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Why is the customer experience a game-changer?
If the customer experience is undervalued, don’t expect a successful outcome.
It’s incredible how many companies don’t give the required attention to the customer experience. Many companies tend to focus on customer service, KPIs, NPS, and some other directions. Although they are essential, the customer experience should never be undervalued or even forgotten. If the company cares about its customers, the customer experience must receive the required attention.
Customer experience involves much more than handling the touchpoints with care. It also includes emotional and behavioral aspects. People will judge the experience based on its peak, the best and worst moment.
The Peak-end Rule says that people judge an experience based on how they felt at its peak and its end, not the average of every moment of the experience. And that’s true whether the experience was good or bad.
— Jennifer Clinehens, How Uber uses psychology to perfect their customer experience
In one of the places I worked, focusing on the customer experience was a game-changer. However, it didn’t happen from one day to the other. It was a process.
The scenario
I was the Product Owner of a startup in Brazil; we wanted to disrupt the used car market. The value proposition was quite simple: “We sell your car in 90 minutes”. The process happened like this:
- Customer books an appointment;
- Customer brings the car;
- The mechanic inspects the vehicle for 30 minutes;
- An auction with the car starts, and it lasts around 45 minutes;
- The customer receives the offer;
- If the customer accepts the offer, he/she goes home by cab;
- If the customer turns down the offer, there is no cost for the customer.
I realized that our conversion rate was far from our goals, even though there were reasonable offers and a good competition…
