lather, rinse, REPEAT!

Two choices diverge in a fluorescent aisle,

And sorry I could not buy both

And be one shopper, long I stood…

Pantene, Herbal Essences, Suave, Tresemme, Pert…

Price, shine, smell, ingredients, volume, color…

The choices are endless, and in many cases the distinguishing criteria are arbitrary. My customer experience journey begins in the aisle of the supermarket. Under the dingy fluorescents, anxiety is rising. A seemingly simple decision turned to a dilemma of great proportions.  It’s just shampoo, so why is this choice so hard? I never realized that many of my choices, as well as my recurring choices have a great deal to do with my experience with that product.

As we have been discussing customer experiences in class, I have started to think back on a few of my experiences. Every product or service comes along with an experience, and I think it has a far more profound impact on customer satisfaction and retention than many people realize. In a world of endless choices, what’s to keep me coming back if not for the feelings and memories I associate with a product. For example, if I go to the Starbucks on my way to class, I am not just going in for a venti caramel macchiato. I have a certain experience that I have come to expect from Starbucks.  If that expectation isn’t met, I will just stop by the McDonalds on the way next time.

On another note, my grandma has bought the same brand of pickles for as long as I can remember. I buy a different jar every time I go into the store. I feel like our generation is not filled with as much undying brand loyalty. This is why the concept of the customer experience has become so important. My grandma surely has no problem choosing a shampoo, because she’s probably bought the same one since she was young. I however, didn’t feel emotionally loyal to a shampoo. In a world where opinions can be swayed in a heartbeat, even little things can cause a switch in product choice.

I chose to talk about an experience I had with shampoo because I think it is pretty unique. You normally would not think that any one shampoo would provide an exemplary experience above the others.  Also, the turnover and repurchase rate of shampoo is interesting. It is not a decision you make every week, or one that you make every ten years. I think this is a very interesting turnover somewhere in between. When creating an experience with shampoo, you have to consider its life from the shelf to the last squeeze, so that when a customer runs out they are compelled to buy another bottle. That is exactly why I bought, and continue to buy Herbal Essences.

From the first second of the customer experience, Herbal Essences is a step above the competitor. Standing in the aisle, I was attracted to the bright colors of the bottles, and fun designs. This fits into the experiential framework we discussed in class under “sense.” During this first part of the experience, I felt fun and lively. I could see myself enjoying the product for its look and its girly, young, fun smell.

I think to some extent, the names of the shampoos also contribute to the user experience. For example, the names of the shampoos fit under the “think” criteria of the experiential framework. The names are clever and engaging, such as “None of Your Frizziness.”  I feel like this cute naming system creates intrigue for the product.

For me, the most important part of this experience was once I got the product home and used it. Aside from the normal experiences that we have come to expect from a shampoo, I think that Herbal Essences delivers an experience beyond the expected. My favorite part of the experience is the appeal to the “feel” category of the framework. On the back of the shampoo bottle there is a joke, and the answer is on the conditioner bottle. I thought this was very clever, and it definitely made me chuckle. It definitely created an affective experience, delivering above what I thought I would get out of the shampoo. Herbal Essences continues to solidify this experience by providing consistency in all of their experience providers. The commercials, the website, and the communications all reflect this young, fresh and fun experience.

In conclusion, I think the customer experience is becoming increasingly important with the inundation of choices we are faced with every day. It is no longer adequate just to provide the experience that customers are expecting. In order to gain loyalty and associations, it is important to deliver beyond what the customer thinks they are buying. In other words, it’s not just about the shampoo anymore!  You have to give the customer a product that appeals to senses, feelings, intellect, lifestyle, and ideals. And in today’s world, that’s how you get a customer to lather, rinse, and most importantly, repeat! 

Persona-fied

“Personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic, attitude and/or behavior set that might use a site, brand or product in a similar way.” As you can see in the Wikipedia definition (hey… I’m sill in college, Wikipedia still counts as a credible source!), personas are a useful tool in segmenting your target market very specifically. Personas go a step beyond segmenting, however, because they take on the personality and voice of just one person in the segment. When we first discussed this in class, I had the same thought that many critics have… isn’t this too specific? I wondered if highlighting just one person in the segment would cause you to ignore the other important attributes of others in the segment. However, I really realized the value of creating personas though our guest speaker from P&G. She spoke to us about creating what they call “placemats” of their specific “prime prospects.” When I saw the way that they laid the placemats of to visually represent a specific person, it really got my attention. I really saw the value for going deeply into a specific customer, and giving her/him a voice in order to gain an insight you might not get if you just lumped everyone together in a segment.

I’m sort of a “trust but verify” kind of person, so I started to do a little research of my own on the value of personas in the “real world” of marketing. I ran across what I think is a very useful article. From this article, I found a key piece of information: “Personas tap into a fundamental human skill—the ability to make predictions about how other people will react based on mental models of them. One can often predict accurately how a close friend or family member will react to a particular event and decide how to act based on those inferences.” I think this description spoke to me because it really explains how personas give us the ability to know the segment on a different level. If we treat the people in the segment as friends, family, or neighbors, we can use our familiarity to hear their voice, their desires, and their likes and dislikes. In essence, the idea is that I can help you design a product for my friend way more insightfully than I can for the “millennial” segment. The granularity that personas provide is an extremely useful tool in knowing our customers, even if we do need to be very specific in order to do it.

