Driving Customer Loyalty and Top Line Revenue with the User Experience to Customer Experience Connection
The connection between user experience and customer experience always creates a great and valuable discussion. This has been particularly true at business development seminars, marketing workshops or one of the recent San Diego Software Industry Council panel presentations. The reason is that user experience and customer experience are inextricably related. The experience a prospect or customer has in using a company’s technology (including web sites, intranet, enterprise software, kiosks, PDA, cell phone or other wireless mobile devices) is absolutely part of the customer experience.
Customer experience encompasses the experience customers have with a company’s people and processes. Since processes include technology, the intersection between user and customer experience is made there. These experiences happen whether they are purposefully created or not.
I am frequently asked by CEOs and company owners: Does the user or customer experience have to be considered if the discussion is not about product or service? The answer is absolutely yes. The answer is routed in the importance of the pre sale experience by the prospect and the post sale experience as a customer. For pre sales, it could be how the prospect experiences advertising in analog or digital form such as a web site, sample software, how an affiliate is linked in, published product or service reviews and much more. These are important influencers of purchasing decisions impacting prospect to customer conversion rates.
The user experience continues after the sale and becomes a critical element of the overall customer experience as it combines how a customer experiences the support, usefulness and value of the product or services used. It also can include the status of ownership or usage, and packaging.
Most companies that have gone beyond usable products and services to design specific positive user experiences as part of a well thought out and executed customer experience program have one or more of the following positive attributes:
o Accelerated customer acquisition, engagement, loyalty and top line revenue
o Sustainable growth with slower margin declines
o Competitive advantage because the user and customer experience is positively
different; and
o Increased return on investment, brand and company equity
Regardless of their development stage, companies that are committed to continuously providing superior user and customer experiences show almost all of the attributes above. They are leaders in the fast company business of understanding and providing purposeful and profitable customer experiences. Examples include Four Seasons Hotels, brokerage firm Edward Jones, Lexus Automotive, Apple Computer and UPS shipping.
Where is your company along the continuum of user experience to customer experience? Are the user, prospect and customer experiences with your company being purposefully transformed into value for the business?
Add comment March 27th, 2008