![\"CES-3_400\"](\"http:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/CES-3_400.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Deploying Customer Effort Score could be destructive under two conditions: using CES as a key metric for your critical touch-point experiences, and<\/em>, your brand value is not about effortless. It would generate three negative consequences:<\/p>\n In the Harvard Business Review article Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers<\/em><\/a>, the Corporate Executive Board\u2019s Dixon and colleagues stated: <\/p>\n When it comes to service, companies create loyal customers primarily by helping them solve their problems quickly and easily. Armed with this understanding, we can fundamentally change the emphasis of customer service interactions.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n The CES creators suggested the following strategy to minimizing customers\u2019 effort on service issues: <\/p>\n Reduce the need for repeat calls by anticipating and dealing with related downstream issues; arm reps to address the emotional side of customer interactions; minimize channel switching by increasing self-service channel \u201cstickiness\u201d; elicit and use feedback from disgruntled or struggling customers; and focus on problem solving, not speed.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The original mission <\/em>of the Customer Effort Score, as far as I understand, is to drive effortless service interactions.<\/em><\/p>\n Reducing or eliminating customer effort in the service environment, is a win-win to both customers and company. Customers save time and hassles; company reduces costs and becomes more efficient. It is no surprise that CES is fast becoming a popular performance measurement metric in numerous organizations since its launch in 2010.<\/p>\n Nowadays, the application of CES has been extended from service to CX – from driving effortless service interactions to driving effortless experiences<\/em>; CES, along with NPS and C-SAT, are the three most important CX metrics.<\/p>\n However, the truth is, service is part of CX; service ain’t<\/em> CX (see the Harvard Business Review Know the Difference between Customer Service and Customer Experience<\/a><\/em> by Bruce Jones, Senior Programming Director, Disney Institute), and that’s the underlining cause, and the beginning, of a serious problem.<\/p>\n Let me explain why driving effortless experience is a serious problem, with the empirical data derived from the Global IKEA In-store Experience Research (note 1).<\/p>\n Based on 3,384 valid responses from the research, the following are the three common pain points<\/em> shared by the IKEA customers around the globe. I display just a few of the voice of customers here:<\/p>\n \tPain Point #1 – Forced Round Tour<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/em>\n<\/ul>\n Pain Point #2 – Availability of Staff for On-site Support Pain Point #3 – Queuing Time at Check-out Counter<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/em>\n<\/ul>\n Based on 511 responses from the Dutch consumers through the Global IKEA In-store Experience Research, we generate their Emotion Curve.<\/p>\n For simplicity’s sake, only the relevant sub-processes are shown here.<\/p>\n Out of the total 34 sub-processes of the IKEA in-store experience, the three most severe pain peaks are ‘Forced round tour,’ ‘Availability of staff for on-site support,’ and ‘Queuing time at check-out counter,’ and we found similar results in other regions; it also echoes with the voice of customers – ‘Sweat’ is painful.<\/p>\n So, with reference to the voice of customers and Emotion Curve, it is crystal clear that IKEA’s customers just hate to ‘sweat’ which begs the question: Should IKEA eliminate the three common pain points and strike for an effortless experience?<\/em><\/p>\n The mission of IKEA\u2019s founder, Ingvar Kamprad, is to make quality furniture that everyone can afford<\/em> (note 3). Their brand values are reflected at the pleasure peaks: price, product, product display and trial, cafeteria and ice cream. Even the cafeteria and ice cream communicate the consistent message \u201cgood value for money\u201d and align with IKEA’s brand values. As these pleasures are reflecting their brand vales, we call them Branded Pleasures<\/em>. <\/p>\n IKEA never says Service<\/em> is a brand value. They hang up big posters inside the store, telling customers that, to further reduce prices, customers will be performing even more DIY (do-it-yourself) services. As expected, customer service is very limited, and once you have selected items from the huge storage area and managed to put them in or on your cart, you still have to wait in the long queue to check out and arrange delivery and installation – we call these ‘sweats’ as Good Pains<\/em>.