"Customer Experience" In All Industries Needs Same Process As Service Companies

When I study lists of companies that claim to want to differentiate competitively based on customer experience, I am heartened to see companies that I wouldn't have associated with "services" beginning to focus on the customer. Retail stores, computer companies, telephone companies, car dealers, are all sounding like pure service organizations these days. Clearly, the "purchase" experience or the "usage" experience, or even the "disposal" experience, are all important when thinking through satisfaction.

"When the customer is centric to the company's design, changes throughout the company happen!"

For example, in the retail world, some of the steps a shopper walks through in a store will add up to a good or bad customer experience. From Bruce Temkin at Forrester Research, http://experiencematters.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/walgreens-rolls-out-customer-centric-retailing/ many of these stores are now focusing on each opportunity and redesigning stores to accomodate. Steps include:

Wayfinding: From walking into the store until you find the right area
Browsing: Comparing multiple products within a category
Studying: Evaluating an individual product or products
Getting Help: Finding answers to questions along the way

So some stores are changing shelf heights and widening aisles, limiting variety of each item, providing more information about choices, and training clerks to be more informed. All in the name of improving the customer experience.

My View

The new thinking about "Customer Experience" can be useful when designing an overall premium service offering.

For those companies, such as retail stores, who depend upon sales of tangible goods, premium customer experience will lead to location loyalty and more sales of those goods. When the customer is centric to that company's design, changes throughout the company happen. For that retail store, reduced inventory means less dollars spent on idle merchandise and more focus on developing knowledgeable staff.

Most interestingly will be how these companies gain insight as to how well these changes are satisfying their customers. And then what process is used to continually improve these experiences.

This becomes even more critical when "service" is the good that is sold. Therefore, how the service is offered, delivered, consumed, and evaluated, must be designed in a way that satisfies the customer.