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Exercise in Customer Experience
Jun 3, 2004
Here's a quick exercise.
Which of these is a better experience?
IN A RESTAURANT:
1. When you walk into the restaurant, the hostess welcomes you warmly and takes you to your table. The interior decoration and overall ambience are attractive and comfortable; the food is delicious.
Or, at a different restaurant...
2. The restaurant is called "The Jungle Experience." Upon entering, the hostess asks you how many are in your "safari." As you sit at your table, a fine mist of water sprays from a sprinkler hidden in the plastic foliage surrounding the dining area. The menu items are all named after rare tropical animals. You have the simulated experience of dining in a jungle, although the food isn't very good.
AT THE DENTIST:
1. The dentist is friendly, starts on time, is gentle on your gums, and gets your claim form promptly to the insurance company.
Or, at a different dentist...
2. The dentist's office is decorated in the theme of Star Trek. The walls are painted like the bridge of a starship; the dentist and assistants all wear Star Trek Federation uniforms and can, on request, greet you in Klingon. However, the dentist doesn't generally start on time and isn't as gentle as you'd like.
ON AN E-COMMERCE WEBSITE:
1. You're able to access the product you want in a few seconds, thanks to prominent links with obvious titles. The search function brings back accurate and helpful results. The simple product page makes it easy to compare different products, and then it's easy to choose a product and check out. Overall, the experience is quick and easy.
Or, at a different website...
2. You're impressed by the attractive logo and the colorful appearance of the page. It looks similar to the colors and graphics in the TV commercials for the company's products. There are lots and lots of features available on every page. Everything has a very professional appearance. Overall, you get the strong impression that the company spent a lot of money on the website. Unfortunately, it's hard to find the product you want.
In each case, did you choose 1 or 2 as the better experience?
- - -
Of course, these are somewhat artificial comparisons. Certainly a safari-theme restaurant could also (theoretically) have good service and delicious food. A Star Trek dentist could be on time. And so on.
But the comparisons are important because they represent two different methods of creating a good experience:
- In case 1, the company focuses on meeting the customer's needs at each moment.
- In case 2, the company creates an "experience" with a "wow factor" in an effort to impress the customer. The customer isn't central to the experience, except as a consumer waiting to be entertained. The focus here is visual flashiness and gratuitous technology.
Which method does your company pursue more often?
If it's 1, congratulations: you're operating in the long-term interest of both the company and your customers. And knowing that, you have the added benefit of a meaningful job - creating some good in the world (even if only the business world).
If 2, I wish you the best of luck. You might get short-term gains in customers and publicity - but without a focus on customers' basic needs, your business won't be healthy for very long.
I've had this conversation with many clients over the years. In many cases, the focus on the *basics* - customers' basic needs at each moment - is THE differentiating factor between successful and failing companies. In fact, companies who invest more in the "wow factor" almost always take resources *away* from focusing on those more important (if visually less exciting) issues.
But think back to the customer. After all, we started the column with an exercise in *customer* experience. If you - as a customer in each of those situations - had to choose between the basics and the "wow factor," which would it be? If you had to design the customer experience in each of those situations, and you wanted to maximize the long-term health of the company, which would it be?
For an interesting alternate perspective, check out Seth Godin's new book "Free Prize Inside" (http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize). Sometimes it's the secondary things about a product or service that makes them remarkable (worth talking about), and that's what makes them successful. I'm sure you're already thinking of a dozen examples...
Very true - I like "Free Prize Inside" and (thanks to Seth's donation of the books) gave away 150 copies at the Gel conference a few weeks ago.
Being remarkable is, as Seth says, of paramount importance. I guess my take is that creating a remarkable customer experience is often a challenge of getting the basics right...
It never fails to amaze me how many companies, whether they are tech-related or not, believe that gold plating everything is the answer. I've seen too many homes that were sold based on the amenities when the toilets wouldn't flush, applications that looked fantastic (particularly ports from DOS to Windows) that didn't deliver on core functionality and women that were all makeup...with nothing behind the eyes, as it were.
There is an old adage in marketing "sell the sizzle, not the steak" but when you do that, it ends up like the teleported steak in the movie The Fly. The steak looks good and may even smell good, but the taste leaves much to be desired.
While I agree with most of what has been written in the article and the value of creating long term value based on the customers objectives, let's also remember, that sometimes our user may have 'disposable' needs
Our audience, in fact, may need and want to be entertained...once. Some of my most memorable experiences on the web have been on sites that I visited once and really, in effect, they were like the visit to the klingon dentist--one that was memorable, but would happen only once.
If someone can craft a business out of disposable experiences--all the power to them. It's like a discussion about one-night stands versus long term relationships!
Gagan is absolutely right. It seems to me that in any given population, there will be some clients who would prefer the user experience of the case 2s (style over substance) -- know your target market.
But why must style and substance be compared as mutually exclusive things? Is that not the ultimate user experience - style and substance together?
Excellent article! It's a breath of fresh air to step back and remember how easy it is to scare a potential customer off when every bell and whistle in the book is crammed into the first page of a site. Definitely an article to be shared.
"I guess my take is that creating a remarkable customer experience is often a challenge of getting the basics right..."
"It never fails to amaze me how many companies, whether they are tech-related or not, believe that gold plating everything is the answer."
Think about it, the "gold plating" approach is easier to do. Let's just deal with the surface issues - extreme makeover. Saves us from having to dig very deep to uncover the details that should direct design. It's faster.
It is extremely hard work even to get the basics of user experience right.
I believe that product development teams in general have the very best of intentions, but the challenges as you know are time, resources, money, and expertise. You need all of these to build user experiences that actually consider who the target users are how your application meets their needs.
No doubt, there are challenges and pitfalls aplenty. The essential question, though, is this: Is the development process focused on the customer?
- If it *is*, then it's much easier to deploy (limited) resources in the right ways.
- If not, it's hard to deploy those resources effectively, no matter what.
I appreciate Mark's contrast between real-world and the web, but have there been any studies done of *users* and whether the real world holds true on the web?
My perception is that web users *DO* expect the experience, before they will bother to spend the time to see if the basics are right too.
So, does anyone have figures or studies that indicate that you can ignore the *experience* in a web site?