<\/p>\n Why they are Good Pains? Because by allowing those pains which don’t reflect IKEA’s brand values – more DIY services and fewer staffs for on-site support – a substantial amount of resources could be saved to further enhance their Branded Pleasures.<\/p>\n The existence<\/em> of Good Pain is to support<\/em> Branded Pleasure.<\/p>\n I might have convinced you that the inadequate on-site staff support is a Good Pain, as it could save significant resources for the Branded Pleasure – price. But how about the other two common pain points – it doesn’t seem IKEA could save much by forcing customers to tour around the entire store or by creating a long queue at checkout.<\/p>\n In another IKEA research (note 4), we asked 518 customers on the spot at the exit of IKEA’s store, to compare their \u2018planned purchase\u2019 (before the visit) versus the \u2018actual purchase.\u2019<\/p>\n We then correlated the satisfaction rating of each sub-process during the IKEA in-store experience to the difference between the planned and actual purchase given by the on-site respondents, to derive the X-VOC Data (note 5). (For more about the X-VOC Data<\/em>, see my article Starbucks: Operationalize Customer Journey Mapping<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The results may surprise you: the number three instant purchase driver is ‘Forced round tour,’ while the number one is ‘Queuing time at check-out counter.’ Both are negatively<\/em> correlated; which means that the more suffering on the forced round tour and the longer it takes to queue up, the more items customers purchased on the spot.<\/p>\n Well, the above unexpected results can be explained. <\/p>\n Some customers from the research mentioned that they had bought some items they didn’t prepare to buy, but when they were going through the round tour they found these items interesting or irresistible. In alignment with the theories of “sunk costs” and “social proof,” the customers feel it justified to buy more when in a long queue as they were already there; it must be something really good to have so many people willing to spend time waiting for payment at check-out.<\/p>\n While I suspect Ingvar Kamprad ever conducted the same research as ours to derive instant purchase drivers, his judgments to tolerate those pains, grounded with over half a century learning-by-doing experiences and first-hand observations on on-floor operations, could be made more accurate and reliable than the quantitative data rendered by any correlation analyses.<\/p>\n A wise business leader would never let customers suffer for nothing – these are Unnecessary Pains<\/em>. Ingvar makes customers ‘sweat’ with a reason: allowing Good Pains to generate significant Branded Pleasures.<\/p>\n Mark Stanley, senior principal business consultant of Genesys, once said: <\/p>\n For years companies do not take time to focus on identifying their own Branded Pleasures and Good Pains. Only a handful of leaders at the top of the company understand this.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Kamprad is a minority. The majority of business leaders, in the modern era, have been brainwashed by the sacred beliefs of Pursuing Excellence, Customer Centricity and Continuous Improvement. They are determined to eliminate any pains, efforts, frictions, imperfections and defects out of an experience. The uprising of CES in CX is not a coincidence.<\/em><\/p>\n Their companies try to make every single detail good and eliminate any effort on the customers\u2019 part, from the beginning to the end of an experience, in order to satisfy their customers. The red<\/em> Emotion Curve represents the conventional approach. They are working hard to raise the entire<\/em> red curve higher and higher still.<\/p>\n It is, however, an ineffective <\/em>experience.<\/p>\n Nobel-prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman suggested that human beings only remember two moments of any experience – the peak and the end (note 6). The problem of the red curve – a zero-defect or an effortless experience – is that you dilute <\/em>your limited resources on too many things. As a result, insignificant<\/em> peaks and ends are generated. You are simply wasting your company\u2019s resources as the experience is not<\/em> remembered by your customers. Would you regard a forgotten experience be effective? No, you wouldn’t.<\/p>\n An effective<\/em> experience has to be remembered<\/em>.