One of our major supermarkets does a great pizza, which they make for you whilst you wait. I must say, they do taste good. If you order your pizza at the beginning of your shop, ten minutes later when you’ve picked up your other groceries, it is ready to take away. It has won awards.

I was a little miffed on Friday evening when I had to wait forty minutes for my pizza. Here’s what happened:

On ordering my pizza the young lady informed me that she was on her own so it may not be ready for twenty minutes. Excellent! I’ve been informed about the extra time, and although it is inconvenient I look through the magazine and book department. However, when I return after twenty minutes my pizza is not ready. The poor girl is working through a long list of pizzas, with a queue of people waiting and ordering more.

The employee experience is an important aspect of customer experience

Whilst the pizza backlog grew, two other employees are working at the same counter, but on cooked chickens and Indian/Chinese take away. There are no queues for these offerings, yet the two members of staff have a joke, pack up some chicken, go out back, come back again, pack a couple more chickens, and serve the odd customer. Not once, in the twenty minutes I waited, did I see them look to the poor pizza girl, let alone offer to help out. I got quite angry at this.
When I finally got my pizza I assured the girl that she had done a great job, little good it did her, and paid for my groceries. On leaving I visited the customer services desk to complain and stand up for the girl on the pizza counter. The lady informed me that the other two staff were unable to help out on pizza due to health and safety. On realising how daft this sounded she phoned through to a manager. After a five minute conversation I was informed that the chicken must be closed down before any help can be supplied to the pizza counter. I gave up!

Business process can remove common sense thinking

The help of one member of staff for fifteen minutes would have reduced the backlog and the queue. So the internal process looks to be wrong as employees stick to the process rather than helping their customers.
This can happen with rigid process. Employees do not see things from another point of view because they are blinkered by process. I’m not sure why the Managers didn’t do anything about it. But then I didn’t see any managers. Maybe they were following a process out the back?

Process is good, but it must allow for flexibility to ensure common sense prevails. Especially when good customers experience is at risk. By simply ensuring the process includes some thought provoking questions like:

• Is there a problem here?
• What do I need to do to resolve the problem?
• If this was my company, what would I do differently?

These questions provide the opportunity for all employees to step outside the process to think for themselves.

Does your internal process ensure an excellent experience for your customers?

Related services: Customer Experience Research and Customer Requirements Capture

We’ve been trying not to talk too much about the ‘credit crunch’ on our blog because quite frankly we’re sick of hearing about it in the headlines every day. But, if it’s something our clients are worried about, we felt we should provide some ideas on what to do during these uncertain times.

So we’ve created a list of reasons why you should improve your website customer experience:

1)  Rising fuel costs and household bills could mean more people turn online to save money

Instead of driving to the store to shop around, customers are more likely to research and purchase online in an attempt to save costs.  Research suggests that retailers are seeing an increase in online sales at a time when  there is a widespread decline in the high street, making the web a good channel to focus upon during a time when customers are more frugal.

Low cost customer research can yield small changes to a website which can have a big difference in improving customer experience.

2)  Lower numbers of customers with money to spend means finding better ways to improve conversion

With a predicted economic downturn all over the headlines, consumers are likely to restrict their spending and become more considered when making purchase decisions.

Through usability testing you can understand your customers’ newly formed needs and provide an online experience to meet their expectations. This will give you the advatange over yout competitors during this period.

3)  Getting your website in order now means you can have confidence in your site if your budget is reduced

If you have budget now, but you feel it could be sparse in the near future, it’s a wise investment to  ensure the site is delivering what your customers need, and what your board demands.

Understanding the barriers to online conversion now, and knowing how to remove these barriers, will allow you to make strategic changes to stabilise the customer experience.

4)  During periods of restricted budget it is even more important to get your prioritisation right

When budgets are tight, prioritisation becomes a critical decision making tool. All too often, website owners make prioritisation decisions based on business goals and available resource. It is critical to understand your customers’ goals and ensure that you include customer priorities in your thinking.

