This is an idea that kept me awake last night. I’ve been struggling for a while to try and bring together a couple of seemingly disparate concepts. Namely search engine marketing, micromarketing, and customer experience. Why would I try and do such a thing? (that’s what my dad asked as well). Well I write about customer experience at experiencecurve, and micromarketing here, and my business is currently positioned around search engine marketing, so needless to say i feel somewhat torn when writing about topics, and feel like I should be offering my clients a wider set of my skills and experience.
Anyway, my starting point for this unified theory is “Attract & Motivate”. Companies have been trying to attract customers for years, and micromarketing is another way of building that attraction over time, by leveraging conversational marketing, customer made aspects of the marketing and business, citizen media. In many ways, many people “get” the attraction side of the equation, the part that’s glossed over is the “motivation”, ie. motivating customers to interact with your company in deeper more meaningful ways by participating in the conversation, by creating citizen media, by helping make things.
I built a framework that tried to connect customer experience and motivation a few years ago, that proposes that customers have certain needs that have to be addressed before they can become a valuable participant/co-creator, and the one thing that companies need to watch out for is avoiding “demotivators” even before they think about motivation. The “demotivators” I’ve identified are “trust” and “usability”, in other words, these are not so much motivators, but enablers, lubricants of cooperation if you like. “Motivators” are actually more enablers, ie. autonomy is just about putting frameworks in place that enable customers to be creative.
I know a lot of my focus is online and blogs etc. so I’ll give you a real world example. Take IKEA, which has gained tremendous value from its customers by giving them more autonomy. When customers enter an IKEA store, they are given catalogues, tape measures, pencils, and paper, and then they are given the freedom to make their own deliveries and put their own furniture together, changing the cost structure of the value chain. It is in this way that customers become creators of value; and autonomy is the foundation of motivation.
Update: here’s a link to the PDF of the Customer Expereince Hierarchy
and if you’re really interested a PDF of the original article that was published in the Design Management Journal “Customer Loyalty and Experience Design”
7 Comments
Hi Karl — I have had your “Hierarchy” diagram on my “wall of good UX concepts” for quite a while now and I look to it as a reminder for what it takes to to create a good customer “interaction.” Linking all of the aspects of customer interaction as you have in this entry, the idea of creating autonomy for the customer (control and freedom, like you said) does influence how customers interact and choose to interact on a regular basis. I think adding “choice” to your mix and allowing users to pick the appropriate level of iteraction they desire is key to the overall customer relationship — creating a measurable experience online and off.
Hi Heather, thanks so much for you comment. I do agree that choice is important, and the aim should not be to shove all users toward these higher level, more creative or co-creative activities. As has been discussed at length it is potentially only 1% of your customers that will rise to this pinicle of high value interactions. The reason I call it a hierarchy is based somewhat on “maslows hierarchy of needs” with the idea that we only move onto the next stage when we are satisfied our current needs have been taken care of. Maslows hierarchy is actually incredibly interesting when thinking about cutomer experience:
2) Safety/security: out of danger;
3) Belonginess and Love: affiliate with others, be accepted; and
4) Esteem: to achieve, be competent, gain approval and recognition.
BTW I also checked out your blog and will be adding your blog to my blogroll.
Cheers,
Karl
Hi Karl — Looking at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is such a great way to look at the context of creating good experience. I couldn’t agree more and feel the hierarchy you created in defining the elements of an Online Customer Experience clearly combines human need with “online” interaction. Brilliant!
Thanks Heather,
just to pile on a little more theory, the other inspiration for the “hierarchy of customer experience” was Hertzbergs theories around employee motivation, and the idea that first you need to take care of “demotivators” before you can work on “motivators”. Demotivators are reffered to as “hygiene factors”. IMHO hygiene factors in the customer experience are “trust” and “usability”.
Hygiene factors are based on the need to for a business to avoid unpleasantness at work. If these factors are considered inadequate by employees, then they can cause dissatisfaction with work. Hygiene factors include:
- Company policy and administration
- Wages, salaries and other financial remuneration
- Quality of supervision
- Quality of inter-personal relations
- Working conditions
- Feelings of job security
Motivator Factors
Motivator factors are based on an individual’s need for personal growth. When they exist, motivator factors actively create job satisfaction. If they are effective, then they can motivate an individual to achieve above-average performance and effort. Motivator factors include:
- Status
- Opportunity for advancement
- Gaining recognition
- Responsibility
- Challenging / stimulating work
- Sense of personal achievement & personal growth in a job
There is some similarity between Herzberg’s and Maslow’s models. They both suggest that needs have to be satisfied for the employee to be motivated. However, Herzberg argues that only the higher levels of the Maslow Hierarchy (e.g. self-actualisation, esteem needs) act as a motivator. The remaining needs can only cause dissatisfaction if not addressed.
This is great! I think the more this type of “familiarity” and attention is paid to a company’s customers, the more the customer is cared for in a way that does keep them “attracted and motivated” to engage. I totally see the correlation. Great connection between the two!
Love your post connection to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – just what I was looking for to preach to the unconverted the importance of basic quality for (internal) web customers, and to give some structure to knowledge that I have internalized to the point that it is hard to describe.
Thank you!
Collette
That’s great Collette, I am really gratified by everyone’s comments, it really helps keep my motivation up to move these ideas forward. I’ve actually updated the diagram a little bit on flickr, and i’m going to link to an updated PDF of the diagram here as well.
Cheers,
Karl
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