Redefining Customer Experience Through Consumer Behavior

Many preexisting trends in customer experience have been expedited by the pandmeic. Online shopping, instant digital communication, and personalized marketing are just a few worth noting. Arguably most notable to the world of customer experience has been the emphasis on improving efficiency of service. Today’s brands are prioritizing fast and seamless experiences in response to exponentially increasing consumer expectations. But it’s important to understand which consumer behaviors are changing, which ones will always inherently exist, and how brands should respond to each. 

Consider the following example. Dan is a single father of three. He wakes up on Saturday after a hectic week of work and remembers his eldest son’s birthday is that Sunday. He has yet to buy a gift. His local mall has been closed since last March, but Dan doesn’t panic. He types in “size 11.5 Nike baseball glove” in Google’s search engine and is redirected to his Amazon account. He expects to find, purchase, and receive the glove in time for his son’s birthday on Sunday. He adds the item to his cart and is immediately advertised a Nike Alumunium Alloy baseball bat. He buys this too.  

Of course, Amazon uses the latest technologies to make the customer journey as efficient and painless as possible. They do this to guide customers like Dan into making effortless transactions. Depending upon Dan’s perception of his experience with Amazon, he may do the same for the birthdays of child number two and three. 

The pandemic’s impact on customer experience

As Jon Picoult, Founder of Watermark Consulting and Author of "From Impressed To Obsessed” recently shared with me, "“There is a stark difference between the customer experience leaders vs the laggards. The leaders outperform the laggards by a three to one basis.” 

In an attempt to follow Amazon’s lead and focus on customer satisfaction, many customer experience, marketing, and service departments have doubled down on digital transformation in 2021. This includes investing in tools such as more attractive website designs to encourage more purchases, self-service channels to improve speed of service before or after a transaction, and CRM systems to revamp operational efficiency. 

According to CCW Digital research, 81% of customer experience and service leaders agree that improving customer satisfaction is now more important than it was prior to the pandemic, contributing to more investments in advanced customer experience technologies. But as more businesses today understand the importance of customer experience, and continue to adopt digital transformation to become more operationally efficient, consumer expectations are increasing at an even faster rate. While the emphasis on efficiency in service has undeniably obvious advantages for the customer, are we overlooking another element in how they judge the their experience? 

The rise in consumer expectations 

The vast majority of consumers today state that they are less willing to tolerate traditional customer experience pain points, and will even switch to a competitor after just one or two poor interactions with a brand. In the example above, if Dan paid for one day shipping, and the products arrived on Monday, he may not have a present to give on his son’s birthday. He may choose Target, Walmart, or another competitor next time. 

With more brands than ever to choose from, today’s consumers are less willing to tolerate fragmented customer journeys, whether they be late product shipments, long wait times, repeating information to customer service agents, slow websites, and a number of other obstacles that became increasingly apparent throughout the pandemic. 

Any business leader that’s in tune with the shifts in consumer behavior is now well aware of their increased expectations. They are also aware of the ROI of quality customer experiences. This is primarily because we have now seen a world that struggled to deliver them. 

As customer inquiries began sky rocketing over a year ago, customers struggled to engage with businesses when they wanted to. Staffing and inventory challenges across organizations became increasingly apparent, and customer service, marketing, and sales functions struggled across industries. Operational efficiency became the solution. But the question remains, did it work? Are brands adhering to changing consumer expectations, or is efficiency in service just one of many areas of the customer experience that should be prioritized. 

The emphasis on customer experience efficiency

67% of customer experience and service leaders believe cost reduction and efficiency is a greater priority than before the pandemic, according to CCW Digital research. While delivering consumers efficient service is more important for both the consumer and the business, are there additional, cheaper strategies to customer experience? Jon Picoult, one of today’s most recognized customer experience consultants, thinks so. 

When an organization hyper focuses on efficiency, the chances of neglecting other considerations of the experience design may increase. This includes psychological components of perception, such as the level of control the customer feels, or the emotional response of the customer, provoked by the brand. Customers may or may not remember the content of their interaction with a brand, but they always remember how they felt during the experience.

An expert on experience design, Jon works with some of the world’s largest brands, personally advising CEOs and other members of the C-Suite, helping organizations capitalize on the power of customer loyalty.

