. A 2-year old can generally navigate most features. They don’t even include a full manual with it when you buy it, just a small pamphlet which is optional to peruse. Amazon is like that too. Going to the website (or the app), you enter a description or words depicting the product or service you’re looking for, and you get a listing of many options. You don’t have to hunt for offerings under offerings. The rest of the experience is simple too…from reading the description, seeing the reviews, the cost and even shipping options.

Solid- What does that mean? A perfect transaction each and every time is unrealistic. It’s the consistency of the service that matters. Knowing that the service is going to execute as described is promising, however, knowing that if it doesn’t, they’ll make it right is reassuring. People gravitate to using Amazon because the service just works without complexity. It’s not something you have to worry about. And that makes for a good customer experience. One where you’re not guessing whether the right item will arrive undamaged, within the promised timeline, and at the correct charged amount. If you have to return an item, you can do that too, and you have choices of how. And if you really want to vent, you can speak to an agent that will do what they can to make you happy. That tlc is something as consumers we’ve growth to expect and love, and definitely a key ingredient for great customer experience.

Scalable- How exactly is that? Whether you’re ordering 1 item or 100 with Amazon, you’re going to get the same good customer experience. They’ve figured out how to replicate their service on a larger scale. They do this by bundling their activities and using unique processes and robotics where redundant steps are needed. But that also allows them to scale. And once the logistics are figured out without a nightmare, then you can safely and reliably order as many items as you want, for as many life events or even daily events as possible, because they can deliver everywhere and anytime. Think about the decision to order common items up to toilet paper…through Amazon! That’s scale. But Amazon didn’t get there overnight, they had to learn how to do this. They invested in good processes and great technology. They figured out what they needed human touch for and when they could simply use robots or RPA. This had to be a strategy, to evolve their efficiency without losing their effectiveness. And it worked. And that’s essentially why they’re used across the US and the world, because they achieve scale and still deliver a great customer experience.

So as you look to design any service, with the aim of delivering a great customer experience, think about these 3 key elements; keep it simple, solid, and scaleable. The voice of the customer will come in loud and clear with satisfaction when their experience is improved through the execution of a strategy that includes this. If you don’t believe this, just watch daily how many Amazon delivery cars drive by your street and to your door (and mine), signifying a great customer experience and a brand loyalty to Amazon. It’s so much an A to Z thing for them, that they don’t even need to have that in their logo, they just have the smile!

For a few other reflections on this topic, here’s another article on this topic from a few years past. Same theme, different times. Pre and Post pandemic, it’s all the same. https://it-service-management.cioreview.com/cxoinsight/how-itsm-eventually-ties-to-customer-experience-nid-30618-cid-188.html Published in CIO Review 7/16/19