Points of view | insights

Mother’s Day offers Jeanne the opportunity to go to this well-known cultural and commercial temple where books are offered for sale on several floors. Of course, the online purchase and the free home delivery in 24 hours could have saved her the trouble of going there, but she likes to touch the books, to leaf through them, to smell them, and sometimes she can even meet the authors. A few seconds are enough for her to find her way around and find a salesperson, who indicates to her, after consultation, the location of the latest Houellebecq book that she wishes to offer to her mother. Jeanne is smiling, the wait at the checkout has been greatly reduced since the lines were reorganized. The time saved will be spent preparing her gift package. But what a disappointment, what sadness this paper, certainly recycled but so ugly! Identical to the one used by the greengrocer to wrap his tomatoes. For a Mother’s Day gift, it is grotesque.

While she’s there, she takes the opportunity to go to the computer section, two floors down. She considers buying a MacBook Air, but she hesitates. She tries hard to get the attention of a salesperson, but they are all too busy responding to a crowd of potential buyers. Exhausted, she leaves the place, the MacBook Air will wait. In any case, it will save her from waiting in line twice more, to pay and get her purchase back.

After the store experience, Jeanne strolls on her tablet from one store to another while sitting comfortably on her sofa. Jeanne is a regular e-shopper to fill her already full wardrobe. She knows by heart the marketing tricks of online sales sites to inflate the bill, and systematically avoids taking out her credit card when the delivery fees are displayed in addition after having built up her basket. It’s a principle! On the heart side, Jeanne hopes a lot from this new relationship. She made a reservation online at one of her favorite restaurants for a first dinner. The experience turned out to be disappointing: they were seated at a table located between the kitchens and the head waiter’s sideboard. Between the noise and the incessant sweeping of the waiters, it was not easy to create a romantic atmosphere! She killed two birds with one stone and gave the reservation site and the restaurant a bad mark.

These testimonies show that the customer has become extremely demanding and his satisfaction is not limited to the product or the service he bought but to the whole of his personal experience with the brand. Reception, waiting, bad surprise, inflexibility, lack of information … The elements felt as disruptive, however minor they may be, tarnish the emotional relationship of a customer to a brand. They want to enjoy a seamless, omnichannel, fast experience, with no waiting time.

On the Internet, the user will prefer simplicity, practicality and immediacy.

At the point of sale, he expects to receive personalized advice, to find the price or quality promises posted on the website.

On the phone, they expect us to target their problem and offer them adapted solutions.

Aware of the efforts they still have to make to respond to these new trends, large companies are reorganizing by appointing a Customer Experience Director who reports directly to their General Management.

However, several tasks await these newly appointed recruits:

• Rethinking the product or service offer to personalize it and adapt it to the customer.
• Digitizing points of sale to better guide customers in their purchasing act.
• Reduce or transform waiting time, a source of chronic irritation, into a pleasant moment.
• Reintroduce the human element into the digital channel in order to offer targeted and personalized advice online.