A couple of weeks ago, I asked a simple question here. Based on some of the recent stuff I’ve been reading that appears to give the indication that customer experience is an actual, tangible thing that can be made, produced, manufactured, I needed to clarify. The customer experience can be designed, yes. But experience is not an input. Experience is an output, to the right of the equal sign. I explored this question first in this post a couple of weeks before.
The experience is designed through the design of the inputs that go into creating the experience. Or, the experience you hope your customer will have. Because, in the end, the experience is in the eye of the customer. You can’t control the experience. It’s an interpretation of all one’s sensory inputs. So, all a brand can really do is attempt to positively influence it.
With all that background. I wanted to hear from you what you thought were the key inputs into the customer experience in your industry. The survey was simple. Two questions.
1) Which element of your business model impacts your customers’ experience the most?
2) What is your industry?
The results:
The “other” category included responses of:
- Expectations
- Punctuality
- Creativity
In addition to the responses here, which are represented as a percent of total respondents, other choices which netted zero responses where:
- Marketing/media
- Availability (supply chain)
- Shipping/logistics
- Billing
Industries represented included:
- Consulting
- Enterprise software
- Insurance/banking
- Telecommunications
- Airlines
This was an intentionally simple survey. So, the conclusions are neither earth shattering nor statistically relevant. However, I think I proved my point. And that is this. The way we frame conversations influences the conversation. By framing this topic of customer experience in terms of the inputs to the experience design, rather than as the experience as the input, it’s clear that we all understand the causality.
Experience is the result of the customer’s perception of the multitude of components of your business model. Experience is not something made, inventoried or delivered.
Agree?
