Evolving customer experiences

Damian, a friend of mine, recently shared a story about buying a new pair of running shoes. His old pair had fallen apart and he visited a shop recommended by a friend. Having waited over an hour to be served, he was finally greeted by a staff member. He said: "after waiting for so long, I was greeted by a staff member who was completely present to me. They spent 20 minutes with me, measured my feet, looked at my gait and knew everything there was to know about trainers. If only all shopping was this good. I bought three pairs of shoes!"

Like Damian, we see that good customer experience is replacing traditional branding, and great customer service takes precedence over marketing. In a search for authenticity, we want great experiences when we buy – and when they're good, we tell everyone we know.

One way of looking at the shifts in what we (and our customers want) is to use coffee as an example. First, coffee was sold raw and unprocessed – a transactional exchange. Then, there was instant coffee – a kind of refined product (or at least a more processed one), mass produced and sold in impersonal ways. After this came more refined offerings, premium products that were designed and targeted to specific audiences and tastes. Now, the pinnacle of coffee drinking happens via shops which deliver a unique experience.

Coffee is just one example of how the way we engage with companies has changed, yet it's amazing how many companies still operate on a transactional model. We often view the delivery of services in an industrial way, and our language around business traditionally been mechanical rather than relational, including the notion of 'selling to clients' rather than 'serving people'.

Services, like products, need to be designed to best serve those they're aimed to help. There are many new forms of design that claim to address this challenge. Service design, human centered design, customer experience design all promise to deliver great customer experiences. Yet somewhere in the excitement of creation, something is missing. For many companies that invest in engaging external designers, when it comes to actually delivering the service, there is a significant gap between expectation and reality. Designing things is great, but how do we actually deliver services that delight customers? How do we make a unique, personal and human experience real? How is a customer experience like the one Damian had made real, at scale, in large and complex organisations?

Designing things is great, but how do we actually deliver services that delight customers?

Peter Denning and Bob Dunham have done research on innovation and provide some insightful thinking when it comes to delivering great customer experiences. They offer the distinction between invention and innovation. Invention is coming up with ideas, and innovation is developing new practices.

We all love coming up with new ideas. It's great fun, as anyone who has done brainstorming, legostorming, bodystorming or any other type of creative idea generation will know. Ideas bring energy and enthusiasm, and they create a sense of what might be possible, and idea generation is a core part of any innovation process.

But ideas alone are not enough, and even the design of a service keeps it in an abstract place, safe from being tested in the real world. As Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of ethernet said "It wasn't inventing ethernet that helped me buy a house, it was because I sold ethernets for ten years"!

Invention is fun, but innovation is what's needed for succesful delivery of customer experiences. The ultimate innovation is teams of people that speak differently, think differently, and work together differently. It's when new ways of working happen inside organisations that help address customer needs that the work of innovation is done.

So create new ideas, and share them widely; get others involved and imagine what could be. But don't forget that the real work happens when ideas become real, and are applied in daily life through everyday work.

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