{"id":8639,"date":"2008-12-11T15:25:30","date_gmt":"2008-12-11T21:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/11\/the-focus-on-customers-usability-part-1\/"},"modified":"2008-12-11T15:25:30","modified_gmt":"2008-12-11T21:25:30","slug":"the-focus-on-customers-usability-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/?p=8639","title":{"rendered":"The focus on customers: Usability – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
by Steve Jones<\/div>\n

A recent study in Holland revealed that half of so called ‘faulty’ new electronic products that were returned to retailers actually worked perfectly well. The consumer of the product just simply could not figure out how to operate their new electronic device and assumed it was broken.<\/p>\n

Even worse still, an American research suggested that 10% of consumers purposely damage or sometimes even destroy such devices out of pure frustration. In one particular study, they found a restaurant manager can thrown his laptop into the deep fryer, resulting in a ruined laptop and deep fryer.<\/p>\n

High tech products aren’t the only things which people get angry over. The BBC reports that 90 percent of people feel frustrated or angry after talking with a call centre representative. I felt this last year when I was moving house as it took 167 minutes spread across 2 days and 9 phone calls just to get the phone switched over to the new address.<\/p>\n

What astounds me is that organisations spend so much on advertising a product or service, and so little on ensuring that it is easy to use. In the end, if a consumer has had a bad experience with a product, no amount of advertising will tempt them to buy that brand again.<\/p>\n

Instead, organisations need to focus on improving the customer experience. This involves understanding customers’ expectations and the quality of their interactions across all aspects of the company, its services and products.<\/p>\n

Knowing what a customer wants and knowing how they wish to be treated is a big step in understanding expectations. These expectations can vary greatly depending on the nature of the visit. For example, a customer who rings in for support will probably have differents needs to be fulfilled than a customer who looks at the website, wanting to buy a product. Such customer expectations can be driven by advertising, word of mouth or their own personal experiences.<\/p>\n

To make this even more difficult, organisations now offer many ways for customers to interact with them. Email, websites, call centres and local branches all need to give consistent information, appropriate to the constraints of that medium. Different technologies persuade people in different ways, and some channels are more suited for some interactions than others.<\/p>\n

If a company can get its customer experience right, the results are obvious; increased customer satisfaction will lead to more sales. A product\/service differentiation will also create an important competitive advantage and improved or better brand perception will lead to an increase in market share. On the other hand, bad customer experiences can lead to angry customers, a fading brand and of course, lost revenue.<\/p>\n

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About the Author:<\/div>\n
Interested in learning how Usability Consultants<\/a> can aid your business? Contact Optimal Usability<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent study in Holland revealed that half of so called ‘faulty’ new electronic products that were returned to retailers actually worked perfectly well. The consumer of the product just simply could not figure out how to operate their new electronic device and assumed it was broken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2602,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[87],"class_list":["post-8639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marketing","tag-marketing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2602"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magic1host.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}