What Is A Customer Experience Really?

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Customer Experience is often a misunderstood concept. For our second issue, we would like to define what a Customer Experience is.

Some people equate a Customer Experience to Customer Service. While Customer Service is a vital part of the overall Customer Experience, the concept encompasses more than just how you interact with a customer. 

Other people think a Customer Experience is a compilation of rational aspects. They believe it is the price, shipping times, and details like how many times the phone rings before you answer it. These are essential parts of a Customer Experience, but they are not the whole of the experience. 

It helps when you are defining Customer Experience to remember that your customers are people. As we mentioned in the last issue, your customers are irrational. Therefore, you should consider all the irrational parts of an experience that go beyond the rational aspects and the conscious awareness that people have of an experience. At our global Customer Experience consultancy, we break Customer Experience down into four parts:

The Four Parts of the Customer Experience:

1. The Rational Experience - This part is the nuts and bolts of an experience, e.g., price, product, placement, and promotion. It is also what customers do.
2. The Emotional Experience - This section is how a customer is feeling during the experience, which sometimes starts long before they interact with you.
3. The Subconscious Experience -  We use this part to describe the signals you send to your customers’ unconscious mind with your Customer Experience design.
4. The Psychological Experience -  The last part covers how we think as human beings and relates to the background work you should do on understanding how people behave in a Customer Experience.

You have probably guessed by how we have broken this concept down, the importance we put on the emotional part of an experience. Our research in the early 2000s indicated that over half of any experience is emotional. 

Emotions are a significant factor in many of the parts of Customer Experience. We built it into the name of the component we call Emotional Experience. However, the signals your unconscious mind receives then triggers emotional responses as well in what we call the Subconscious Experience. Moreover, emotions affect how we think, which in turn influences our actions, so they are a vital part of the Psychological Experience, too. 

Emotions are a crucial influence on your efforts to create a satisfying and exemplary Customer Experience. Unfortunately, most organizations have focused their efforts on Rational Experience only and neglect the emotional parts entirely. While more firms recognize that emotions are significant to success, they don’t get specific about them. Instead, they view emotions as either positive or negative. In our experience as global Customer Experience consultants, that is not enough. 

Every organization’s Customer Experience has what we call an Emotional Signature®.  An Emotional Signature is the emotional engagement you have with customers. 

Your Customer Experience has an Emotional Signature right now, whether you were deliberate about what it is or not. We have research that helps you understand what your current Emotional Signature is. It also shows you what emotions drive the most value for your goals, and what emotions you should evoke with your Customer Experience. Therefore, today’s practical advice is to do some homework that will expose the feelings of your experience. 

There are three parts to this homework. We would first have you consider how your customers feel in your experience as it exists today. Also, we would recommend taking some time to determine what emotions inspire the behavior you would like to see in your customers. Finally, we would ask you to look for ways to evoke those inspirational emotions in your Customer Experience. 

In practical terms, this homework means you should walk the experience as if you were a customer yourself. Some examples could be:

• Call in and place an order. 
• Mystery shop one of your locations. 
• File a claim with the claims department. 
• Sit in the customer’s seat and look around your location to see it how they see it. 
• Call the customer service center to initiate a return.
• Make an appointment for a service call. 

Whatever it is that your organization does, pretend that you are seeing it for the first time. Take notes or record the conversation. Be sure to include how the moments make you feel. You might be surprised at what you discovered. 

In our next issue of Why Customers Buy, we will explore the two ways our mind works together to make decisions. It might surprise you to know that being irrational is, in many ways, an evolutionary imperative. 

There you have it. No promotions, no gimmicks, just good information. 

We hope you enjoyed this issue of Why Customers Buy. If you have, please forward it to a friend or colleague.

Think reading is for chumps? Try my podcast, The Intuitive Customer instead. We explore the many reasons why customers do what they do—and what you should do about it. Subscribe today right here.