<\/p>\n Now, allow me to take you through a paradigm shift – allowing pain or imperfection – to deliver a dynamic blue<\/em> Emotion Curve. It focuses on the critical few moments – peak and end. This approach creates a memorable experience with significant pleasure peaks, while spending fewer resources. <\/p>\n Kahneman does explain how an experience is remembered \u2013 the peak and the end; he, however, does not explain which peaks – pleasure or pain – are recalled by customers. The decisive factor is: Do you keep your promise, i.e. are you delivering a branded experience<\/em>?<\/p>\n When you deliver your brand promise, customers remember the pleasure peaks. On the other hand, when you fail to deliver on promise, they recall the pain peaks. <\/p>\n Personally, I share my sympathy with the research respondents. I hate the forced round tour, the never enough on-site manpower, and the forever long waiting time at cashier. Whenever I shopped at IKEA, I swore<\/em> I wouldn’t be back. But for the past three decades, I buy from IKEA again and again. Why? Because IKEA is delivering a highly memorable <\/em>and branded<\/em> experience. What I recall from my memories are the significant pleasure peaks, which reflect their brand promise: Good value for money<\/em>.<\/p>\n The essence<\/em> of brand loyalty is, customers have to remember you and what you stand for<\/em>. To achieve that, you have to deliver the dynamic blue curve experience consistently and repeatedly, with your brand values reflected at the pleasure peaks, i.e. your Branded Pleasures.<\/p>\n Think of how you make your buying decisions. For example, if you want to enjoy a relaxing afternoon, away from your home and office, for a decent cup of coffee. Starbucks is probably the first thing that comes to mind – because you recall their significant pleasure peaks from your memories <\/em>– the ‘new coffee experience’ and the Third Place<\/a>.<\/p>\n Bob Thompson, CEO of CustomerThink Corp., commented on Do you really want to create a frictionless customer experience?<\/a><\/em> written by Adrian Swinscoe: <\/p>\n I’m seeing Starbucks and other premium coffee shops offer mobile orders. In the short term, could be nice for those in a hurry. Longer term, will it result in consumers saying to themselves \u201cWhy am I paying $4 for a cup of coffee when I\u2019m not spending any time in the store to enjoy it?\u201d Next step: drive thru?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n What if Starbucks focused their resources driving full-force to deliver a frictionless experience? Their significant Branded Pleasures would turn insignificant, and their brand values would become blurry in customers’ memories. Ultimately, their brand might not be recalled. <\/p>\n When you are delivering the flat red<\/em> Emotion Curve – an effortless or a frictionless experience – there will be no brand loyalty at all. Brand loyalty is, literally, determined by our memories. No memories, no brand loyalty.<\/em><\/p>\n Pains and efforts will be minimized or eliminated, and so too the pleasure peaks. Because no company has unlimited resources, the dynamic blue<\/em> Emotion Curve would turn into a flattened red<\/em> one.<\/p>\n As a result, customer’s pleasures are reduced, resources are wasted, and the brand is homogenized. The branded experience turns into a no-branded experience.<\/p>\n Both the customers’ pains and pleasure peaks<\/em> are gone.<\/p>\n Great brands have one thing in common: they make customers sweat<\/em>.<\/p>\n IKEA makes customers sweat <\/em>with DIY services to generate unmatched pleasure on good value for money. Starbucks makes customers sweat<\/em> with premium pricing and waiting time to create extraordinary pleasure with their \u201cnew coffee experience\u201d and the Third Place. Louis Vuitton makes customers sweat<\/em> with the different service levels to deliver unprecedented pleasure with exclusivity. Southwest Airlines makes customers sweat<\/em> with no meals, entertainment, upgrades or reserved seats to offer knockout pleasure with cheap airfares. Jiro\u2019s sushi restaurant makes customers sweat on most aspects of the dining experience to render the utmost pleasure with the best sushi in the world (see my article Sukiyabashi Jiro: Make the World’s Best Sushi by Creative Aggravation<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n By making customers ‘sweat’ – allowing Good Pains<\/em> – resources can be channeled to their Branded Pleasures. That is why IKEA, Starbucks, Louis Vuitton, Southwest Airlines, Sukiyabashi Jiro and other great brands are able to deliver a highly memorable and branded experience.<\/p>\n Despite my emphasis on the potential damages caused by CES in driving an effortless experience, I do totally agree with the CES creators that Customer Effort Score is a good metric when using in a service environment driving effortless service interactions.