Argo Creative Leader, Laura Richardson talks about one of the
most important ideas in creating great customer experiences.

Two words. Mazda Miata.

 

Even if a person has never driven one, he might have an emotional reaction to the car. Many American consumers don’t realize the Miata’s origins, but it was designed using a 50-year old Japanese methodology called Kansei Engineering. Kansei, loosely translated, means “feeling.” The methodology was created specifically for automobiles and other consumer products whose success depended on evoking powerful emotions in customers. To design a product from Kansei meant to understand the primary emotion the new product should evoke. In the case of the Miata, which was targeted for Japanese men between the ages of 18 and 25, market research suggested that the primary emotional driver was “human machine unity.” Literally translated, the phrase meant “horse and rider as one.” This emotion was further deconstructed to underlying emotions of tight feeling, speedy feeling, unified feeling and others. Each of these emotions was first mapped to the five senses (sight, sound, touch) and then mapped to specific product features. For example, speedy feeling mapped to sound was then mapped to the sound of the exhaust. The engineers ran emotion trials with consumers to determine the exhaust sound that felt “most speedy” and modified the exhaust system to create that exact sound. The entire car – from its length (which is exactly 5 meters) to its gearshift (which is exactly 9.5 centimeters) to its two-seat design – was designed using this process.

 

I learned of Kansei while pursuing my Masters in Human Computer Interaction. Mitsuo Nagamachi, considered the founder of the Kansei process, was my long-distance mentor. I felt that Kansei’s power could be harnessed and applied to non-tangible products and experiences like software and services. If so, I wondered, what would need to change? I have spent the last fifteen years playing with that idea and here is what I have learned.

Simply put, the emotions are the atoms that make up the molecules of an experience strategy. By combining a set of emotions, you can create strategies that embody customer feelings.

Today there are few products designed that standalone; instead they are often part of a larger customer experience. They can be physical, digital or both. They might be embedded in part of a larger environment, but are often part of an even larger ecosystem of customer service and fulfillment. While this has often been described as an experience economy, the complexity of experience has grown as technology and the systems that support them have proliferated. Five year ago it was enough to design a singular good touch point experience, such as a website, mobile application or in-store experience. Current expectations have shifted to a brand’s holistic experience across many touch points. The proliferation of touch points, technology platforms, and experiences across a customer journey are made even more complex when one considers customer emotions, brand attributes and time. Businesses now need a macro lens in the ­­form of an experience strategy to account for the minutiae. Experience strategy helps create a framework, if you will, that brings together the brand, delivery channels and touchpoints in a cohesive customer experience.

 

In truth, customer experience is a feeling, not a feature. Just consider the current measures of Net Promoter Score (how likely a customer is to promote a brand) and CSAT (customer satisfaction) – both are grounded in emotion. It’s clear that in a customer experience economy, emotional connection is the currency. And Kansei, uniquely, has stood the test of time as a framework to engineer emotion.

 

There is a reason that the Kansei process developed out of engineering. A car is a complex piece of machinery, with states, moving parts, inputs and outputs. Kansei was designed to address that complexity through its rigor. But more importantly, it was a process originally conceptualized as a way to deconstruct customer emotion and use that as input for touch point design. While Kansei recognized that we might not be able to guarantee the emotional outcome of every experience, the goal was to design each touch point as if we could - because that became a differentiator for the product. However, Kansei - in its current framework as a process for product differentiation - does not translate easily to the totality of customer experience design. Kansei needs to be reimagined.

 

First, Kansei’s application to software and experience design has been hampered by the length of time the process takes to complete. Cars, for example, are generally concepted, designed and fabricated in five years. The Miata was not much different. To map every single car feature to an emotion and to test that emotion is time intensive. So, the first hurdle is time. My work found that emotions people want to experience can be identified and tied to product or experience attributes - albeit with less rigor. Even better, the concepts can also be more quickly tested to determine if an intended emotional response is elicited or not. Kansei, I believe, is both the innovation and the evaluation in customer experience.

 

Another challenge is that customer experience is organic, while product design is static. A car, for example, is bounded by its physicalness. It has a release, a ship date. Customer experience is like a living organism in its fluidity. It has no off state, there is no final release. To design for that fluidity is a complexity that car design doesn’t face.