Having a site which focuses only upon your business goals in our experience is the best way to provide a poor customer experience because you can easily lose sight of customer needs.

5)  When times are tough, people seek experiences which make them feel good

During an economic downturn, marketers have noticed an increase in lipstick sales. The term ‘lipstick factor’ refers to phenomenon where women turn away from the more expensive shoes and clothes towards the less expensive items that make them feel better about themselves. During troubled times people have a greater need to feel better about themselves, so making customers feel good by providing small ‘pick me ups’ during their experience with your site is a way to thrive during the ‘credit crunch’.

Is your website catering to current customer needs?

Related services: Customer Experience Research, Expert Evaluation, and Usability Testing

My girlfriend and I always seem to have real trouble finding a holiday, mainly because the brochures never seem to tell us what we actually want to know, like is the resort likely to be full of Brits abroad, Irish Pubs and McDonalds or can we find a bit of traditional food and culture here.

This time we decided to go for the easier route. So we decided on a budget, we picked a couple of dates we could both do and we set off to our local travel agent. Excited, we sat down in front of a friendly travel consultant and announced that we wanted a holiday in a quiet resort, self-catering, with a pool, around the first two weeks in September. We looked at the travel agent expectantly, she responded with a tired look and asked which resort and apartments we wanted to go to. Right here is where my experience breaks down, and I’m sure so does the experience for many other customers.

Improving travel agent customer experience is key to survival

I don’t want to have to paw through several brochures reading the same old marketing speak which makes every resort sound the same. I want to go to a ‘consultant’ for inspiration and advice. How hard can it be to recommend a quiet resort with self catering? I appreciate there are hundreds, but that’s what you get paid for isn’t it? Otherwise I can do all this independently on the internet and cut you guys out of the picture. Oh wait, that’s what consumers are doing.

For some time now industry experts have predicted the death of the high street travel agent. The stats seem to agree, with one report suggestion that only 7% of us are using the high street to book holidays abroad. If they are to survive, particularly in an uncertain economic climate, travel agents must provide an experience to really compete with the online channel.

The current in-store customer experience only works when customers know exactly what they want

Many of the high-street retail staff are called ‘travel consultants’. A dictionary definition of a consultant is “one who gives expert or professional advice” which is not the experience customers are offered when they are unsure where to go. Instead, they’re handed brochures, told to choose a resort and a couple of hotels and then come back. This places the travel consultant more in the role of a glorified booking agent.

High street travel agents need to adopt a more active role in recommending and inspiring

To improve customer experience travel agents need to be trained to recognise the customers need and provide a service that matches. When customers have vague ideas of what they want, travel agents should recognise the need to play a more inspirational role to match the customer needs to a few different choices and guide them through the process to make a final decision. It’s no surprise that they are losing potential customers to online agents when customers are forced to research the holidays themselves.

Are you responding to your customers needs?

Related services: Customer requirements capture, and Customer experience research

We’ve all been there, in an electrical retail store buying a TV, DVD player, Hi Fi, or similar. Just when you’ve found the right product, in stock, at the right price, the pleasant sales person starts twitching and suddenly transforms into the Werewolf of insurance. Run for the hills.

Customer goals vs business goals

All you want to do is pay for the TV, have someone load it into your car, and away you go. So you have to wait for the Werewolf to take a breather in his well rehearsed drivel while the knot in your stomach gets tighter. When you get the opportunity to jump in with a quick, ‘No, it’s ok, I’ll take the risk’, he continues as if his newly enlarged pointed ears can’t process customer objections. It can get to a point where you would actually prefer not to buy the product and go elsewhere. What a shame.

