The point of what follows is that however well you market a product, however well we design the brochures, application forms and website for the marketing of that product, the experience of the customer is finally what counts.
I have a current account at one of the large banks in central London and have recently acquired a new income of £200 or so per month. Rather than pay it into my current account I thought it would be a good idea to open a new savings account with the same bank but local to where I live in the country.
I walked in to the local branch and, lo and behold, there was a marketing man’s typical scenario - 2 members of staff talking at the back desk with nobody at the counter. I waited whilst they finished their conversation - in truth, not too long - and told them what I wanted to do. They told me that I would have to make an appointment with an advisor who came in to the branch on certain days of the week. These days were not convenient to me so I was given a 12-page application form to fill in and leave with them to pass on to the advisor. I took the booklet and left. I did gently remark that filling in a 12-page form was not what I had in mind when I walked in to a bank where I already had an account, albeit with another branch.
A few days later I told a young man in the London branch what I wanted to do and he came up with an extremely satisfactory solution, all within 10 minutes. And it was a pleasant experience - I really enjoyed spending time with the young man and being in the bank. I have now set up an account (or more to the point, the young man did) where I pay the money into my new account every month and obtain interest. I left the bank a happy bunny!
My experience in the local branch is just a small example of the frustrating telephone conversations we all enjoy with our mobile providers, public service utilities and isps.
I strongly suspect that the heads of many of the large organisations we complain about don’t see the customer experience as central to the whole company. They don’t see it as something on which they should seriously focus. So they don’t have the machinery to collect this data and analyse it. To come back to my experience, unless I contact the bank concerned and tell them what happened, they will never find out.
Unless a company has the set-up to look for problems they will never know. They will see their footfall decreasing and their profits dropping but they won’t know why. And all that wonderful marketing and design work will be wasted.
When I’m trying to use a product that’s not working because the instructions don’t make sense or the parts aren’t fitting together as they should, I often say “I want the Managing Director of the company that made this, here, now!” This isn’t because I want to rant (well, perhaps a little!) but because I want him to share in the “customer experience.” Only when he has a real understanding of that will he understand how he can improve his company’s relationship with his customers and improve the bottom line.
As a matter of fact, whenever we are asked to design an instruction leaflet, we go to great pains to ensure that it makes sense and that it works with the product. We put ourselves in the position of the customer. This principle also applies to making up a set of Branding Guidelines. We make them clear. And we do this by assuming that in the future the client’s marketing manager/brand manager may be somebody we don’t know and that we might not be the company doing the work that has to conform to the Guidelines. This doesn’t happen very often of course! But the point is, we are putting ourselves in the role of the customer to ensure that everything works smoothly even when we’re not actually there.
Let us know what you think.
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