4 Principles for a Customer Experience Design

Why a customer buys certain products or shops certain stores is mainly the responsibility of companies Marketing Department since they manage the Marketing / Advertising budget. But how a customer experience is executed generally depends on the sales/operations staff of an organization. So the Marketing Department drives traffic into a store, web-site, or catalog but the psychological aspects of what a consumers picks up during the shopping/buying process can ultimately determine if they will return or tell a friend about a positive/negative experience. 

Lou Carbone (Author - "Clued In") has found through research that sensory “Clues” exist during the customer experience which ultimately drives the consumer buying behavior. These sensory clues can be one or more of the five senses (sight, smell, touch, hear, or taste). Now I know what you are thinking. I don’t go to my bank because of the smell or sight of the local bank but you might go to your bank because it is close to your house, the teller always calls you by your first name, or the bank interior has a warm and cheerful color scheme. While you might not recognize the sensory items during your visit those “Clues” do have a psychological impact on your decision to deposit your money at Bank “A” or Bank “B”.

Again, I know this sounds unconventional and as some have told me this is very “touchy/feely”, the reality is a consumers brain is taking in these “Clues” which determine what products/service might be bought from a particular company. Given my exposure to Lou Carbone (CEO - Experience Engineering) and his approach, I am constantly aware of the "Clues" that exist when I am at a store, restaurant, or for that matter a web-site. While I am very passionate about process improvement, I am even more passionate about the blending of process improvement and customer experience design which in my opinion is the true “Holistic View of Continuous Improvement”.

Outlined below are 4 Principles of a Customer Experience Design based on my engagement with Lou Carbone and Experience Engineering team......

1. Discover – Just like Six Sigma’s DMAIC methodology, Discover is the combination of Define and Measure Phases. Within Discover, you are basically developing a project charter as well as measuring the customer experience through several different methods. The measurement of the customer experience is generally done through actual face to face interviews with customers and employees, monitoring of consumer behaviors (what are their patterns in a store, what do they say about the store/employees when they are in a store, etc.), and my favorite a “Clue Scavenger Hunt” (Asking a customer to retrace their steps in a store with a digital camera and take pictures of things that standout to you). For customer interviews, the questions are a little bit different in the fact that you ask the customers questions about what they “Heard” and “See” to what they want to “Hear” & “See”. By monitoring customer behaviors and asking those to conduct a “Clue Scavenger Hunt” you are understanding what psychology aspects of the customer experience are being influenced.

2. Understand - Referring back to Six Sigma's DMAIC methodology, Understand is truly taking all the data captured during Discover step and trying to determine patterns that are contributing to a good and bad customer experience. Once the analysis has been complete and the current experience has been documented it is time to share the information with key stakeholders which generally consist of the executive management team along with top lieutenants within the organization from departments like Marketing, Operations, Sales, Product Development, Customer Service, etc.

Once the information is reviewed the next step is to develop the company “Theme”. The "Theme" is an exercise that requires the key stakeholders to develop 3 words that described what the new customer experience should be. This "Theme" can then be used as a filter for new advertising, marketing, training, point of purchase, etc. At Blockbuster, the "Theme" we came up with was what we called the 3 C’s (Confident, Captivated, and Connected). I know, sounds a little unconventional but trust me this is where it all comes together developing a true customer experience design.

While narrowing down your "Theme" to 3 words sounds relatively easy, the truth is it took roughly half a day for 50-60 senior leaders at Blockbuster to discuss, narrow, and ultimately decide on the company’s "Theme". During this session there were points where it got very tense as some people had very passionate beliefs about certain words. In the end, we agreed to 3 words that would be the center piece and filter for making future decisions in store layouts, customer interactions, training, and advertisements.

3. Build – Like the Improve Phase in DMAIC, the Build step is about determining ideas/suggestions to implement the new company "Theme" which should enhance the overall customer experience. Now when we talk about Six Sigma methodology, there is a heavy emphasis on the importance of meeting and exceeding customer expectations as it relates to a process. Here is where the blending of process improvement and customer experience comes together.

For example at Blockbuster, with our store process re-engineering project we were able to reallocate labor hours to create a new role for Friday/Saturday evenings to focus on improving service levels during our peak shopping times. The role was created and deployed but wasn’t clearly defined and executed throughout the store network. So one of my first tasks at Blockbuster was to develop, test, and roll-out a structured program for the new role (What we called the “Active Seller”). Having tested multiple ideas in 10 stores for months, I partnered with the training colleagues to develop a training program that focused on defining the “Active Seller” role which entailed critical customer interaction points within the store, how to identify customer wants/needs to build an entertainment solution, & understanding what entertainment solutions provided the best profit margins for the company. 

Now I mentioned earlier, that the blending of process improvement and customer experience design is where the “Holistic View of Continuous Improvement” takes place. When we rolled out the “Active Seller” training program we hadn’t completed the Customer Experience Design with Experience Engineering. But they say timing is everything because it actually worked to our benefit because we got the stores acclimated to the approach to the role before we layered improvements from a customer experience design.

The team at Experience Engineering worked with us to brainstorm ideas to improve the customer experience and ironically one of the things I was creating was a "Movie Trivia" book that the stores could use to improve their movie knowledge but we took it a step farther by having the “Active Seller” offer different movie tid bits about specific movies that would take the moving watching experience a step farther because now the customers have something to look for when watching the movie. It also broke the ice with customers and allowed our “Active Sellers” the opportunity to suggest other movies, promotions, or add-on’s (candy, used movies, etc.).

Another technique Lou Carbone & Experience Engineering introduced us to was the Customer Experience Job Description. Unlike a traditional job description, a Customer Experience job description actually outlines how an employee is to play the role to assure the customer experience is a positive one. In short, it describes how to interact with a customer, how the role fits with the “Theme”, and what are the primary aspects of the role. While at first it was a difficult concept to get your head wrapped around, it really helped tie things together for employees and how they were expected to play their role with customers. Many companies will write a job description which outlines your duties/tasks that you are expected to execute. But very few really tell employee's how their role is expected to interact with customers. Now there are the “experience leaders” like Starbucks, Disney, Southwest, etc. that put a priority in defining the employees role when interacting with a customer but this is the exception not the rule.

4. Deploy – Just like the Control Phase of DMAIC, the Deploy step is just as it sounds. It is about the implementation of your customer experience design leveraging the tools described earlier. Some of the key aspects of the Deploy step is training the employees, leveraging metrics to measure the improvement that have been implemented, share the success with the management team, and last but not least continue to tweak the customer experience as opportunities exist.

Building a customer experience design takes time, resources, and some financial commitment to assure your return on investment is attained so I strongly suggest you collect “live data” by talking to customers and using some of the same tools and approaches described in the “Discover” step. Watching the needle on a dashboard is one thing but hearing and seeing your customers experience changing in a positive fashion is something that should be done in person. Nothing is more powerful then talking to a customer and hearing “why” things are improving. While process improvement depends heavily on data, monitoring your experience takes a little more time and effort in which you need to roll up your sleeves and see the experience firsthand.  In summary, get involved where your customers are being impacted by your customer experience everyday so you can execute a "Holistic Continuous Improvement" framework.

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Thank you for reading the article. You may follow me at @bradnelsonops.