UX London: e-Service

by June 15, 2009

Eric Reiss' e-Service presentation at UX London 2009 walked through examples of bad customer service in action and presented strategies for avoiding similar pitfalls in your online experience.

  • Service is 100% about user experience. User experience is not 100% about service.
  • Companies with an 83% satisfaction are in trouble. Need 90% satisfaction for long-term customer loyalty.
  • Service management is a process not a program. Goes on for a long time with no finish line.
  • Unhappy customers are dangerous. If you have a good experience you will tell three friends. If you are an unhappy customer, you will tell 17 people.
  • Service happens at the moment of experience. Moments of truth are when and where people experience customer service. Brand touch points happen everywhere.
  • Service is an intangible event that helps us achieve something.
  • 10 reasons services are tougher to manage than products:
  • Produced at the moment of delivery
  • Cannot be recalled if sucks
  • Experience cannot be sold or passed on
  • Product cannot be demonstrated. You cannot send a sample.
  • Cannot be centrally produced, inspected, or warehoused.
  • Quality assurance needs to happen before production
  • Help, Enhance, Fix –three ways to provide service
  • Don’t just prevent bad things from happening. Educate front-line staff that it is not just prevention, but also making wonderful things happen.
  • Beware of the easily measurable metrics. These often just meet basic expectations. They do not exceed.
  • The online & offline worlds are intersecting. The whole experience needs to be choreographed.
  • All the rules of offline service design apply online.