A View From The Floor - NUX Manchester 2017

MEC Momemtum is at the heart of everything we do here and as part of the Digital Engagement team at MEC Wavemaker, we use this approach in order to create online content for our clients to drive consumer purchase decisions and digital performance.

The customer journey and associated user behaviour are both areas which I am ever more interested in and to promote my learning, I found myself at the most recent NUX Manchester event.

In case you haven’t heard of it, NUX Manchester is a Northern user experience community, where a group of UX design and usability enthusiasts across the north, meet regularly, to talk through ideas and share the latest knowledge, within an informal social setting.

The most recent ‘meet up’ on 30^th January, saw Frank Fenten from Dinosaur.co.uk, a creative communications company, take to the stage with his talk entitled: ‘How not to do CX – A Northern Rail case study.’ https://nuxuk.org/2017/01/16/how-not-to-do-cx/

The underlying message was that, actually, great customer experiences are easy for the consumer, as when things run smoothly we generally just do not notice, for there is no reason to question because things just work properly. Yet when CX (customer experience) is bad, it is truly awful; the whole experience leaves you frustrated, unable to complete the transaction or get to where you wanted to go and this results in negative brand perception. This is something which we have all experienced at some time.

Frank went on to deconstruct the Northern Rail customer journey, specifically around the complaints and returns procedure, which he construed was actually awful; it was not intuitive, did not account for UX best practices and was a brand which he had battled regularly.

But, what can we all learn from such examples which we can then take in to practice and that should sit at the heart of all we do? After all, the work that we all do for our clients and brands should centre on the consumer.

A few thoughts are below:

It is often all too easy working in the world of digital, to think solely of the customer journey around a brands website; a user searches via google, visits the site, looks around online and exists again. Yet, the customer journey is so much more than this and comprises all touch points. It surrounds everything a particular customer has done prior to landing on a website; what they have read, what they have watched on TV, conversations with a friend who has already purchased a product, and visits to social media. We must strive to centre all that we do around our knowledge of the consumer and the challenges they face, by anticipating user behaviour when they interact with a brands product or service and how that interaction actually fits into their personal goals.

Chosen Channel

It is imperative that brands speak with consumers across their chosen channel; wherever the consumer is, that is where the brand should be. The case study showed that this brand was not aware of how their customer preferred to interact.

A single customer view.

There has to be one single customer view. The wider team, here at MEC, manages the customer service for many clients and it is tremendous to see just how well this is done. Queries are answered and respondent times are less than an hour and each channel is integrated with information passed directly to other teams, which is the exact opposite of that which Frank condemned.

Customer Service doesn’t belong in a silo.

Brands should be using such customer service conversation as fuel for future decision making and to make sure problems are eradicated. This could include the use of queries taken, to form on site Q+As, in order to address public concerns and hence build out on site content. Alternatively these ideas could be used to fuel authority building campaigns, in order to drive organic performance and build brand awareness. Such initiatives reflect part of our content strategy work here at MEC.

‘Make people feel cared about and they’ll forgive you a lot.’

This one is huge, the saying “people won’t remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel” is so true. Brands must listen to the consumer and react in a way that is human.

This leads aptly into the fact that:

A brand message should translate across all touch points in order to appear realistic and transparent.

An advertising campaign message should not differ to consumer reality, which reflects Frank’s message exactly. It is imperative that brands have a cohesive brand message that sits across the entire customer journey in order to gain awareness, appear trustworthy and essentially build a loyal consumer base. Something that was disjointed in this case study.

It is the little things that count.

It is, therefore, all about the little things: the constant accretion of minor irritations has a huge effect on our experience. In a world of instant gratification, where we can mostly have what we want at a click of a button, there is zero room for irritation across the customer journey: a consumer will give up and go and deal with a competitor, if a brand does not have the user at heart.

A sounding conclusion is, that ultimately, everything is about people. It is about feelings AND it is about behaviour.

Therefore, across our cohesive work, we must endeavour to find that spot where both business goals and objectives are met alongside human needs.

You can check out NUX YouTube channel here https://www.youtube.com/user/northernux which houses the talk in question, along with lots of associated content from various other meet ups, and if you thought this was interesting, then come along to the next one - details of which can be found here. https://nuxuk.org/