How to turn moments of frustration into moments of delight

Happy Tuesday, friends!

I’ve been running a lot of brainstorms lately, so today I wanted to share a brainstorming activity that helps you turn moments of frustration into moments of delight for your customer.

Before I dive in, why is this so crucial? The stakes are high these days. You’re not only compared to your competitors, but customers’ expectations are based on their “last best experience”.

If you don’t execute each part of the customer experience well, your product will either fail or be mediocre at best.

As Tony Fadell (author of Build) put it, “The world is full of mediocre, middle-of-the-road companies creating mediocre, middle-of-the-road crap.”

There are bumps throughout each phase of the customer journey that we have to help customers overcome. In each moment, they are asking “why?”

• Why should I care about what you’re telling me?

• Why should I buy it?

• Why should I use it?

• Why should I stick with it?

• Why should I wait?

• Why should I invest time in it?

• Why should I upgrade?

• Why should I buy the newer version?

The reality is, if your customer encounters problems along the way, they are more likely to abandon your service or product since they can easily go elsewhere.

The other week, I was trying to buy groceries online for pick-up and wanted to use a different store. To start grocery shopping I had to create an account (bump #1). Annoying but I created one. Then as I started adding items, I saw they charged $5 for order pick-up (bump #2, my go-to store didn’t charge for order pick-up). And it wasn’t clear what the value was for the fee (bump #3). So I abandoned and went back to my existing habit. There were too many points of friction and unknowns.

Here’s the thing — we love to focus on the happy path, our ideal customer experience. To optimize what’s already working well, it’s way “easier”.

And in this scenario, the grocery store could easily match the competitor’s pricing structure but you don’t delight the customer by doing what they already expect you to do. It’s when customers expect things to be difficult and we’ve made it easier, that we delight them. Helping me grocery shop from a recipe or giving me meal plan ideas is where delight can come in. If I’m sick and the store has a “wellness kit”, that’s delight. They’ve added value and made shopping for groceries easier for me.

So how do you identify moments in the customer journey to improve?

Enter my favorite brainstorming activity…

The Bad Idea Brainstorm: Worst Customer Experience Ever

By identifying the worst customer experience, you’ll uncover potential pain points and issues that need to be addressed. And then generate innovative solutions and challenge assumptions/biases.

It’s a magical tool to turn moments of frustration into moments of delight.

How to step-by-step:

1. Grab some post-its and a marker.

2. Story board the customer journey*. What are the core steps that someone goes through? Note: we want to think about moments outside of the direct interactions of the product.

3. Now instead of asking "how can we improve the customer experience?," ask "how can we make the customer experience as bad as possible?"

4. Generate as many ideas as you can, without judging or filtering them. You’re going for quantity here. Add one idea per sticky note.

5. Next put all the negative ideas up on the wall, no matter how absurd or unrealistic they may seem.

6. Analyze the negative ideas and identify potential pain points and issues that need to be addressed. Group or bucket similar ideas.

7. Now grab your sticky notes and flip the negative ideas into positive solutions, again, one idea per sticky. Focus on how to address the pain points and improve the customer experience to reach our goal: delight.

8. Put the sticky notes up on wall and prioritize the solutions based on their impact and feasibility of implementation.

9. Time to vote! Vote for 2 or 3 ideas you want to work on post-brainstorm.

10. Determine next steps and assign ownership to keep the momentum going.

It may seem silly at first but try it out. Great design is all about the details. Turning moments of frustration into moments of delight.

It’s a big reason for Apple’s success. Think about sharing wifi passwords, the passwords are complex, full of mixed characters and often entered wrong. Apple took that point of frustration and made it delightful with the"Share Your Wi-Fi" feature. This feature allows users to easily share their Wi-Fi network with others nearby who are also using an iOS device.

It's little things like that which transform a frustration into a memorable and delightful moment.

The Worst Customer Experience Ever has quickly become one of my favorite brainstorming activities and I’d love to hear yours. Add your favorites in the comments!

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*A customer journey is the series of interactions a customer has with a brand. There are generally 5 phases that customers go through: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, and Loyalty.

A simple example of an eCommerce customer journey:

1. A customer sees an ad for a pair of shoes on Instagram.

2. The customer clicks on the ad and is taken to the product page for the shoes.

3. They browse the product details, images, reviews, and compare the shoes with similar offerings.

4. The customer adds the shoes to their cart.

5. They check out - entering their shipping and payment information, and completes the purchase.

6. The customer receives a confirmation email with their order details and tracking info.

7. The order arrives via UPS.

8. After receiving the product, the customer is prompted to leave a review for the shoes.

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Photos of the week:

I’m on vacation this week for a spring reset. It’s been a great time with friends and family. And of course time in nature, healthy routines and creating.

What are your favorite things to do on a staycation? I’m looking for ideas! 🙏

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Until next week,
raika

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