Your goal is simple: a client who has a pleasant and distinctive experience compared to your competitors is highly likely to become a loyal customer, or even a brand ambassador. Customer journey, as the path taken by all stakeholders, Customer experience, a distinctive travel experience for your brand.
How to achieve this goal? To answer this question, let's compare the different types of Experiences that you can define and offer to your customers and their impact on your customers' feelings.
The Ultimate Customer Experience
To begin, let's explore the simplified model (inspired by the one we offer as part of our exclusive CX Dynamics© method) of an a priori "ideal" customer journey.
Your entire customer journey is located in the enchantment zone. You are truly attentive to them and constantly surprise them at every point of interaction.
Ah! The sweet dream of all Customer Experience managers…!
Unfortunately, this Experience is very difficult to maintain in the long term: from your company's perspective, the efforts deployed to reach this level of service are likely to generate costs that could potentially erode your margin. Or, you'll have to charge a premium for all these services... Which, from the customer's perspective, risks producing a perverse effect: they will quickly be convinced that they are paying for this level of service and that the Experience offered is not exceptional, but normal from that point of view! Their perception will therefore gradually fall into the "neutral" zone as your interactions progress.
So, if this sales strategy isn't the Holy Grail, what Customer Experience should you aim for?
Before going any further, it is necessary to make a digression on the difference between the Experienced Experience and the Memorized Experience. To illustrate this subject, it is interesting to look at a 1996 psychological study that examined the perception of pain (rated from 0 to 10) by different patients.
Here is an excerpt from the study:
Pain levels as described by 2 patients during a surgical procedure.
Anyone of sound mind would prefer the experience of Patient A over that of Patient B: an intervention that causes the same level of pain (a peak of 8), but lasts much less time.
However, when patients were asked to rate the average level of pain they felt after the procedure, it had nothing to do with an average of the different peaks.
The average described by each patient was more like the highest peak and the last moment of the operation.
Thus, even if Patient B's operation was longer, and therefore certainly less pleasant than Patient A's, Patient B retains a less "violent" memory of the procedure (we wouldn't go so far as to say more pleasant...).
This phenomenon, highlighted by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, is known as the 'peak-end rule': the way individuals remember an experience is linked to its most intense moment and its ending. This digression sheds new light on what the customer experience should be like to be best remembered (and therefore lead the customer to be loyal and become your ambassador).
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The dangers of a Neutral Experience
In light of this study, one might think that a "neutral" experience is enough to ensure a good level of customer loyalty. However, this is not the case, as we will see, and for several reasons.
A neutral customer experience is often what most customers experience. It does not allow them to be loyal and at the first opportunity pushed by the competition, they will gladly consume elsewhere.
In addition, if an obstacle occurs during the process, they will retain a vivid image of this obstacle, and you will very likely have lost them for good.
Target key moments to delight the customer
As you will have understood, it becomes particularly important to ensure 1 (or even 2 or 3) key moments throughout the journey where you will delight your customers.
Firstly, to differentiate yourself from your competitors, and secondly, to prevent the slightest problem from causing you to lose your customers permanently.
In this example, the customer is very likely to overlook a rather disastrous purchase experience and be pleased to have purchased a product that satisfies them every day.
Regarding the Importance of After-Sales Service
The "peak-end rule" theory also explains why it is very important to have an efficient after-sales service. This is potentially the last step in their journey, which will greatly affect their perception of the overall quality of the Customer Experience you have offered them.
Moreover, when we conduct workshops on this and ask people in the room to give us real-life examples of positive Customer Experience, 80% of customers tell an anecdote with a problem brilliantly (or surprisingly) resolved by customer service.
And do you know why?
Because it always makes a good story to tell.
From Storytelling of the Customer Experience
All the stories we are used to seeing and hearing since we were little include a hero who starts from a rather flat (neutral) initial situation, goes through a moment of great difficulty (disenchantment), but ends with a happy ending (moment of delight).
The story is often even more successful if a mini moment of enchantment precedes the great disillusionment.
For your customers to remember the Experience you have given them and for them to tell their loved ones about it, it is therefore useful to design your journey according to this scenario.
Of course, we are not talking about creating moments of disappointment along the way, but about identifying the main stages where a disappointing experience can occur in order to counter it as quickly and effectively as possible so that your customers have a nice story to tell. :)
Did you know that 95% of your success is linked to your state of mind? To learn how to manage your emotional load more effectively, discover the Triad method in this webinar:
This article uses (in a simplified version) modeling from KESTIO's exclusive CX Dynamics© methodology to measure the quality of the Customer Experience throughout the journey.
It was inspired by a Smashing Magazine article.
