Terrific Trading

What is a customer experience designer?

Think about the experience your customers have when they come into contact with your organisation in some way.  Is it the experience you want them to have?  Do you have a clear picture of what you want?  Do your team have the same picture as you?

Do your customers consistently get this picture perfect experience?  And is it the experience that they want?  In other words, does it meet your customer’s expectations?

If these are questions that you grapple with regularly; if they are high on your priority list; if you are already a customer focused organisation; then it could be time to talk to a Customer Experience Designer  like Jan Collins, or her sidekick Jurek Leon, though he’s only a Special Agent For Customer Obsession.

A Customer Experience Designer helps you to identify what your customers expect and what you are capable of consistently providing.  Then, to profitably make a positive impression, meet your customer’s expectations and turn them into walking, talking ambassadors for your business.

Customer Experience Designers (at least the ones we know) are demanding people.  They expect you to understand that good customer service doesn’t happen by accident, it happens by design.  They expect you to involve all your team(s) in identifying the touchpoints, mapping the sequence and setting standards for each touchpoint.  It takes commitment and you’ve got to be in it for the long term.  This is no quick fix.

We only enter this process with special people in special businesses as it is the road less travelled.  But, if you are serious about providing consistently excellent service, put your tray table upright and fasten your seat belt as this is the only way to fly.

What are touchpoints?

Think for a moment about the difference between a product and a service.

The end result of a service experience is a ‘feeling’.  For example, when we get our car serviced we will react to the experience from making the booking through to picking up the vehicle afterwards, not just to what has been done to the car.

It is the customer’s reaction to the experience, rather than the product, which decides whether they will buy from you today or again in the future.

A touchpoint (Jan Carlzon called them ‘Moments of Truth’) can be defined as any episode in which the customer comes into contact with an organisation and gets an impression of its service. They are the parts of your business process that touch your customers, affect how they feel about you, and collectively make up their customer experience.

A Moment of Truth in itself will not usually be the deciding factor on whether a customer has a positive or negative view of your organisation.  It’s when a number of experiences in the sequence of touchpoints go wrong (some of which may have nothing to do with your role in the transaction) that the customer will come to view your organisation favourably or unfavourably.

People who provide products and services tend to see the interaction with their customers as a series of discrete events that are not necessarily related to one another.  This is not how the customer sees it.  To the customer each event, each touchpoint, is part of the total experience of dealing with your organisation.