Customer experience intertwined with Customer expectation has been popping up on my feed of late. With strong argument for spending time first to understand customer expectation, before designing improvements in the experience. This renewed focus on expectation may be driven by a commonly cited stat...that approx 80% of people say they deliver a great customer experience vs approx 20% of customers saying they receive a great customer experience. Experts say that this gap is being driven by a difference in expectation. Some may say this a B2C or digital topic only. However, having run a number of CX and Brand innovation workshops recently, I have seen how spending time to understand customer expectation not only highlights the gaps between company belief in what they deliver and what customers receive, it also helps to find innovations that can be measured by customer expectations being met, to support brand strategy. Surprsingly it can also drive simpler solutions e.g. incorporate user copy experience in communications, to improve emotion and therefore overall experience more simply than fancier digital solutions. This is particularly important while we wait for data and processes to catch up ;-). To get started I would suggest the following. 1. Run experience research to understand expectation and emotion at key touchpoints in a decision journey (across medical, access and sales is a good start). 2. Map the customer decision process and what's getting in the way of progression. 3. Understand the gap between customer expectation and experience delivered at key touchpoints. 4. Work with a cross functional team to create innovations. 5. Don't be afraid of innovations which may seem 'minimal' to begin. The aim is to deliver or set expectations. Setting expectations may be quicker while you plan to deliver improvements. What are your thoughts...should we start to investigate expectation as part of designing customer experience?
Good approach very clearly laid out. Managing expectations is critical and often not focused upon deeply enough. I’d add that in some cases expectations can be impacted by frozen perceptions - long-held internal biases which close the aperture for information. Even the “best” messaging sometimes simply doesn’t get through - to manage expectations or anything else. Unfreezing these perceptions can be a critical first step in calibrating expectations.
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4moClarity on customer expectation should be part of the insight generation & customer understanding phase for the latter to be complete I believe. I don't see it as something new