Customer experience consists of every interaction a customer has with your organization, products, or services – in person or online. When your offerings are intuitive and easy to use, customer experience is positive. When your organization meets customer needs, profits increase. In turn, customers feel empowered and move toward economic freedom.
What is customer experience?
Key Resources
![A Tigo Cash representative in Ghana teaches a customer about USSD long codes. Photo by IDEO.org Tito Cash representative teaches a mobile money user in Ghana about USSD long codes, providing positive customer service to a customer in a low-income segments](/sites/default/files/styles/mini_article_image/public/mini_articles/2016-09/Tigo%20prototyping.jpg?itok=NmDHeq_B)
How does good design help deliver positive customer experience?
Customer-centric design is built around learning directly from customers in their own environment, then quickly developing and refining concepts along with them. This ensures that customer needs and expectations inform design decisions and leads to a higher likelihood of adoption and success. The process challenges your organization to understand, create, evolve, and test possible solutions, then repeat the cycle as many times as required. Design practices revolve around a common understanding of user needs that can improve strategic decision-making – and increase the effectiveness of individual products and services.
Key Resources
![Bank ads are customized for specific customer segments. Ads by Centenary Bank Two Centenary Bank advertisements that promote financial services to low income customers, designed through customer research to target specific customer segments in low-income areas](/sites/default/files/styles/mini_article_image/public/mini_articles/2016-09/Centenary%20Bank.jpg?itok=hOuU6Qbv)
How do you identify opportunities to address customer needs?
Complete an opportunity brief to help your organization prioritize which key benefits a product or service must offer customers to ensure adoption. Next, and most importantly, translate these insights into true business opportunities.
To optimize your thinking around business opportunities:
- Analyze barriers that prevent customer use.
- Analyze potential product/service incentives and benefits. Identify “must haves.”
- Analyze touchpoints and channels that bring customers to products/services. Identify the strongest/weakest.
Prioritize key product/service attributes that drive value and adoption.
Key Resources
![An Indonesian entrepreneur is interviewed. Photo by frog Indonesian man with big pot is interviewed to identify business opportunities to serve low-income customers with customer-centric products and services.](/sites/default/files/styles/mini_article_image/public/mini_articles/2017-09/CGAP_Cihereng_CI_Gigi_-42_0.jpg?itok=9eugk94v)