Contextual Levels of Customer Experience

It seems to me that the notion of "customer experience" is used with a vague sense, if any sense at all, that "experience" has an object and occurs within a context.   The object is fairly easy to define (it is typically some aspect of a brand, at least insofar as the facilitator is concerned), so what I'd like to meditate upon is the context, specifically the level at which and experience occurs.

This is likely to be rather tedious, but there's value to the tedium: often we are conflicted in designing user experiences because we are focused on a specific level of experience to such degree that we fail to consider the impact on other levels of experience - and as such we end up making grave mistakes that are detrimental to both the customer and our brand.

A ready example is making the experience of the purchasing process beneficial, when the product that is purchased renders no benefit to the consumer in the context of their journey to serve a specific need.   Our motivation to do so is based on both altruistic intent (to make the purchasing experience simple and pleasant) and mercenary intent (to make a profit from an immediate sale), but detrimental to the customer's long-term interest (there will be disappointment when an easy-to-buy product does not address the need for which it was purchased) and our own long-term interest (a disappointed customer will refuse to consider the brand when they have a legitimate need for it).

That aside, it's also useful to be able to consider the context of experience in order to better understand what, exactly, we are doing when we mean to orchestrate and experience and to determine whether the course we are considering is productive (or at least not counterproductive) on the various levels of experience.

That said, I'll get on with it ...


Experience of an Interaction

Interactions are the molecules of customer experience - molecules, rather than atoms, because they are made up of smaller parts that are the individual actions and reactions between the customer and the brand.   Interactions are very quick, and are often not inherently meaningful - there are likely very few occasions in which a single interaction accomplishes a transaction.

A few examples of interactions:

• The customer sees an online advertisement (an action taken by the brand) and clicks it (the customer's reaction to that action)
• Clicking the advertisement (the customer's action) causes them to load the brand's landing page (the brand's reaction)
• The landing page presents text (action) that the customer reads (reaction)
• The landing page presents a form (action) that the customer fills in (reaction)

The last example is likely more than a single interaction, as a form that contains multiple fields presents a number of interactions: the form presents a "name" field into which the customer enters their name, the form presents an "email" field into which the customer enters and email address, the form presents a "submit" button that the customer clicks.

I struggle to describe what distinguishes a single interaction from a complete transaction, but my sense is that the individual interaction does not suffice to accomplish a task - that is, when the user enters an email address, nothing happens.   When they click the "submit" button, something happens, but unless they also tended to the other interactions (providing name and address), the task is not complete.

Experience of a Transaction

This leads to the consideration of a transaction, which is comprised of all the interactions necessary to complete a task, but not necessarily all the interactions necessary to accomplish the greater goal of satisfying a need.

Consider the transaction of shopping at a retail store.  The actions that occur from the moment the customer arrives at the store to the moment they leave constitute a single transaction (buying detergent) - that is to say that entering the store, walking the aisles, selecting a bottle of detergent, carrying it to the cashier, paying for it, and carrying it out are all interactions that occur to accomplish the immediate task of obtaining detergent, but do not suffice to satisfy the need to have clean clothing, because the customer must conduct a separate transaction (doing laundry) using the detergent in order for their goal to be fulfilled.

The definition of transactions seems poorly defined in common use.   Considering the example above, many would consider the checkout process to be a separate transaction from the process of gathering merchandise - but to return to the definition of interaction, the checkout process is not meaningful if performed in isolation (to walk into a store and go to the checkout without merchandise is pointless) and therefore cannot be considered a self-contained transaction, but merely a discrete set of interactions within the context of a transaction.

This also calls to mind that many actions are not directly related to the transaction.   If the customer reads the label on the detergent to ensure that it is compatible with his high-efficiency washer, this is a supportive interaction (the customer feels confident in proceeding) but not a necessary one (he could buy it without reading the label).   Moreover, there are a number of "wasted" interactions along the way (the customer reads the labels of several other brands he does not purchase - which is entirely needless to purchasing the one brand he ends up choosing).   This likely bears further consideration, but I will set it aside for the present.

The concept of "task" seems largely arbitrary, but fairly intuitive to define: to accomplish the goal of having clean clothing, requires an individual to

1. Obtain the necessary resources (detergent being just one of them)
2. Gather the clothing that needs to be washed
3. Run it through the washing machine
4. Transfer it to the dryer
5. Fold or hang garments
6. Transport the garments to the a staging location (bureau or closet) where they will be retrieved for wear

The sequence of tasks seems largely linear - it is possible to fold laundry before washing it, but entirely pointless - and the steps seem discreet, though there may be gaps between them (a person may load and start the washing machine, leave their home, and return later to transfer it to the dryer).

I also have the sense that I'm not quite clear on the distinction between transaction and interaction here.   Running the clothing through the washing machine is not a complete task, as having a washing machine full of soggy but clean clothing is not particularly useful, not is the transaction of placing clothing into the drier possible (or advisable) if the clothing has not been washed first.

It could well be that the concept of "transaction" is entirely subjective: an individual may feel that "doing laundry" is a transaction, and that the transaction is not complete until all the steps are done; or they may feel that "folding clothing" is a task that they start and finish in a manner that is dependent on the preceding task being completed.