Staff incentives move focus away from customer needs

Let’s look at this from the Werewolf’s perspective. They are well trained in the different products available, and they are also well trained and experienced in asking the right questions to understand the customer’s needs before making recommendations. The retailer will put a lot of effort into the retail customer experience to ensure customers return and, ultimately, choose this store to part with their cash. On top of all of this, the sales person is then told that at least 10% of their retail sales must come from selling insurance. Suddenly, all the previous training, and all the marketing that the retailer puts into ‘customer experience’, might as well be thrown to the wolves.

The issue here is that the customer receives a very good retail experience up to the point of selecting a product. The customer expectation at this point is to pay and have their new TV loaded into their car. At the point of choosing the TV, and being told that it is in stock, most people (if they are like me) are looking forward to getting home as quickly as possible to set the TV up in time for the football. This nice and happy thought is then rudely interrupted by the previously pleasant sales person, who now has large fangs, forcing an extended warranty down your throat.

I don’t mind being asked if I want to extend the warranty, and to be told that it can be extended any time in the first year, but when I inform him that I do not want an extended warranty (doesn’t my household insurance cover most of this anyway?) I expect the matter to be closed, and to return to my vision of my living room as a surround sound cinema complex!

Retailers are not listening

What’s worse is that this has been going on since I worked in a large electrical retailer, and that was 15 years ago, and people would have this same conversation then. What is the point of all the training and retail customer experience activity to only let the whole thing down at the end of the sales process? From a retailer’s perspective they will often still get the sale, so the lesson is not learnt and we all have to put up with this because it is the norm. Well, I’ve spoken to a couple of people recently who have decided to walk away as soon as the Werewolf refuses to listen to the objection to extended warranty. If we all did this do you think they might finally listen? Come on Mr Retailer, let us buy our goods and enjoy them, or I might have to resort to browsing in your store and buying online.

Are your staff incentives having a negative impact on your customer experience?

Related services: Customer Experience Research, and Customer Journey Mapping

Within the retail market there is a lot of talk about Multi-Channel, where services are provided via multiple touchpoints. Most commonly, this refers to a website and a shop floor. So it was interesting to see that one of the UKs largest retailers is still experiencing gaps between what it offers in-store, what it promotes online, and what level of understanding its staff has.

This example was experienced as a bit of research I was undertaking to review the online experience of buying an affordable suit. I was testing the website, but as part of the user journey I needed to visit the store to reach my goal. Here’s what happened:

The website promoted a suit, shirt and tie combo for £32, which was exactly what my user profile was looking for but it wasn’t available to buy on-line. My user profile was not fond of shopping, and certainly didn’t want to go all the way to the store only to find they had no stock. So I called my local branch. The polite lady that I spoke to was not aware of such a combo offer, and informed me that their in-store stock was often different to that on the website. So my journey ended there and I hadn’t reached my goal. Well, out of character, I decided to pop into the store to have a look for myself. And guess what? I found a suit for £26, a shirt for £4, and a tie for £3. A suit, shirt and tie combo for £32.

So what has happened here? If your retail website does not allow you to buy the products online, then users will expect them to be available in store, and will also expect that when you mention the online products to the sales assistants then they will know what it is you are referring to. The key mistake made in this is example is that the retailer did not provide sufficient information and training to its in-store staff about the products and promotions currently live on the website. The impact of this is a potential online customer, happy to buy in store, is let down when he crosses channels. The retailer loses out on a sale, and the customer has to begin their journey again and go elsewhere.

Successful companies will need to provide its services across multiple touchpoints (shop floor, web site, call centre, brochure, etc.), but those that will come out on top will review all their touchpoints together as one solution and roll out each channel to provide a consistent experience and enhance the customer journey.

Is your multi-channel experience consistent across all your touchpoints?

Related services: Customer Experience Research, Expert Evaluation, and Customer Journey Mapping

It’s easy to see why retailers are turning to more and more self-service kiosks. They put the customer in control, they can reduce operational costs and they save on staff costs. When they are designed well they can improve customer experience because customers grab their goods and leave the store with minimal fuss. When they are designed poorly, they can be time consuming and frustrating having a negative impact on customer experience.

