Memory Matters Most
In a recent edition of Interactions Magazine, Don Norman writes about what he argued at last years UX Week conference put on by Adaptive Path:
We should not be devoting all of our time providing a perfect experience. Why not? Well, perfection is seldom possible. More important, perfection is seldom worth the effort. So what if people have some problems with an application, a website, a product or service? What maters is the total experience. Furthermore, the actual experience is not as important as the way in which it is remembered.
Think about the last productive customer service call you had with a corporation like Bell, Rogers, or AT&T. My memory of every call to such multi-billion dollar corporations has always been = FAIL!
The resulting memory of such experiences has literally put me in a mind set where I’ll need to dedicate up to 30 minutes or more pushing buttons and getting transferred to several different people to eventually get transferred back to the first person I was talking to.
But what if the experience could be remembered differently? What if the next time I called I was immediately connected with a real person! And within that brief interaction if they didn’t have immediate access to the answer, they would take my contact information and get back to me within one business day? Now the memory of that experience has changed from FAIL to SUCCESS!
I agree with Don on this point; I don’t think we need to be striving to make everything perfect. I believe in order to create a great memory of any experience we need to focus more on understanding the people for whom we are designing so we can create a positive memory the first time, and every time thereafter.
As the owner of ParlezWireless, an Authorized TELUS dealership, our mission is to deliver exactly what has been described here.
The experience we provide our clients is what differentiates us. It is what brings our clients back, what makes them refer others to us.
Now take it a step further, what if you got a handwritten thank you note after your purchase? And a follow up call to make sure all was well with your purchase?
that’s a small snapshot of what we do, because we actually realize our business is built around customers and the road to success is making them have happy experiences.
It’s interesting that you note the idea of writing a letter to customers. I was speaking with friends the other day and how few people receive hand written letters in the post any more.
In my own business, getting back to paper and markers, having clients draw out their ideas on paper and engaging other members of a team instead of feeling the need to get into an email battle about the best design.
I believe most in business are starving to be heard; to interact in meaningful ways. Instead of looking at technology as a set of tools to bring people together, to engage in discussion, most hide behind these tools preventing innovation and the advancement of ideas, products, and the betterment of services.
After all, the memory of an experience with any product or service is ultimately shaped by the people building such solutions. If they are allowed to express their ideas freely and learn accordingly, the memory of the experience should start off good and only get better with time.