I likely need to ponder this a bit further - perhaps it's something in the nature of choosing an unfortunate example - but I do have confidence that "buying detergent" and "doing laundry" are two discrete transactions even though there is interdependency and sequential necessity between them.

Experience of a Journey

A customer journey can be rather neatly described as everything that occurs from the moment a need is discovered to the moment it is satisfied - though it's likely necessary to specify that "a need" is meant as a single instance of a need rather than every instance in which a given kind of need arises in the customer's lifetime.

For example, the journey surrounding the need of thirst begins the moment that an individual realizes "I am thirsty" to the moment that their thirst is sated and the need no longer exists.   That is:

1. The customer recognizes they have a need
2. The customer identifies what they must do to satisfy the need
3. The customer recognizes they must have other things in order to take the action to satisfy the need
4. The customer considers how to obtain those things
5. The customer acts to obtain the things
6. The customer acts to satisfy the need
7. The customer decides (perhaps inherently) the need has been sated

Transactions are undertaken at each step of the journey, from beginning to end.   The degree to which a firm wishes to participate in the journey likely depends on the nature of their product: those that provide goods are likely concerned with steps three, four, and five whereas those that provide services are largely concerned with steps two and six.   But from the perspective of the customer, the full journey must be completed to satisfy their need.

My sense is that the current hubbub over customer experience is a broader consideration of the journey - that is, a traditional manufacturer is interested in selling their product regardless of whether it is satisfactory in satisfying the need for which the customer undertook the journey.    Moreover, customer expectations have become (if they weren't always) that those who provide goods and services to them take an interest in the completion of the journey, and may in some instances be argued to want their service providers to accompany them through more of the journey than they traditionally have (and some firms are interested in this as well).

Experience of a Relationship

The customer's relationship is a long-term phenomenon that consists of multiple journeys over a long period of time.   I am not entirely clear on whether customers consider the "relationship" to be germane to a specific need, a specific product, or a specific brand and I have the sense that all three relationships exist and are considered in a way that is somewhat interdependent.

That is to say that a customer may consider his relationship with hunger, consolidating all instances in which he undertakes a journey to satisfy that need in the context of his relationship to that need.   In essence, the customer splits the journeys he has among various activities and brands - to be hungry for something specific is a subset of the larger relationship with hunger.

A customer may also consider his relationship with a specific product of journey type.  "Also" is significant because the two levels of relationship are not exclusive.   Within the context of his relationship with hunger, he may consider "restaurants" to be a separate relationship than "vending machines" or "grocery stores."   The relationship may be further subdivided to consider his relationship with restaurants to be a parent of several children - his relationship with certain cuisines and restaurant formats (a relationship with full-service continental restaurants is different to a relationship with quick-service sandwich shops).

A customer may also consider his relationship with a specific brand: the entirely of his experience as a patron of a specific restaurant (or a specific location of a specific restaurant), and this is the level at which companies are most interested in pursuing, though there is some interest in gaining greater share of wallet by becoming the customer's preferred provided in a category or for a need.

It's also been suggested that the relationship with brand is more than merely a consolidation of journeys.  That is, a customer's relationship with a sports car may begin when they are a child who dreams of someday owning one (even though their first journey to purchase one will not begin for many years) and continue even into the years in which they are too old to drive, but reminisce about the years in which they owned the brand.  There seems to be some merit in this, such that the span of a relationship is much broader than the already broad notion of "from the time they bought their first to the time they sold their last."

Experience of a Lifetime

In the broadest possible sense, the customer's entire lifespan can be considered to be an experience, made up of many relationships, journeys, and transactions.   I do not expect that any firm is ambitious or foolhardy enough to attempt to be involved in the customer's entire lifetime, but instead chooses (if by default) only certain aspects of the customers lifetime during which it wishes to be involved.

At the same time, the lifetime experience is the ultimate level at which customer experience exists, and a level at which brands should consider the impact.   This is often reflected in high-level documents such as mission statements, in which the firm considers not only the purchase, its consequences, and the interactions it has over time, but the net impact that interacting with the firm has on the customer's lifetime experience.

For example, it is in the interest of a credit card provider to consider not only the use of the card at the register, but the impact that having consumer credit has on a person's life.  This includes not only the immediate results of using the card for purchasing, but the ultimate result that the facilitation of these purchases has on the customer's life: the benefit of being able to obtain things when needed (and the precipitating benefits of those purchases) and the detriment of being in debt over the course of their entire life.

This is extremely unwieldy, which is likely the reason that firms often back away from confronting such a huge proposition - but providing a good or service that is routinely used, and that makes a positive contribution to the customers' experiences of a lifetime, seems to me the ultimate goal of being in business at all.

***

This simple meditation has gone on quite long enough for my liking, but my sense is that there is a great deal more to be considered - some of the ideas are not as clear or refined as I would like or need further development.   I've noted a few things for future exploration and it's likely that this will be on my mind for quite some time.  So there's more to come, to be certain.