 

Therefore, in my experience, Kansei as a customer experience framework needs to account for inputs that a physical product doesn’t necessarily rely on – more specifically, the translation of feelings into business strategy; time, represented as the customer journey; the channels through which the touchpoints will be experienced (e.g. call center, retail, mobile), and the emotional response to the orchestration of those touch points.

 

Customer Feelings to Business Strategy

 

Customer feelings aren’t actionable, but the strategies a business follows are. How do you change consumers’ emotions – the feelings they want to experience – into something actionable by a business? Simply put, the emotions are the atoms that make up the molecules of an experience strategy. By combining a set of emotions, you can create strategies that embody customer feelings. For example, Show Me, Value Me and Know Me feelings might become a business strategy of “We Make The Experience As Personal As Possible.” The strategy would be further defined. What does a personal experience really mean? One refinement might be, “Are we providing personalized solutions to our customers based on their history and all the available information we have collected about them?” It’s at the intersection of brand promise and customer needs that you will find a strong footing for developing your ideas.

 

Business Strategy to Customer Journey Moments

 

These business strategies must be accounted for in every step of the customer journey. Mindfully, you develop the journey (or journeys) customers must go through to experience the brand and product offering. Using the example of Make It Personal and its further refinements, you would be able to audit the experience to find moments that impact the customer experience – both positive and negative. For example, if a customer is already a member of a company offering, but receives an invitation to join that same offering, it clearly doesn’t feel personal and it’s clear the company doesn’t know the customer. Additionally, these strategies also help determine new directions and opportunities across the customer journeys and across the platforms.

 

Customer Journey Moments to Touch points

 

The touch point is the most crucial aspect of customer experience because it is the only moment when a brand actually “touches” its customers. A customer never sees the projects or the business strategies that created them. They never see the product requirements documents or care that three distinct business units must work together to accomplish a multi-channel experience. Instead, they touch your brand when a store rep helps them merge plans or when they pay their bills through a mobile application. So, to improve customer experience you must design every touch point on every platform to matter. As I mentioned before, you can’t control the emotional outcome of every moment, but you must consider each touch point as if you can. Using the Make It Personal example, if I visit the same restaurant frequently, the restaurant might create a Member card (touch point) that lets me set my seating preferences, drink choices and favorite foods. Then, the waiter can say, “We have a booth by the window just the way you like it. Would you like to get started with a glass of Prosecco, Mrs. Richardson?” With a Kansei mindset, the company has both innovation and evaluation in one.

 

Measuring Experience

 

While the original Kansei engineering process sought to measure the emotional response of each touch point to refine the design, Kansei for Customer Experience has additional considerations like the experience of the touch point on a specific platform (e.g. email, text, salesperson, tablet) and during a specific moment of the customer journey. In other words, the emotion should be measured in context as the touch points are specifically designed with those in mind. Additionally, companies today measure experience with tools like NPS and CSAT. However, it’s incredibly difficult to take a bundled score and determine its traceability to a touch point moment or a series of experiences. Emotional response is often a continuum of experience over time. The goal then is to not only test the touch points as conceptual ideas, but also to test the orchestration of the moments together qualitatively and quantitatively. Using our example above, you might test the Member Card concept in a restaurant (context) using the emotional values of Know Me, Show Me and Value Me, among others. You might also test its creation in the context of a mobile channel and digital card format.

 

A final word, or rather an emotion

 

I had an upcoming trip to a Marriott in Canada. The week before arrival, I checked my emailed itinerary and found that I was booked to arrive that night, not a week away. In a panic, I called Customer Service worried about lack of availability and extra fees. But the associate said, “Don’t worry, we will make it right.” Not only did Marriott make it right, but the new arrival date had a special offer and I saved $30.00.

 

I believe that type of experience was choreographed and its traceability goes all the way back to Marriott’s business strategy and the emotions the company knows customers want to experience – show me that you care, make my life easy, reward my use of your service. And while it seems easy, to pull that off daily requires amazing customer experience acumen. It was the perfect orchestration of a touch point through a specific platform at a specific part of the customer journey that tapped emotions and stayed true to the brand strategy. So, it’s no surprise that Marriott was the top rated hotel chain in the last three annual Temkin Experience Ratings. Scott Allison, VP of Marriott’s Canadian Operations has said that something goes wrong during one-quarter of stays – so hotels need to be good at recovery. And thus, Marriott empowers its associates to improve a guest’s stay. But more than that, the company evoked emotions that endeared a customer to the brand. And if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance their NPS score just went up as well.