The cult of the customer (experience)
August 2nd, 2008 by Hugh Kennedy
Anyone who feels their customers are locked up in loyalty and just dandy with their products may want to check out Adaptive Path’s recent presentation at Google headquarters.
The presentation was a bit of a pitch on their new book, Subject to Change, but it’s a lot more than that. If only to see what you can do to take some of the suck out of PowerPoint as a presentation tool it’s worth your while.
If I can take a swing at their core point, the only way to build a “long Wow” into today’s products for customers is to approach products as platforms that continue to get better, often with Web-based updates that take the pressure off trying to predict every new feature that’s needed in the first generation.
My favorite statistic here, from a 2003 Bain study, is that of 362 companies surveyed, 95% felt they were customer-focused, 80% felt they delivered superior experiences, whereas only 8% of those companies’ actual customers felt the same way. Clearly, the bulk of these companies did not (and probably still do not) internalize and operate each day with the goal of superior experience as a customer priority.
Some of their support points:
* Focus on experience and use it as a strategy.
* Focus on the lives of customers and understand people as people (versus stats or even personas).
* Embrace complexity and use systems to support experiences.
* Focus on design as an ongoing activity not an aesthetic practice.
If you have a free hour during August, give it a look.
