Control and Customer Experience

In customer experience design, ease has been overemphasized.   It is assumed, often without the proper research, that the customer’s deepest wish is a one-click buying process for a product that will operate with the push of a button.   For some customers and for some products, this may be the case – but in many instances it is entirely possible to make things too easy, such that the customer finds the acquisition and operation process unappealing and disempowering.

The Need for Control

Philosophically, it is a defining characteristic of human beings to attempt to control their environment.  Psychologically, the feeling of being out-of-control is one of our greatest horrors.   Having control gives a feeling of safety and empowerment - and while the ethics of exerting control over other human beings is debatable (this is the basis of most political conflicts), it is clear that man demands to have dominion over things and expects to have control over the people who accept payment for service.

While the ultimate desire of the customer is to solve their problem, their satisfaction with the solution often depends on the level of control they were able to exert.  If something seems “too easy” then there is suspicion about whether it will provide a satisfactory outcome – and if the customer overcomes their apprehension in advance, a too-easy solution creates no sense of satisfaction in having performed the task, hence no sense of satisfaction with the brand.

Granted, it is a matter of balance: “too difficult” is worse than “too easy” because it frustrates customers and prevents them from deriving the benefit of the product – but this is a scalar rather than binary decision.   It is a matter of finding the right level of difficulty for a given customer in a given buying situation.

Levels of Control

 The concept of control considers what a person must do to accomplish an outcome.  The less they do, the less control they can be said to have.  In this sense, the level of control can be generalized into four categories:

• Primary Control - An individual is able to directly interact with the environment to achieve a desired outcome.  A homeowner waters his lawn to cause the grass to grow.
• Secondary Control - An individual is able to give instruction to other people who will perform the task that will achieve his desired outcome.  The homeowner tells his gardener to water the lawn.
• No control - An individual understands that he is at the mercy of the environment and has no method of achieving a desired outcome.  The homeowner hopes that it will rain so his lawn will not die.
• Illusion of Control - An individual performs activities that have no actual connection to an outcome, but which he believes to be correlated.  The homeowner does a rain dance to cause the spirits to water his lawn.

Psychologically, the individual discounts the participation of objects and agents when considering the outcome of his control.   He will say "I watered the lawn" rather than "the sprinkler watered the lawn" or "my gardener watered the lawn."   It is in the same way that video game players speak in the first person about activities their avatar performed (I leapt the gorge and slew the dragon).  To the individual, it is the intention to do the act, rather than the physical requirements of performing it, that convey a sense of power to see that his will has been done.

As an aside, there are even products for which the satisfaction of exerting control is the sole benefit.   No-one climbs a mountain or wears jewelry to achieve any functional benefit – these tasks are done for the sake of doing them, and the psychological benefit (self-esteem or social esteem) of performing the task itself.

Tuning the Level of Control

 Ideally, the product will provide the user with the level of control that he desires to have – and there is no one level of control that is suitable for all users.  This is the foible of the assumption that everyone wants everything to be as easy as possible at all times: it inherently assumes that no-one ever wants to exert any control at all.   This cannot be safely assumed, and some consideration (preferably based on or confirmed by actual customer research) must be given to the level of control that the user wishes to have.   But there are some general principles that can be applied:

1. Importance.   How important is it to achieve a good or precise outcome by performing a task?
2. Capability.  Does the customer have the knowledge and skills to leverage the controls that are provided by a given solution?
3. Self-Esteem.   To what degree does the customer take pride in his own ability to perform the task?
4. Social Esteem.  To what degree do others demonstrate respect for the customer for demonstrating his skill/ability to do the task?
5. Value.   Is the value of the benefit perceived as being worth the time and effort of using a solution that provides a given level of control?

And finally, there is no single level of control that is “just right” for all customers in all situations – which is the reason there are markets for various products that represent different levels of control.    The customer who wants a cake may be satisfied to buy one from a bakery, or they may prefer to purchase a cake mix and ready-made icing, or they may purchase the ingredients and utensils to make it “from scratch.”

Correspondingly, there are markets for the various products that provide different levels of control.  The mass-producers generally seek to serve the preferences of the majority of customers, but there are markets to serve customers who want to exercise a greater or lesser degree of control than the masses.  Hence the existence of bakeries did not wholly demolish the market for cake pans.

Ultimately, getting the level of control right for a given customer is critical to winning the market – and making things too easy is just as disastrous as making them too difficult.   There is a common example, possibly an urban legend, about the first cake mixes that required the customer to “just add water” – and these failed horribly, but when the mix was adjusted so that the customer was required to also add an egg, they found success.  That one extra step was not a nuisance, but a means for customers to feel that they had just the right level of control.   This same principle applies to any product and any market, and merits careful consideration.