Jeff Bridgforth :: Webcraftsman

The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly of Customer Experience

September 10, 2009

User Experience

“Please see the cashier inside to get your receipt”

It was the sec­ond straight time that I had received this mes­sage after pump­ing gas at a neigh­bor­hood sta­tion. Doesn’t that sort of defeat the whole pur­pose of pay­ing at the pump. I want con­ve­nience. I want to be able to pump my gas, get my receipt, not have to inter­act with any­one, and then get on my way. I won­der if they do this on pur­pose to get peo­ple into the store, where they are enticed to buy some­thing sweet.

A poor cus­tomer experience.

Tonight on the way home from the office, I was at my neigh­bor­hood Wal­mart. One of the things I like about this store is that it is close to my house and it is con­ve­nient. One of the rea­sons for it’s con­ve­nience is self-checkout. But on recent vis­its, those lanes have been closed and only one reg­is­ter is open. So I have to stand in line when I want to be on my way home.

Tonight, they only had two of the four self check­out lanes open. It meant I had to stand in line there, or go to another line where I had to inter­act with a cashier. I want con­ve­nience and to be on my way to spend time with my family.

Another poor cus­tomer experience.

Where Shop­ping is a Pleasure

Con­trast my Wal­mart expe­ri­ence with going to Pub­lix later tonight. (I really like Pub­lix but go to Wal­mart more often because it is closer to my house and the prices are lower.) Publix’s tag line is “where shop­ping is a plea­sure.” I can­not think of an expe­ri­ence I have had at Pub­lix where it was not a plea­sure. I actu­ally like inter­act­ing with Pub­lix employ­ees because they have a smile on their face and gen­uinely want to serve the cus­tomer. They value their cus­tomers. I don’t always feel that way at Wal­mart.  I usu­ally leave Pub­lix with a smile on my face, or at least in my heart because it has been a plea­sur­able experience.

Going Online

As a Web designer, I think a lot of cus­tomer or user expe­ri­ence. My pas­sion for user expe­ri­ence comes from the fact that before I was a Web designer, I was a Web user and I still am. I learn so much by reflect­ing upon my own expe­ri­ences online.

Tonight, I was online try­ing to reg­is­ter for State Farm’s Web site. My car insur­ance pre­mium is due and wouldn’t you know it, I am out of checks. I hardly ever use checks except to pay a few bills and give to my local church. So I went online to pay my bill. It would have been nice if State Farm men­tioned this online pay­ment option on my bill. I found out about this option by call­ing my local agent. I can only describe my online expe­ri­ence as painful. I had log-in mul­ti­ple times and encoun­tered sev­eral appli­ca­tion errors before com­plet­ing my task. A poor experience.

Min­utes later, I was pay­ing my Dis­cover bill online. Dis­cover has a great Web site. They make it easy for you to get your task done and get on with your life. A lot of the suc­cess of their user expe­ri­ence is due to the visual design that make the inter­ac­tions clear. Nice big but­tons help me to nav­i­gate my way to my des­ti­na­tion. Of course, most of the time, I don’t even think about the expe­ri­ence. It meets my expec­ta­tions and I accom­plish my task. Not mem­o­rable but def­i­nitely plea­sur­able in the sense that I accom­plish my task and come move on to things like writ­ing this blog post. Way to go Dis­cover Card.

So what do I take away from my expe­ri­ences tonight. I am chal­lenged to con­sider how I help the peo­ple that use the sites I design.

• Are the call to actions clear?
• Can they eas­ily find what they want?
• Are they able to accom­plish their tasks quickly and move on to some other aspect of their life?
• Does the visual design I cre­ate pro­vide an plea­sur­able envi­ron­ment that the user may not be con­sciously aware of?
• Do those who visit my sites have a good expe­ri­ence as they accom­plish their task? In the end, that is what mat­ters the most to me.

How do your good or bad expe­ri­ences in the offline or online world affect your work as a designer or devel­oper? Please share your thoughts.