What’s particularly unique (and even unusual) about Jon’s background isn’t that he received his A.B. in Cognitive Science from Princeton, his M.B.A. in Management from Duke, or any of his career accolades. In an industry heavily focused on digital transformation (i.e. AI, automation, and other technologies aimed at improving efficiency), it’s his psychological approach to customer service that stood out to me. 

I recently spoke at CCW Digital’s July online event with Jon about some of the psychological factors influencing customers' perceptions of experience, and where the hyper focus on efficiency can potentially have a negative impact.

Jon ’s insights have been featured by dozens of media outlets, from CCW Digital, to the The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, The Economist, Inc., NBC News to Forbes (from which the following excerpt of Jon’s is from). 

"When Efficiency Is The Enemy: How Great Companies Create Engaging Customer Experiences"

Starbucks’ former Chairman, Howard Schultz, learned this firsthand when, in early 2008, he was asked by the company’s Board to return to the CEO role and engineer a turnaround.  Starbucks’ stock had lost nearly half its value in the preceding fifteen months, and the financial stresses of the Great Recession were weighing heavily on the company...

A decade earlier, in an effort to improve speed of service, Starbucks replaced all of its original espresso machines with upgraded, automated ones.  

...In his visits to Starbucks stores, Schultz realized that those new, automated espresso machines weren’t just faster, they were also taller.  As a result, baristas could no longer maintain eye contact with customers as they prepared their drinks.

This was a big concern for Schultz, as it cut to the heart of the whole Starbucks brand value proposition, which was always about creating an authentic coffeehouse experience.  If customers couldn’t see baristas as they made their drinks, if they couldn’t maintain eye contact, then they might as well have been getting an espresso at McDonalds or any other fast food chain that prepares beverages out of sight.

...He commissioned a Swiss company, Thermoplan AG, to develop a new espresso machine exclusively for Starbucks, one that made great-tasting espresso but did it with a low-profile appliance, so baristas could once again see and chat with the customers they were serving. 

This change, as well as other in-store experience enhancements that Schultz championed, helped Starbucks emerge from the Great Recession stronger than ever, with the company’s stock outperforming the S&P 500 Index by an over 8-to-1 margin in the ensuing years.

How choice influences perception of experience

Make no mistake, efficiency is and should be at the top of mind for customer experience leaders. However, as the Starbucks example from the Great Recession shows, the importance of psychological factors in customer experience design must never be forgotten, because they are inherent principles that consumers will always desire. 

For example, a customer service department that prioritizes average handle time (AHT) metrics below three minutes may be rushing customers off the phone, failing to empathize with the customer, or understand and solve the customers’ needs. Hyper focusing on reducing average handle time metrics, many contact centers may miss out on enhancing the customer lifetime value (CLV) metrics that come with demonstrating an understanding of the customer’s problem, and then actually solving it. 

As Jon told me, “The principle is about giving people the perception of control.” While many consumer behaviors are changing, such as increased expectations of service, more digital communication, and efficient interactions, there are many basic psychological elements that are not. 

In the Starbucks example, the concept was as simple as maintaining eye contact, letting the customer know they have the employee’s attention. But the importance of psychology in customer service spans across all industries. 

In his book, Jon described one example from an experiment by the researcher Richard Mills in the 1970s. Mills went to the local Red Cross blood donation center and separated blood donors into two groups. In one group, the nurse was instructed to take the blood from the blood donors' non-dominant arm. But in the second group, the nurse gave the blood donors' the option which arm they would like to give blood from. 

As Jon told me, “The people who were able to choose which arm to have blood drawn from were significantly happier with the experience than those who had no choice.. What I like to call it is your conforming the experience to people’s thoughts,” or giving customers the perception of control.  

Not every organization can invest in every conceivable resource to solve every customer’s need. But they can use basic principles to enhance the perception of the customer’s experience. In a rapidly changing world of how brands and customers interact, consumer behavior should always be top of mind for business leaders. The trick is to discern which behaviors are changing, and which are not. Only then can they deliver competitive customer experiences. 

For media coverage, lead gen, and digital marketing inquiries, (or to say hi), contact me at matt.wujciak@customermanagementpractice.com, or connect with me on Linkedin.