The latest on digital design trends and consumer behavior from Avenue A | RazorfishEmpty Promises, Damaged Brands: When the Digital and Physical Collide
May 29th, 2008 by Sean CollinsTags: brand, brand experience, circuit city, customer experience management, digital, experience, experience economy, micro-experience, physical, post-sales experience, retail, retail experience, total customer experience
With the increasing focus on total customer experience – the philosophy that micro-experiences in their entirety are strong influencers in defining a brand – I still find countless examples of experiences that make the user jump unnecessary hurdles or, worse, fall short of a promise that some marketing department has made, albeit with good intentions.
Case in point: at first blush, Circuit City should be one of the darlings of 360 experiences. You can research a product or store, get advice from Consumer Reports, peruse their City Center blog, purchase products online or by phone, and – if you simply must have it now – there’s an option to reserve and pay for it online so that it’s ready and waiting for you within 24-minutes at the nearest retail store.
Sounds like shopping nirvana, right? Wrong!
From a digital perspective, Circuit City would rank close to an A+. However, as reported by a colleague, who ordered an electronic device online for in-store pickup, the offline experience fell far short of what was expected from the digital experience.
My colleague purchased the product on CircuitCity.com and shortly thereafter made her way to the physical store for in-store pickup. Upon descending the escalators, she first noticed the unattended pickup window and then – to her dismay - the huge line for customer service. She was instructed to join the line to pick up her purchase. As time went by, it occurred to her that it would have been faster to leave the line and buy one from the floor. Finally, at the counter, my colleague was informed that the product was out of stock.
This example is one of many micro-experience “paper cuts” that customers have with brands – some of the most respected - every day, when experiences cross borders from digital to brick and mortar.
What good is it to offer a convenient purchase option online and then completely undermine it offline? Is it too much to ask that my colleague be alerted that her product was out of stock? The cost to her: an unfilled experience; the cost to the brand: priceless.
2 Responses to “Empty Promises, Damaged Brands: When the Digital and Physical Collide”
I completely agree. Most product pickup counters are an afterthought at most big box stores and thus, usually understaffed.
Lately, the retail experience is a complete disappointment to me, especially up here in Canada where stock tends to be a lot more limited.
Micro-experience?
If you do a bit of task analysis, measuring and quantifying the efforts of someone picking up a product in-store, as aposed to purely shopping online… it is the digital experience that is the \’micro-experience\’
I would also go on to argue that this is the way we should approach the design of the internet\’s. The thinking is that actual reason someone is going online is that there is a break in the REAL user experience…