Customer Experience is just a like a sprinkled donut

Let’s take a look at donuts. As Nicolina Savelli explains very well: you have plain unglazed ones and they are okay. It’s like good functional customer service: you satisfy your customers’ needs. Now let’s take a look at colourful donuts full of sprinkles: way more attractive. You want to eat more than one, right? This is like customer experience. You add sprinkles where needed and make people feel good about their interaction with your brand, in a very smooth way. They want more and will talk about it.

People forget what you say, or what you do.

But they’ll never forget how you made them feel.

Customer experience is not only about customer service. It’s about service, interaction and experience design. Everything in a product or service should help to create the ultimate customer experience. There are many ways to build on that customer experience. Just like you can create a million different colourful donuts. Below are three great examples of customer experience, each focussing on a different aspect.

The functional experience, with a focus on the product.

Pill Pack (2013) is a great example here: it simplifies a patient’s life, makes him feel good and creates a brand new surprisingly good experience.

The green experience, with a focus on alternative ways of usage.

Coca Cola repurposed its bottle in Asia by creating 2ndLives (2011): sixteen bottle caps with each a new function. Upcycling a bottle to a paintbrush or a lamp. Even though we can argue on the sustainable aspect of this campaign, we can agree on the fact this enhances the happiness of the brand and their customers.

The emotional experience, with a focus on the human side.

West Jet performed a Christmas experience (2013). The company surprised its passengers in a delightful way. They build trust and people will always talk about this wonderful experience, even after a few years.

Customer experience can be created on different levels as you can see. And they all still have an impact - even today. The list of great customer experiences can be expanded. With the KLM Lost & Found service or the TD Canada Thank you campaign. What is the best customer experience you've ever felt, seen or heard about?