Pleased to announce ...

Carolyn and Chris have both been accepted as associates with Facilitators International http://www.facilitators.co.uk/

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Facilitators is an internationally recognised brand facilitating and delivering sustainable business improvements.

Is your website UUD or UUDon’t

Recent research shows that in order to be really effective Websites must be three things:
• Useful – the site must offer the customer value, tell the customer what they want to know
• Usable – the site must be easy to use, simple to read and navigate through
• Desirable – the site must appeal to the emotions of the customer

Many companies have seen significant improvements in their website KPI’s (e.g. conversion rate from visitors to sales, effectiveness of key content and number of repeat visits) following re-design improving the site usability. However there is a steadily growing body of research that shows companies are losing out by not addressing “desirability”.

We all make instant decisions based on lots of small stimuli. Colours, fonts, layouts, pictures all combine to give us an immediate impression – not only of the site but of the company it represents. A website which gives a good impression can raise a customer’s opinion of a brand as a whole.

A recent small study we carried out on e-commerce websites revealed that one site was leader in evoking positive feelings of trust and desirability. The site contained elements (colours, images etc.) that have been shown in research to evoke feelings like trust. However there were still areas in which it could be improved, a different website was better at evoking a sense of excitement and the feeling of ‘getting a good deal’. What was surprising to us was the spread of the websites across the range of emotions – although all were good websites, there were clear winners.

So check what your site is saying to both the conscious and the subconscious. Don’t throw away the advantage of a useful and usable site by having undesirability which makes your customers feel uncomfortable and unwelcome (whilst your back is turned?).

Negatives to Positives ...

I had to take some clothes to the dry cleaners the other day. To set the scene, I had a busy day ahead and needed to drop my cleaning off before going to work so that I could pick it up later that day. At opening time I was outside the dry cleaners, ready and waiting – but it didn’t open. I waited, but still no sign of anything happening. After ten minutes I’m getting a bit annoyed - time is getting on.

Just as I was getting really irritated a member of staff from the dry cleaners, sitting on a nearby bench came over. It turned out that her supervisor, with the key to the premises, had yet to arrive. After discovering that I was waiting she went off to phone the missing person. On her return she very kindly took my cleaning from me, took my name and address and promised that it would be ready for me to pick up later that day. I was able to leave my cleaning even though the shop wasn't open. My cleaning was ready when I returned ... I was a very happy customer.

So even though initially the service went completely wrong – the shop wasn’t open for business and a key member of staff may even have forgotten to go to work that day – the actual service I received was excellent. I was so pleased I actually went away with a more positive impression than I would have done if everything had gone to plan! I felt that the staff had really gone out of their way to help. My point is - that whilst “right first time” is definitely the best policy, a really good customer experience in the face of service problems can still be a winning strategy.

The art of differentiation

I was reading about Delta Airlines plans to introduce Wi-Fi access on all internal US flights by the middle of 2009. This really interested me as I had come across an article a few months ago on a business travel site about how Wi-Fi would be the next big differentiator between airlines.

When I first read about this I was unsure about how this would work as a differentiator. I was looking at it as a purely functional feature; these are often easy to copy and as a result don’t remain differentiators for long (in fact the same article containing Delta’s announcement mentioned that a number of other airlines have announced similar plans).

But on further thought, from an emotional design point of view, Wi-Fi is an interesting addition to the in-flight service. Reading comments posted on the web about the accessibility of Wi-Fi during travel showed me that it’s an emotive subject. The language used includes many emotional terms such as trapped, bored and distressed. There are references to feelings of safety (a big emotive subject!) and gratitude with people expressing that Wi-Fi access will increase their feelings of comfort and peace-of-mind.

So is Wi-Fi just a new functional feature, readily copied, destined to be standard in a few years or could it be the starting point of a new emotional design brief for a service? I think it would be interesting to do a service re-design that focused on the growing perceived need for the type of connectivity that Wi-Fi provides and the implications of its availability. Potentially one airline could become the carrier synonymous with “outside world connectivity” or “complete productivity” – a differentiation which would remain long after Wi-Fi becomes standard.

Lean and Emotional Design

I’m a great fan of using Lean techniques for process improvement. Services can be spectacularly inefficient so big savings can be achieved by removing some of the waste which creeps in over time. In addition unnecessary waiting, bureaucracy and all other forms of service waste can seriously impact the customer experience.

I recently attended an event where I was involved in a discussion on how ‘intangibles’ can add value to a service or product. At one point the discussion moved onto the issue as to whether implementing Lean damages the customer experience - it was argued that Lean is totally incompatible with excellent and emotionally engaging customer service.

One example given was that of a service where the customer designs a gift. Some of the design features available to the customer are purely sentimental and have no practical purpose but it is the sentimentality of the gift which makes it popular. It was argued that Lean would remove the ‘unseen’ personalised elements because they would be considered to be waste – damaging the emotional appeal of the gift and the overall customer experience.

I’ve been thinking about this and have come to the conclusion that this shouldn’t be the case. As part of a good Lean implementation the company should decide up front what constitutes waste and what is ‘value-adding’ in the eyes of the customer. There is no reason why an emotionally engaging step can’t be recognised as value-adding. What Lean should do is to make sure that the emotionally engaging part happens on time, consistently, with the minimum of wait and fuss.

Emotional engineering for service continued....

Part 3 of our blog post on applying emotional engineering principles to service design, click here to read part 1 and this link to read part 2

Common sense might tell you that a fast speed of service is a good thing in a restaurant catering to people who have somewhere else to go – but to really optimise the service we need to answer more indepth questions e.g. exactly how fast should the service be? How does combining service speed with the restaurant lighting affect the emotions experienced by the customer? What happens when you add in “how customers are greeted on arrival” as an additional factor? Is the style of tableware important?

And what emotions do we want to evoke? (they may well be specific to the individual service, and might not be as obvious as you first think). Which emotions go beyond satisfaction and enter the region of engagement?

....enter emotional engineering.

Using emotional engineering we can answer these questions, often with surprising results.

Emotional engineering for services continued...

Ok - this is part 2 of this blog post on applying emotional engineering to service - to read part 1 click here

When we apply emotional engineering to a services, one size doesn’t fit all. We can’t look at what works with one service and apply it across the board. Each service needs to be emotionally engineered to appeal to its typical customers using the service in a ‘usual context’.

Two extremes of a design element can make or break a service in the right context: for example, there are two excellent Italian restaurants near where I live. The first has leisurely service, the second serves food so quickly you practically have to catch it as it passes over your head. These are two different extremes of the same design element - speed of service but both work because they’re perfectly matched to their typical customer personas within usual context.

Context....

The first restaurant caters for people having a relaxed evening out: fast service in this setting is likely to evoke negative emotions, possibly annoyance and frustration. The customer may feel disappointed that the meal they’ve been looking forward to is going to be over too quickly. They may feel irritated at feeling a conscious need to slow down in an attempt to string the meal out. The second restaurant is located next to a theatre and close to a cinema: ideally suited to customers fitting a quick meal before going to see a film or a show. In this setting fast service evokes positive emotions (relief, excitement, pleasure). Slower service is likely to evoke irritation and anxiety about time. So, if the restaurant understands exactly how it's customers want to feel, it can begin to tailor its service to optimise those emotions.

Next post - Can't we achieve this anyway without emotional engineering?