“Experience is everything!” exclaimed Jason Ulaszek, Founder & Chief Design Officer of Inzovu, during a recent roundtable on Designing the Customer Experience. Whether that is handling a client services team focused on longstanding relationships, or continuing to improve our organizations and the products and services themselves, the customer experience matters.
Part of the way we get to these well-crafted experiences is through intentional design. Most great experiences are now designed with the intention of helping to strengthen habits and ultimately lead to behavioral changes. This requires a very conscious, concerted effort around the orchestration of design. What our customers expect is a flow or natural extension throughout their experience: the journey they take before, during, and after interacting with our organizations.
Jason went on to explain that “Design at its roots helps to create culture.” It’s about continuing to not only stay relevant but also demonstrate our core values.
There are three behaviors that Jason sees in organizations who design with intention. The first is to think and act human-centered. In the world of marketing and design we may hear terms like “customer-centered” or “patient-centered” or “employee-centered.” While Jason understands this language from a decision-making standpoint, he ultimately believes it’s more important to come from a holistic business perspective and be human-centered. Whether they are customers, patients, or employees, treating others as we would want to be treated is critical.
The second behavior Jason emphasized is to seek understanding for the entire experience – before, during, and after. The during is the time in which we have the most interactions with our customers and that part may already be going well, but it’s important to consider the before and after as part of the entire customer experience.
The final behavior is to cultivate curiosity and experimentation in regards to both learning and trying new things. Whether that is thinking about how we’re going to collaborate and communicate now that everyone is working from home, or shifting customer calls to video, for example, we must constantly be looking for opportunities to experiment and grow.
Designing the customer experience is critical to success, even more so in today’s remote environment. By being human-centered, understanding the entire experience, and cultivating experimentation, we can continue to evolve and adapt our design experience.
