When people think about customer experience they often think about emotions. How people feel when they engage with you, your company, and your products. Yet, experience is also about behavior. And it also includes utility. Do you really know how they use your product?
Do you know what your product does for them? How challenging it is to use it? How easily it solves their problems?
A customer experience metric that is sometimes overlooked is CES – Customer Effort Score. This is a companion to NPS and CSAT. Even if the customer is totally satisfied with the outcome that your product delivers. Even if they tell everyone they know about you. If it’s just too hard to use, their enthusiasm will wane over time.
An analogy for these three metrics is they are like cardio, strength and flexibility is to exercise. They are on a continuum in terms how fast (or slow) you lose ground in them when you don’t exercise. As well as how fast you gain it back when you put some effort behind it. And like body flexibility, it can be something we lose momentum on because the gains aren’t immediately visible.
When you have an opportunity to survey or interview your customers, make sure that you include questions on how they use the product and how easy it is for them to do so. You might be surprised at what you hear.
They could be using it for purposes that are different than what you intended. That could illuminate a better understanding of your ideal customer and their problems. Which is useful for both your marketing and product development. Though if they are using your dumbbells for paperweights – then you might want to really rethink things, lol.
If they struggle with using the product, then you can rethink better ways to make it easy. It could signal a need to improve your onboarding and support processes. Or even tweaks to your interface or help prompts.
What we don’t want is for our products to take the path of a lot of new year resolutions. Great enthusiasm at the start of the year, then put aside six weeks later!
Like our products, the best behaviour changes stick if they become easier over time.
Here’s to lots of success in 2022! Wishing you all that you want the year to bring you!
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