Now that I have gotten my two cents in, I think it will be a valuable exercise to create a persona for myself! Flipping through the Cohort Personas posted on the class site, I thought of two things. 1) I thought of the similarity of the visual design to the P&G placemats. I particularly LOVED that the people were even given their own handwriting. I think this was an extremely useful piece of giving each person his or her voice. 2) I saw myself relating to one type of persona, and picking another that I aspire to be. For example, I really relate currently to Megan (“Fit and stylish students: young, fashion-conscious, career-minded female students who enjoy music, sports and the latest in high tech.”) However, I find myself hoping to be Allison (“Educated working women: Childless, professional women building their careers, developing sophisticated tastes and staying fit.”) Perhaps there is another level to personas that I haven’t learned about, such as which persona you seek to be! Going from the examples I have seen with the cohorts and placemats, I have attempted to define my own persona below.

Jennifer

Spunky Student meets Sophisticated Goals: College senior, driven student looking toward the future after graduation, never standing still and enjoying being young.

Personality:

•       People find me intimidating, but most of the time I am unsure why.
•       I love to exercise, but I do it to reduce stress rather than to lose weight.
•       I am a big planner, I love calendars and to do lists to keep all my commitments in line.
•       I enjoy being an individual, I am fun loving and spunky.
•       My friends know me as sassy because I am not afraid to speak my mind.
•       I enjoy sophisticated style and tastes, but my student budget leaves me hunting for deals!
•       I love being around creativity, and most of my friends are very talented in different ways.
•       I enjoy taking care of people, whether that is going to coffee with a friend in need or cooking big dinners for all my guy friends.
•       I don’t always like taking risks, and I would not describe myself as spontaneous.
•       I work through college, but for the experience and ethic, not for the money… although I never say no to a little extra cash!
•       I enjoy school and learning, the classes I love the most are those that are so engaging I end up talking about them all the time.
•       My relationships are my most important possession. I love my family more than anything, and rely on my friends and boyfriend for emotional support.
•        I consider myself opinionated, and able to articulate my thoughts.
•       I am passionate and driven, but most of the time I wish people knew more about the caring and fun Jen.

Demographic:

·      Average age: 22

·      Average income: just enough to spend!

Lifestyle:

·      Audio/Video: Mac lover, MacBook, iPod, photography.

·      Outdoors: long runs, swimming, snow skiing, water sports.

·      Sports and fitness: yoga, healthy foods, running, playing sports with friends.

·      Connoisseur: cheap beer, concerts, cool coffee shops.

·      Home life: live away from parents, renter.

·      Other interests: photography, traveling, modern art, quirky literature, trash TV

Hope you enjoyed my persona! Thanks for reading J

Coming into the class, I thought I had an idea of what a “customer insight” would be. Taking the term literally (as I often do; to give you a “Jennifer insight”), I assumed that it would be an insight or knowledge about your consumer that your competitors do not have. I have learned since, and have been pleasantly surprised, that it goes beyond that. Without even realizing it, I had equated customer insights with marketing research. I learned on the first day that the topic goes far beyond studying your current customers; it goes into diagnosing problems and discovering solutions. I think the key to a customer insight is that aha moment when you think: “why didn’t we have this years ago!” Like many, following that aha moment is usually that slap-in-the-forehead moment: “why didn’t I think of that!?” Well enough of the shoulda, coulda, woulda... I’m ready to learn about the all –important but seldom-understood customer insight.

The first topic that I felt was particularly interesting was the discussion of the difference between following your competitors, versus adding true design value. I was originally confused because I thought that a customer insight would lead to a product that would drastically differ from the current offering. In some ways, I assumedthat this would mean the invention of some brand new cutting edge technology. Through the lecture with our guest speaker Jeff Malhausen, I learned that this is not always true. In fact, in customer centered design it is always important to push the boundaries, but not to break so far beyond the consumer comfort zone that the product is not readily accepted. This concept, pioneered by Raymond Loewry, really helped me understand that although the new design driven by customer insights may involve some new technology, in all reality it is often a simple modification of the existing product.

I think a great example of this is the Flip camera. The status quo when this product emerged was an escalating “feature war” of companies battling to provide more or better specs. The video cameras were getting bigger, with more storage, and more this-and-that. This video-recording brinkmanship finally broke when someone took a step back and looked at the true needs of the consumer. The Flip camera is small, user friendly, simple, and I think most importantly it easily interfaces with social networking. The Flip camera was not successful because they developed cutting edge technology. The success came from understanding the needs of the customer. And on top of that, it came from providing to a market that was wide open.

In my opinion, this is where marketing research and customer relationship marketing falls short; they analyze the markets they currently hold to find how to gain market share over competitors. In this way, I think an important segment is consistently left out: in this case people who didn’t think they wanted or needed a video camera at all.

The other concept that initially surprised me was the fact that customer insights do not just include what product a consumer is looking for, but extends into what experiences the customer has when they purchase that product. I was initially surprised to see TOMS shoes on the slide of examples of products driven by customer insights. In this case the customer values the experience of knowing that their shoes convey their concern with the populations in the developing world. Although there is not new technology in the shoe, it provides a new experience along with shoe shopping.

One topic that has confused me, and I hope to learn more about, is the topic around “feature creep,” which relates to the theories of Dieter Rams who argued that “good design is as little design as possible.” This makes sense in a lot of ways, but I wonder about the exceptions. One example that I have found in real life is the singing toothbrush, or better known in the elementary school gossip channels: “Tooth Tunes”. In all honestlythough, I did buy this as a gag gift; however after some further scrutiny I think it is a pretty ingenious idea. How many times were you yelled at as a child when bedtime came around? After being herded into the bathroom to brush your teeth, despite your whining, excuses, and sometimes even lying (although they always catch you with the time-old breath sniff test), the length of your brushing was hardly a priority. Tooth Tunes solves this problem by cleverly timing the length of a proper tooth brushing to a popular song. Is it “feature creep” to add a musical feature to a toothbrush? Originally it may seem so, but I believe that it is an astute consumer insight into the problem of children being motivated to brush their teeth, especially for the dentist-recommended but mother-enforced amount of time.