What we’ve noticed in our research is that many of the problems are due to designers and engineers not paying enough attention to customer needs. What the kiosk developers appear to do is take the service tills used by trained retail staff and then redesign the interface for customer use. Trained staff use equipment hundreds of times a day and learn ‘work arounds’ to their frustrations. Customers on the other hand use the equipment infrequently and have much less tolerance for frustration.

To help you make sure your kiosk provides a smooth customer experience rather than a frustrating one, we’ve put together a list of the most common frustrations customers experience when using self-service kiosks/checkouts:

• Poor product or service categorisation - Most kiosks require customers to identify the item before they scan it. Many kiosks haven’t spent enough time researching which categorisation systems are most logical to their customers, leaving customers struggling to locate the best match for their item. When they have a number of items to process, and the queues are building behind them, this can be a real source of stress for customers.

• Kiosks can’t support the speed of input - When customers gain confidence with the checkout and speed their rate of scanning items and placing them on the conveyer or into their ‘bag area’, the system tends to ‘get confused’ and appears to lag behind, issuing confusing error commands to customers asking them to perform actions they have already completed.

• Physical layout and ergonomics don’t support common tasks - Some of the popular self-service checkouts tend to force customers to shuffle between the main screen, and the payment mechanism placed beyond stretching distance away. Before completing their transaction they need to return to the main screen again. This often leads to customers over stretching or shuffling their bags while they struggle to complete their purchase.

• Touchscreens can be unclear - Many checkouts use touchscreen input and a common source of frustration with these are the readability of the screen due to glare from overhead lighting or from the size of the text on the screen. We have observed customers also struggling to know which areas are ‘clickable’ and which are not.

Whilst self-service kiosks become more popular, we feel it is important that they don’t fall into the trap that many websites did in the early days of web development: to assume that customers will adapt to the technology, rather than adapting the technology to the customers. In order for retailers to gain the benefits from self-service, they must ensure that the technology provides a smooth customer experience by focusing upon usability and customer needs very early in the product development lifecycle.

Does your self-service kiosk frustrate your customers?

Related services: Usability testing, Customer-centred design, & Customer experience research

It’s that time of year again when many of us are stuck for ideas for Christmas gifts to buy our friends and family. Many people this Christmas will give and receive ‘experience gifts’ in the form of concert tickets, theatre tickets, short breaks, spa days and so on. It seems that we’re no longer content to have the material possessions we once were, instead we now crave new and exciting experiences.

In fact, this is the premise behind the term ‘experience economy’ which many commentators feel is a phase we have now entered. Its thought to be an age where our material needs are more commonly satisfied and instead of upgrading our gadgets we’re increasingly seeking to spend our money on the experiences offered by hotels, coffee shops and so on. Retailers are increasingly coming to terms with the notion that the experience of shopping is slightly more important than the items we buy and take home with us.

The experience economy brings with it a strong need for companies to truly understand their customers wider goals. It’s no longer enough for a company to anticipate and deliver the products people want, instead they must understand the wider goals customers have such as the need to belong to a group, the need for status, and the need for personal growth to name just a few. Those companies who truly understand their customer’s needs and offer experiences which generate an emotional connection between the customer and the brand are going to be the leaders of this new age. Apple, Starbucks, Innocent, Abel and Cole are just a few of the stand out companies who seem to be doing this and they are leaving their competition standing.

In the experience economy, where many customers appear to be seeking meaning and self actualisation in their lives, does your company really understand how to offer an emotional connection with your customers?

A good customer experience is one which integrates business goals with customer goals. So the first thing a company should do is clearly identify their business goals and then talk to their customers to build an understating of their customers’ goals. Then they need to look at ways to integrate them in a seamless experience. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Well it is a simple principle, but in reality it can be hard for companies to let go of some of their business goals to even up the balance. A great example of this is with the Post Office.