<\/p>\n At the beginning of this article, I said “Deploying Customer Effort Score could be destructive<\/em>: use CES as a key metric for your critical<\/em> touch-point experiences.” But it could be equally constructive<\/em> if you apply CES in non-critical <\/em>touch-point experiences.<\/p>\n Take, for example, a banking experience. When withdrawing cash from an ATM machine, doing a simple online transaction, or calling hotline to report loss of the credit card, customers simply need a frictionless or an effortless experience. No more, no less.<\/em><\/p>\n The majority, say 90% (just a ballpark figure, it varies from industry to industry, and company to company) of the interactions with a brand fall in that category: customers don’t need any significant pleasure peaks, they merely<\/em> want to \u2018get things done.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n Don’t get me wrong! CES could be useful: CES is the right metric for a pure service<\/em> environment and the non-critical <\/em>90% touch-point experiences.<\/p>\n For the remaining 10% interactions are the true differentiators <\/em>of a brand \u2013 touch-point experiences that deliver their promises and drive customers to buy from them in the first place \u2013 e.g. the IKEA in-store. Unless your brand values are about effortless, faster and easier, like Amazon.com, McDonald’s or Seven Eleven; otherwise, CES is definitely not <\/em>the right metric to use.<\/p>\n I understand that the customers\u2019 bar of unacceptable levels is ever rising; customers tolerate less and less in terms of inconvenience and slow speed. Even IKEA has added shortcuts and fast lanes for checkout at some of their stores. However, slightly raising the pain points in order not to drive customers away, is entirely different from driving full force for an effortless experience. Don’t mix them up.<\/em><\/p>\n Strategy is about resource allocation. The effectiveness of a strategy is judged largely by the effectiveness in resource allocation. Adopting CES is not only a bad<\/em> strategy – put your resource in poor use – it’s a wrong<\/em> strategy. It is wrong because it delivers the opposite<\/em> of what you desired: drives a disremembered experience, damages your brand loyalty, and reduces customers’ pleasures. Instead of a win-win<\/em>, it becomes a lose-lose<\/em> outcome for both customers and your company.<\/p>\n Perhaps you should ask yourself this: Why spend monies and resources to strike for an effortless experience – at the expense of a memorable experience, your brand loyalty and customers’ pleasures – just<\/em> for the sake of enhancing Customer Effort Score?<\/p>\n Here is my two cents for different scenarios that you may encounter:<\/p>\n I do believe, that it\u2019s simply a matter of time, before the sensible leaders are able to rectify their mistakes with the aid of common sense and critical thinking: to stop pursuing the flat red line and start creating a dynamic blue curve<\/em>.<\/p>\n 1.\tGlobal IKEA In-store Customer Experience Research, Global CEM, CustomerThink (U.S.) and TOTE-M (Netherlands), December 2008-February 2009.<\/p>\n\n
The Original Application Boundary of CES – Service<\/h2>\n
The Extended Coverage to CX – A Serious Problem<\/h2>\n
Voice of Customers: Just Hate to ‘Sweat’<\/h2>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\n
\n\t<\/p>\n
The Emotion Curve Echoes: ‘Sweat’ is Painful<\/h2>\n
![\"CES_1_480\"](\"http:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/CES_1_480.jpg\")
\nAfter listening to the voice of IKEA’s customers, let’s take a look at the Emotion Curve<\/em> (note 2) of IKEA the Netherlands.<\/p>\nBranded Pleasure and Good Pain<\/h2>\n
Good Pain may Help Driving Business Result<\/h2>\n
A Wise Leader Makes Customers ‘Sweat’ with a Reason<\/h2>\n
“Zero-Defect” Drives a Forgettable Experience<\/h2>\n
![\"CES_2__480\"](\"http:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/CES_2__480.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWhy Pleasure – Not Pain – Peaks are Recalled<\/h2>\n
![\"CES_3__480\"](\"http:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/CES_3__480.jpg\")
<\/p>\n“Frictionless” Harms Your Brand Loyalty<\/h2>\n
“Painless” Eliminates Pleasure Peaks<\/h2>\n
![\"CES_4_480\"](\"http:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/CES_4_480.jpg\")
\nSimilar as Starbucks, if IKEA listened to the voice of customers, and followed the conventional approach, to adopt CES to eliminate the pain points and strike for an effortless experience, what would happen?<\/p>\nGreat Brands Always Make Customers ‘Sweat’<\/h2>\n
Don’t Get Me Wrong! CES could be a Good Metric<\/h2>\n
Adopt CES Blindly is a Wrong Strategy<\/h2>\n
My Two Cents Advice<\/h2>\n
\n
\nNOTES<\/strong><\/p>\n