Why user and customer experience are more important today than ever!

User experience is one of the buzzwords of today. Ever since it became generally known how Steve Jobs dealt with the customer experience of his products in an almost manic way, it has been part of every marketing manager’s good manners to ride around on it in projects and emphasize how important a good UX is. And in agencies anyway. I have often witnessed long discussions about the design. Far removed from the cost-benefit ratio. UI dominates the digital economy. Why is that? Why does everyone now think that the usability of devices and solutions is so important? And why have they effectively become more important? A few thoughts on this.

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From “sales” to “sales”

I believe that a key reason why UX/CX is so important today is the general saturation of the market. The more saturated a market is, the more effort I have to put in as a provider to be able to sell my product on the market. I have to do more marketing, I have to make the product better and I have to try to produce it more cheaply.

However, the markets have by no means always been saturated, quite the opposite: until around the 1970s, there was a shortage economy. Especially in the western world. In war-ravaged Europe, it was enough to produce one product. The rest, the actual selling, was usually an administrative process. Significantly, the term “sales” was also coined during this time. Getting products to the man (yes, man) was cheap and easy back then. Customers simply had a need for the products. So why make the products as good as possible? The main thing is that they work, are durable and offer good value for money.

Market saturation as the main driver

Today’s market is completely different: there is no longer any real need in the sense of a shortage. Conduct an experiment on yourself: which purchase in the last 12 months, apart from food and personal care, was really due to a genuine shortage? In other words, because the product or item was really not available. I did the thought experiment on myself and realized that the only thing that was really necessary was a window that could no longer be closed.

But it’s not as if I haven’t bought anything else. I’ve bought a whole host of items in the last 12 months. From a dishwasher that uses less water and electricity, to new speakers that can now be controlled via smartphone, a larger closet, a new family table, a new TV (why actually?), new travel items, new smartphones and so on. The whole list would be very long. And probably also quite boring. I bet it looks exactly the same for you?

In saturated markets, products are bought because users expect a better experience, not because they really need it.

So why do we buy these things? Quite simply because they are better than the ones we already have. Products can be better on various levels. For example, in price, in appearance, in usability. All these factors contribute to us having a better experience with the product. I think that’s why we buy them. And that’s why so many companies invest in this customer experience.

Lack of time as a favorable factor

In addition, time has a different value today than it used to. One of the reasons for this is that working time has become a significant cost factor. Time has simply become much more valuable, even though we have much more of it in demographic terms.

Just 200 years ago, it was the other way around: materials were much more complex and expensive to procure than labor. For example, wood was “marbled” in many prestigious buildings: Instead of bringing expensive marble from Italy to the north at great expense, wooden cladding was built, which specialized painters then treated using a special painting technique so that it looked like marble. Marbled elements can still be admired in many ancient buildings today. To the naked, untrained eye, the original is usually indistinguishable from the “fake”. The time required was enormous, but as labor was much cheaper and materials very expensive, it was worth it. Today, it is exactly the opposite and time in general has a correspondingly higher value in society. Spending as little time as possible on “useless” things such as operating the dishwasher is, so to speak, part of the duty of Western man.

So the faster you can operate a product, the less time you have to spend operating it, the better. Simple and pleasant operation has therefore become a key factor in today’s products.

Customer experience and user experience are not the same as “simple” and “beautiful”

Far too often, however, user experience is equated with ease of use. Or the great design of a product. This falls far too short and I don’t think good CX designers see it that way at all.

My personal awakening moment in terms of customer experience came in 2008 when I read the book “Conversational Capital” (the contents of which I know through and through, but unfortunately forgot the title yesterday and mistakenly referred to the people at Adaptive Path, thinking it came from them).

“Conversational Capital”, actually a book about word-of-mouth, is entitled “How to Create Stuff People Love to Talk About” and defines 8 different drivers that a product or service must have in order for this experience to inspire customers. These 8 are (copied from the Wikipedia summary):

1. Myths are the narratives that become part of the very fabric of consumption because they provide important clues as to fundamental meaning of that act.
2. Rituals are an essential part of how human beings create and formalize meaning. The presence of ritual marks out an experience as deeper in meaning – a phenomenon that is true for consumer experiences, as well.
3. Exclusive Product Offering (E.P.O.) is about allowing consumers to create an experience that asserts and actualizes their individuality; to, in a world of seven billion people, feel and be unique.
4. Relevant Sensorial Oddity (R.S.O.) is about challenging our senses with something extraordinary, marking an experience as unique.
5. Icons are signs and symbols that clearly demarcate a consumption experience from any other.
6. Tribalism is about the power of a brand experience to inspire the association of like-minded people.
7. Endorsement is not about celebrity – it’s about how the meaning and intensity of a brand experience naturally lead to credible people organically endorsing it.
8. Continuity is a strong harbinger of reputation, a fact that rests on the unity between what you promise, what people expect and what you deliver.

When we look at products and companies with an excellent customer experience, we quickly realize that all of these elements are being served.

Today, I don’t think this list is exhaustive. But it shows nicely that customer experience can also contain elements that are not per se aimed at simpler operation or handling.

In fact, it is always the more tedious things that make up a significant part of this customer experience. For example, the long waiting list for a table reservation at a prestigious restaurant is an essential part of a customer experience. It is not particularly pleasant. But it is part of the ritual that I have to endure when dealing with the product or brand. We always hear ourselves say: “That’s just part of it.”

Less differentiated approach to a comprehensive customer experience

In my daily professional life, I experience far too little differentiated handling of the topic of comprehensive customer experience. In other words, one that is not limited to online or offline, but attempts to offer the customer a holistic customer experience.

One reason for this is that many online screen layout designers now call themselves experience designers, but actually still do the same thing. Screen layouts. Many of them also suffer from what I call the “Steve Jobs complex”: a tendency to over-engineer visual details while losing the big picture and a sense of relevance. I don’t think Steve Jobs neglected the big picture or relevance, on the contrary. But all the freaky stories about Jobs obsessing over details led to a whole generation of creatives adopting this kind of behavior.

I know I am doing many people an injustice with such general statements. Of course, there are also many creative people who develop great solutions in a very differentiated and determined way. But they are usually much quieter.

On the other hand, I experience time and again how incredibly difficult it is to consciously design a comprehensive customer experience in larger companies. Mostly purely administrative. More often also culturally. The fact that it is not the other way around is thanks to the general discourse on user-centric design in recent years.

It is generally accepted that we have to take care of the customer in saturated markets. At all levels. Compared to the 1960s, the customer has an almost endless number of alternatives. And, much more importantly, impulse and emotion have taken the place of genuine need. Managing this is the challenge we have to face today. Whether online or offline.