The Holistic Customer - Beyond the Website Experience
For organizations that have multiple venues, channels or modalities by which a
user can interact with their services or products, developing a seamless
customer experience across all touchpoints is the new nirvana. Few
companies
are doing it well, and even fewer resources seem to exist on how to integrate
the disciplines of interaction design and user experience with the long
histories of customer service and brand marketing best practices. In many
organizations the responsibility for the website experience is in a separate
silo, or even a separate legal entity than the rest of the company, making
developing a truly holistic user experience more a battle of politics than of
design.
I have had the great fortune to drive the creation of a top US retailer’s
user experience function while at the same time participating in its
simultaneous new focus on a broader customer experience discipline. This has
forced me and members of my team into new ways of thinking for designing a
truly holistic customer experience:
* How do we engage users in multiple venues before and after they use our
website? How can an interaction successfully cross modalities?
* How does word of mouth (digitally or physically) shift a user’s needs and
expectations for a website?
* If a brick and mortar experience for the brand exists, how should it mirror
or differentiate from a digital experience?
* How does ‘brand experience’ fit in with the user experience, and how does
the hot ‘customer experience’ buzz word impact us?
* Are website personas still valid, or should we instead be thinking about
holistic customer personas who use different channels at different times for
different needs, but who want to operate seamlessly across all of those
experiences?
* How do we measure a successful holistic experience across channels and
modalities?
I will cover my learnings (successes and mistakes!) thus far in this brave new
world of optimizing for a multi-channel customer experience, and provide
actionable recommendations. Participants will walk away with specific ideas and
exercises to bring to their own organizations. Even if you work
for a
purely
online company, many offline conversations and experiences influence online
needs and behavior!
This session is for any IAs, UXers and other friends who are interested in
broadening their career opportunities and challenges to the holistic human
experience. It is a tangible case study for optimizing a holistic
multi-channel customer experience – providing tips for participants that
cover the tactical and actionable to the visionary and aspirational.
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