Same day. Two big companies. Two issues. Two calls. Two customer experiences.
Diametrically opposite customer experiences.
Experience #1
Bank in Croatia that has recently changed its long term strategic partnership (previous brand abandoned its business operations in Europe) and now offers a new credit card brand. All users have been properly informed and successfully transitioned to new card holders. At least judging by my own experience. Until the issue happened.
Issue: failure of an online payment processing
Customer service call took about 4 minutes including my identity check, installation of a new token app and its activation. Special kudos for the operator. She went the extra mile and found the solution to make it happen despite the fact that my mobile number has a different country code.
Outcome: reassurance that this credit card brand will continue to cater my needs (as it was the case with its predecessor for the past 10 years).
Experience #2
An internet provider in Austria proudly promoting its 5G introduction and all the fancy perks around it. This company is continuously failing to deliver internet speed in-line with service specifications from the contract. Incidents became regular over the past few months, hitting the lowest points this week.
Issue: extremely slow internet connection (precisely 0.2 yesterday and 0.8 Mbps today)
Customer service calls took altogether about 1,5 hour, including ca. 2 minutes of actual conversations in-between melancholic music sounds, in a regular frequency interrupted with a prerecorded message of encouragement. They are busy working on a quick resolution of my problem.
Outcome: decision to terminate all three services provided by this operator that I have been using over the past 8 years.
What has actually happened here?
Regardless of the length of the journey itself, typical customer experience could be explained by four key elements:
Problem that calls out for some type of action to solve it
Action or set of actions orchestrated to solve the problem
Experience as a consequence of our actions
Memory of the experience that usually serves as a point of reference for future
Although naming it as a problem could prompt negative associations, it is clear that our “problem” can also represent any positive trigger for action (e.g. desire, curiosity etc.).
Whether we like it or not, we live in the age of consumerism. And we are looping in numerous experiences in the role of customers/buyers/users each day. Some of these experiences are pleasant. We enjoy them. Some are negative. We complain. Majority are neutral. They are ok, nothing special. We don’t bother much about them.
But what if we should?
According to Merriam Webster dictionary: neutral = not engaged on either side.
So, in reality, what we define as ‘ok, nothing special’ is actually an experience portrayed by the lack of involvement. We pay such a tiny attention to it that we either completely fail to memorize it or we do it for a very short span of time. And this is dangerous in the age of consumerism.
In his book “The Power of Habit” Charles Duhigg elaborates the three step loop process of our brain that forms a behavior called a habit: cue – routine – reward. According to him a reward “helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future.”
A memory of an experience we have as customers represents an equivalent to what Duhigg is referring to as a reward. This memory is a criterion that defines our future choices as a customer. It is responsible for our wish to repeat pleasant and our longing to avoid negative experiences at all costs.
Ostensibly irrelevant neutral experiences thus represent a serious lapses in a customer journey. They are a crack which an experience that is ‘nothing special’ wades many times through before it is experienced either as pleasant or as negative.
When it comes to dating we rarely end up with neutral experiences. We would never go on a date that was ‘nothing special’ twice.
Why do we disregard it when it comes to products or services and let firms get away without evaluation of the experience they have provided us with?
They stumble all the time. And we tolerate it by not bothering much about it.
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