If you ask most British people (or indeed non-brits) about their experience in their local Post Office, I’d lay a hefty wager that at least 70% of customers would complain about the queues. In my experience, the total time spent in the post office is about 90% waiting in a line and about 10% actually being served. This situation was no different for me the other day when I spent 10 minutes in a queue to send a parcel abroad which took less than a minute once I was at the counter. Half way through my wait I was frustrated to find that reason for the delay was not because of the usual lack of staff, instead it was due to Post Office staff trying to sell broadband to pensioners who needed every detail to be explained to them. For some reason, management at the Post Office felt that it was more important to push their own broadband service than it was to help customers achieve their goals as quickly as possible. So, not only are they increasing an already annoying waiting time for customers, but they are also encouraging their staff to sell broadband to people in a context which doesn’t support their goal. Why the Post Office want to offer broadband to their already strange set of services is a topic for another day, but this example shows a clear imbalance between Post Office business goals and customer goals.

More often than not, we find that poor customer experience is the direct result of too much emphasis placed on business goals and not enough on customer goals. Quite often it is simply due to a disconnect between the board room and their customers. We try to help senior management gain a better understanding and empathy with their customers to ensure that every business decision has a balance between what the business needs and what the customer needs.

How do you ensure your business goals aren’t overpowering your customer’s goals?

Adverts are everywhere. Everyday we are bombarded by efforts to persuade us to buy this or use that. They raise our expectations by making promises about a product or service. When those promises aren’t kept, customers have a poor experience.

Recently we talked about how customers’ expectations are key to a good experience. Following similar thinking, we believe that when advertising raises customer expectations the customer experience must go beyond expectations in order to deliver a great customer experience.

Good Experience offer a brilliantly simple summary of the relationship between advertising and customer experience:

“Advertising is a promise of something.
Customer experience is the something.”

If companies are pouring money into advertising and raising their customer’s expectations, but they don’t match their investment in customer experience, it would follow that they risk investing in delivering a poor customer experience. As ICE suggest:

“If you were throwing a party, wouldn’t you clean up your house before you invited people over?”

Shouldn’t the people responsible for customer experience be driving the advertising? Only when they are confident the customer experience is consistently excellent should they start advertising. I suspect this is idealistic, but I wonder how much involvement or warning the departments contributing to customer experience have before an advertising campaign goes out.

What do you think? Is your advertising creating unfulfilled customer expectations? Are you spending too much on advertising and not enough on customer experience?

It was only a matter of time before Amazon outgrew their old tab navigation system. They have just launched a new design which maximises the screen real estate while retaining a lot of what customers are familiar with.

The main changes appear to be the navigation where they have used a more traditional left navigation which works well. The navigation minimizes once in a specific section and is revealed by a rollover ensuring they have as much screen real estate as possible. They have obviously done extensive usability testing and conducted a thorough customer-centred design process. Here’s what they have to say about it:

“We consulted the foremost experts in the field: our customers.

We travelled around the world, inviting customers like you to come and try out the new features and design. We listened to their feedback and made changes based on their opinions. Then we asked more customers for their advice, and we made more changes from their feedback. The design you see today reflects the input of many real-life customers of our UK and international websites.”

Overall they appear to have done a great job and I’m really pleased to see that they have continued to offer a good customer experience by understanding what their customers’ goals are. They say that after speaking to their customers they found the four most important customer goals were shopping, searching, saving and buying, so they made those areas a priority. After having a good look around though, I don’t see any big changes which would improve my experience in these four areas so I can only assume that they made minor tweaks as they felt that those areas worked well as is.

Teams which follow a thorough customer-centred design process on their website can be confident that when they launch their new site, customers will continue to have a good customer experience. In our eyes it’s no longer a nice to have, it is an essential part of a website redesign process. How confident are you that your web team will follow a customer-centred design process?