CXPA is excited to announce that Matt Dixon, co-author of "The Effortless Experience," will keynote at the annual Insight Exchange on May 16 & 17 in Phoenix, AZ. Matt speaks to the critical need to provide customers with an effortless experience whether it be a quick in-and-out transaction or easy way to get a refund for an accidental overcharge? So often we want to dazzle and "wow" customers to inspire their undying loyalty. We sat down with Matt to get a glimpse into this exciting keynote speech.
CXPA: Matt, tell us more about your philosophy around Effortless Experience?
Matt Dixon: Effortless Experience is the argument that most companies believe, in order to create a loyalty building customer experience we have to "wow" and delight customers while exceeding their expectations. We went out and studied this idea with data from 125,000 customers. We found that the delighted ones are no more loyal than the ones whose expectations are met. In fact, service interactions are 4 times more likely to make customers disloyal. Customers are driven crazy by having to call back, be transferred, asked to repeat info, tell their story over and over, key in account numbers and then are asked to repeat it when they get a representative on the line. When we look at drivers of loyalty, if work is put on the customers plate by the company, it leaves a customer disloyal.
The bumper sticker of all this would be: rather than focusing on making your customers loyal, focus on making them less disloyal.
CXPA: We talk a great deal about emotion in CX. When you discuss delivering on basic promises - it just doesn't sound as "sexy" as being wowed or die hard fans? How are people emotionally impacted when the experience is effortless?
Matt Dixon: Effort from the customer’s perspective makes up only one third whereas two thirds feel. That is, in a high or low effort only 1/3 of the effort has to do with what the customers interpretation of the interaction was, 2/3 of their interaction effort has to do with how they felt about what they did and their perception of what they had to do - rational vs. "how I felt about the steps I had to take." The biggest lever is the emotional lever. This is good news for companies as we redesign our websites so customers can find what they want, streamline customer service centers, and reduce expenses and time. Even if you don’t fix any of that, you can still reduced effort for customers by managing emotional components, the words that come out of the reps mouth and the customer's interpretation. The best companies teach reps how to use language techniques to manage customer interpretation of the interaction, they perceive it as low effort. A chapter of the book is titled “Just because there’s nothing you can do doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do.” This gets at how you deliver a “no” with principles in behavioral economics that can turn into a positive experience. I will share a really cool example of this at the Insight Exchange. Disney Parks uses “experience engineering”, using words in a scientific way to get customers to perceive the effort of the interaction in a different way. If you ask, “when does the park close?” rather than saying, “The park closes at 9”, they’ll tell you “the park stays open until 9” positive version of a bad news answer. The experience is then rated at a higher level.
CXPA: Can you share a real world example where you've witnessed this?
Matt Dixon: I’ll present high level findings at the Insight Exchange, but in our research we were able to pinpoint the companies that rated as delivering a lower effort experience.
Companies teach representatives to use language in a different way. They spend time creating a simple, intuitive website - "If you have this issue, go here. If you have this issue, go here." They design language to be easily consumed. Travelocity, made an investment to get customers to have a low effort experience by hiring a team of English majors. They wrote simple and clearer language. Language that equates to an 8th grade reading level. Too many people had their hands on the copy before it reached customers: marketing, legal, human resources, with simpler language people could understand the website and find their answers better.
First Contact Resolution in the contact center space: what % of time do we resolve callers problems? Companies who are low effort mindset think beyond solving what the customer called about, but instead solving what they might call back about. Dyson uses this strategy. If a customer calls to order replacement parts, they noticed the customer often ended up breaking the replacement upon installation, requiring them to call back. They began sending two replacements because they found it was cheaper to send two then to have the customer call back. We call this "Next Issue Avoidance," avoiding what might they call back about.
CXPA: What are the critical first steps an organization needs to start with when focusing on building effortless experience?
Matt Dixon: 1. Companies don’t get paid for exceeding their customer expectations. We never define what that means in the research. You need to understand what your customers' expectations are and be careful of going beyond that, you’ll change their expectations and the customer will feel you under delivered the next time
2. What level of effort are you imparting on your customers and where is it coming from? Website? Person-to-person? Second issue? Software? What kind of effort level are you giving customers and if it’s high where is it coming from?
CXPA: Anything else you'd want to share with our members in advance of the Insight Exchange?
Matt Dixon: Metrics that came from the research, particularly customer effort score, have become a topic of debate. At the Insight Exchange we will talk about customer effort score. It's not silver bullet, but an important indicator that provides a level of detail in the CX that others don’t because of their altitude. We aren’t trying to create a debate, we just believe it’s important to spot the momenst that are creating issues in the service interaction, knowing its happening and why its happening.