Providing the best product with the best service is no longer enough to win the preference of its customers. Today, it is no longer a question of meeting their expectations but of surprising them by anticipating their unconscious needs.
The smell of fresh bread tickles your nostrils as you finish counting the customers ahead of you in line. This time you came by bike, parking spaces are scarce on Sunday morning. You distractedly consult the free newspaper made available to you as you walk along a display of appetizing pastries. Finally it’s your turn. The shopkeeper speaks to you: “Hello, I’m listening”. She doesn’t seem to remember you. This is your third visit. You smile at him, order your croissants and a semi-grey bread. She tells you the account, very reasonable. By reflex you take out your card. You are answered with a slight annoyance: “We only take the cash, sir”. Same discomfort as on your first visit. Change returned on your 20 euro note, the shopkeeper gives you a mechanical smile. “Thanks, have a good day!” As you reply “to you too”, she is already welcoming the next customer. You painfully recover your bike placed among three others. Unfortunately, your change leaks out of your pocket on the third pedal stroke and forces you to stop to retrieve it…
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The smell of fresh bread tickles your nostrils as you finish counting the customers ahead of you in line. This time you came by bike, parking spaces are scarce on Sunday morning. You distractedly consult the free newspaper made available to you as you walk along a display of appetizing pastries. Finally it’s your turn. The shopkeeper speaks to you: “Hello, I’m listening”. She doesn’t seem to remember you. This is your third visit. You smile at him, order your croissants and a semi-grey bread. She tells you the account, very reasonable. By reflex you take out your card. You are answered with a slight annoyance: “We only take the cash, sir”. Same discomfort as on your first visit. Change returned on your 20 euro note, the shopkeeper gives you a mechanical smile. “Thanks, have a good day!” As you reply “to you too”, she is already welcoming the next customer. You painfully recover your bike placed among three others. Unfortunately, your change leaks out of your pocket on the third pedal stroke and forces you to stop to retrieve it… If you study this story from the angle of “customer satisfaction”, it is likely to be positive. The customer got what he wanted, the products are of quality, cause pleasure at a decent price with good availability. But if you reread it focusing on “customer experience”, it becomes much more questionable, even mediocre. Since the 1960s, marketing has struggled to measure and increase customer satisfaction, which can be defined as “the expression of a consumer’s satisfaction after purchase”. The customer experience takes into account the emotions felt throughout the journey that frames the purchase of a product or service, from intention to customer loyalty and recommendation, passing by fulfilling his promise. Satisfaction is measured, experience is lived. The productivist economy of the second half of the 20th century increased customer satisfaction by constantly seeking to improve the quality of products and services through consumer surveys and studies. The emergence of the digital economy has upset this paternalistic relationship. As predicted by the famous Cluetrain Manifesto, a sum of 95 theses written in 1999 and deciphering the internet revolution, digital has transformed the markets into “conversations”. Consumers now have a voice that is heard outside of studies and is listened to by everyone, everywhere, always. This voice does not express a rational qualitative opinion. It carries the emotional relief of the customer’s experience. So, providing the best product with the best service is no longer enough. Admittedly, the “quality/price/service” ratio remains a key factor in satisfaction. But at a time when each individual with a smartphone can order a quality good in a few seconds at a fair price, have it delivered everywhere, in good condition and quickly, the added value of trade has shifted from quality to experience, from satisfaction to enchantment. Already in 1980, the “theory of the confirmation of expectations” showed that the satisfaction caused by a response exceeding the initial expectations is greater than that which results from the simple realization of these same expectations. The idea of offering more or better than what the customer expects has pushed our companies to constantly improve the quality offered for 50 years. But the voice of customers, released on digital channels, has revealed another reality: a “good” product or service is not enough to cause real delight, a real pleasure to buy and consume. It is no longer a question of to reach, to exceed the legitimate expectations of the customer but to surprise him by anticipating his unconscious needs. These can only be detected by being attentive to the dissatisfactions that appear along the way. There is no doubt that the first Apple walkmans in 2001 were superior in quality to all the other MP3 players already marketed. But Apple, by precharging the battery of its iPods, has provided an answer to a latent need, thus offering buyers the ability to use them immediately without having to charge them, a frustration hitherto considered normal. It’s the customer experience that has been improved, not the product. Similarly in 2008, Jeff Bezos engaged his main suppliers in the “frustration-free packaging” initiative to respond to the “rage of packaging”, this dangerous exercise pitting an ill-equipped customer against impenetrable packaging which each year provokes dozens thousands of accidents. With just a few tweaks, the unboxing time for some Fisher-Price toys went from 11 minutes to 44 seconds! Amazon could have just improved its own order quality, pricing, offering, and delivery times. But Bezos did not stop at the quality of service, he was again interested in the customer experience. According to a study carried out by Trends-Tendances, in collaboration with VOObusiness, 70 to 80% of Belgian SMEs rely primarily on quality and relationships (helpfulness, politeness, etc.) to generate customer satisfaction, while less than 30% of them say they work on being proactive and anticipating unexpressed needs. Only 9% of VSEs with less than 11 employees claim to take care of simplifying the purchasing process, compared to 27% for companies with 11 to 50 employees. Yet it is in these areas that digital challengers come to shake up habits. It is by making the experience more fluid and by anticipating needs that platforms like Uber, Airbnb or Booking have cut huge croupiers in their respective markets without improving the quality of the final product. Is the customer experience the only prerogative of the digital giants? No. Amazon can be beaten in the field of physical commerce by investing time and attention in this experience. So let’s go to the other side of the bakery counter, but now with the eyes of a beginner who knows nothing about the business, evaluating at each step and interaction how the customer “feels” and thinking about ways to make the emotion experienced always more positive. To delight the customer, there is no point in improving the quality of the croissant: it is perhaps more judicious to work on the friendliness of the shopkeeper. But accepting cards, equipping yourself with Payconic or pre-collecting cash on a customer account that builds loyalty and avoids small change, working on memorizing the names and preferences of regular customers, offering something to taste or equipping the storefront with A bicycle parking lot would ultimately require little effort for a clear result: the improvement of the customer experience and therefore, real satisfaction that leads to lasting loyalty.
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