Customer Experience versus User Experience

I just read an interesting post on Leisa Reichelt’s blog tackling the subject of “Customer Experience v User Experience” so I thought I’d attempt to articulate my thoughts on the subject.

The U in UX stands for ‘user’. A user in this context is a person who interacts with a computer system. During the advent of e-commerce UX suddenly found itself thrust into the limelight as it was thought that UX was one of the major contributors to determine product success – and failure where there was a lack of a coherent UX. However the users of the computer systems in the context of ecommerce, were no longer just mere users – like in the old days of desktop software –they were now potential 'customers'. These customers have quite different characteristics to users and they behave in different ways because they have higher needs, motivation and choice.  A customer will do what they need to in order to inform their purchase decisions; to make sure they are buying the right product, at the right price to meet their needs. This behaviour will invariably take them to various different places sources online and also offline. So the experience a customer has, is all encompassing and should consider passive and active experiences across all channels, not just the online channel.

A few years back I was engaged as a UXer by @alancolville, at what is now Virgin Media, to help design the hardware and the software for a new cable TV product. We began thinking about the ‘user experience’ but soon migrated into thinking more broadly about the total customer experience. Along with @damienread we took into account the broader experience ecosystem that included everything from online/video/TV and phone-based customer service and support, online/ offline and TV-based sales and marketing channels, operational support of installations, disconnections, fault-repairs and upgrades. It became a full-service customer experience programme.

This is where customer experience and service design actually become one and the same because you need to design for the full cross-channel customer experience. When you are dealing with a premium product of that complexity and a customer base who has choice through highly competitive offerings and a voice on public internet forums you need a much more holistic and strategic view. To play effectively in this kind of game there needs to be organisational changes to create an empowered cross-siloed, cross functional team who are responsible for delivering a customer experience that synchronised both internally and externally. Customer data and intelligence needs to be centralised so that all channels can benefit from the shared learning’s, then understand and act on the strengths and weaknesses in whole customer experience.

Here are some principles to consider when developing a customer experience strategy:

·      “Know me” – recognise and respect customers’ identities, preferences and behaviours across channels. If they have signed-up online and completed a customer profile, don’t make them do it again in-store to join your loyalty scheme.

·      “Do it once” – if customers move between channels to complete a purchase, minimise repetition of effort on their behalf to complete the deal. For example if a customer starts a mortgage application online but decides to finish the application in a branch, because they need some face-to-face support, don’t make them start the application from the beginning.

·      “Be consistent” – customers don’t see channels they see a single brand. If your experience or product offerings are different across channels there should be a very good reason for it.

·      “Be relevant” – design for everyone pleases no-one, so ensure that the design of the experience is focussed on the most important customers. Sure all customers are important, but you need to prioritise who the most important customers are to your business and make their experience relevant. 

Surprised I’m still surprised

I presented at the ThoughtWorks Retail Agility Conference on Agile Experience Design. Specifically I was looking at how retailers can take advantage of AXD to design, develop and deliver compelling, shopper-centric, omni-channel experiences that delight customers and drive business success.

I’ve been doing experience design for a long time. I’ve been doing agile experience design for a sizeable proportion of that time. When I was preparing the presentation I got that pre-presentation feeling, similar to the pre-publication feeling I got when reading the draft manuscript of our Agile Experience Design book. I was worried that I had nothing to say. I’ve been doing this stuff for so long that it has just become second nature to me and feels like common sense.

But no fear! A number of people approached me immediately after the presentation and thanked me for talking about the approach, about how inspirational it was and how it’s really got them thinking about how they can do things differently and most important, make a difference. Perhaps to other experienced practitioners in the same field, what I’m talking about isn’t necessarily all that different but it certainly seems to make a difference to many of the business and IT people that I meet along the way.

I guess that is similar to what James Box and Cennydd Bowles said in their book ‘Undercover User Experience Design’, “The fundamentals of UX design…are easy to learn but difficult to put into practice.” So I guess what I bring to the table is the benefit of my experience and the context of all of my learnings in different situations.

Agile Experience Design - the book

Wow how remiss of me! I have completely failed to blog about my biggest project of last year – the book! In November last year (2011) Marc McNeil and I published Agile Experience Design: A digital designers guide to agile, lean and continuous. To our knowledge it’s the first book to market about the topic of experience design in agile.

How it came about

There has been a lot of banter on the subject for a good number of years on various SIG groups, and lots of great presentations delivered at various conferences and published on the web that have sought to explain how to marry the two. However there was no one go to comprehensive reference point.

I remember when I started with ThoughtWorks (agile custom software experts) as the only UX person in Australia wishing that I could find a definitive guide book on how to do UX in an agile environment. It is a very different way of working but I was keenly aware that someone somewhere must have solved the problem, and that I didn’t need to work it out for myself. The book ended up being the book I wished that I could have read back then.

I joined forces with Marc when I moved back from Australia to the UK and realised we were aligned in our thinking on the subject. We were also still surprised that no one had published a book on the subject and so we set about doing just that.

An non-movable feast

From start to finish we had FIVE months. Prior to signing the contract I talked to Martin Fowler and Jez Humble, both successful authors, about the timescales and the unanimous opinion was that we were mad! Jez said ‘ You need at least 18 months to write the first draft, then you need some decompression time, then you need time to rewrite and edit.’ So we went back to the publisher, in the hope of revising the proposed publication date. However we were faced with a ‘deal or no deal’. Marc and I both laughed and agreed that we might as well die trying as not try at all.

A very non-agile process

In agreeing to the terms we were also asked to commit to the length of the book. At this point all we had written was two paragraphs describing the essence of the book. We had no idea. I flicked through a couple of notable books on my shelf, of the ilk that I thought ours might be, stuck a finger in the air and suggested 100,000 words. When we submitted our first draft, it was 135,000 words long. Naively we had not appreciated that 100,000 words had been cast in stone. We then had a very tough process to cut 35,000 words (over a third of the final book) from the manuscript (and still deliver on time).

Concurrent working

So five months is a doable time-frame, just, if you are a full-time author perhaps. But hey, we both had full-time jobs. This is the job that give us the experience and expertise to be able to write books. We both also have families. So we begged borrowed and stole time and worked bloody hard for five intense months to produce the book. We are grateful to our families in particular who made the bulk of the sacrifices, for allowing us to realise our ambition.

Collaborative and feedback driven

Two aspects that were sacrificed as a result of the timeframe was the ability to collaborate and also solicit feedback from peers and colleagues on the work in progress. We started off with the best of intentions and were able to include some contributions and get some feedback, but not as much as we might have liked. If word count and time had permitted we would have liked to have included more anecdotes and lessons learnt from other practitioners.

Test and learn

This book was only ever intended as a guide, rather than a recipe book. It would be a contradiction in terms to say that there’s a one size fits all approach to agile experience design. Every project will be different because of the budget, timescales and people/process/technology constraints.

However to stay true to the nature of agile experience design I’m keen to hear about people’s experiences and how they have aplied, adopted or adapted some of the concepts and ideas in the book. I promise to share the finding and attribute them to the contributers either on the accompanying website (if I ever get the time to add some content to it) or perhaps even in version 2.0.