How many dimensions are there to customer effort?

We were discussing this question in the office today.  We were in agreement that there are two fundamentals – the physical and emotional angles. Physical work to get what you want, which varies little by customer and “emotional work”, which varies enormously by customer. There were many examples that convince or confuse when it comes to describing or measuring an experience through any customer effort index:

• Why will customers queue for 2 days to buy Apple’s iPads? That’s a lot of customer effort. How can the emotional need to own an iPad overcome the physical effort in getting one?
• Why will angry customers invest so much time in getting an apology, or in acting as brand terrorists and persuading others not to buy? It’s a lot of customer effort for little reward.
• Why do I change my mind about some things from day to day ( buying a car) whereas others are constants (eg Man Utd)?
• Why do measurements by asking customers rarely reflect what they really feel or give a full picture of the end to end experience?
• Why do people donate lots of time for free in helping others in help forums, such as Microsoft’s MVP scheme or new companies like giffgaff ( more on this company later n the week)

We decided a few of levels of analysis are required for different purposes.

At the first level in “Best Service Is No Service” we use the value/irritant 2×2 grid to assess the amount customer effort (both physical and emotional) for each customer demand ( e.g. “where’s my stuff?”). One can quickly assess what action to take by this method eg if its an irritant to both company and customer then stop it. If value/value then invest in this demand type eg “I want to buy…”. Value to customer/irritant to company can be self served. Irritant to customer/value to company needs to be simplified.

At the second level to understand the flow of value, i.e. how value is added or destroyed, we think of the 3 major flows as physical work, emotional work and reward perceived by customers. We can look at this second level like a water tank being filled by 3 taps and emptied by 3 similar taps. Each tap represents a flow either in or out of the tank. The taps are a) physical work, b) emotional work and c) reward (both financial and emotional pay back). The tank holds the customer’s investment in the company’s brand. Every step along the customer’s journey can affect the taps and how the water level, i.e. the customer’s investment in the brand, goes up or down.

Some interactions can only affect the bottom taps – i.e. you can lose water but you can’t gain any. For example a car recall for faulty air bags done in the normal way can at best be neutral because it should not have happened at all. Some interactions can add or destroy value depending on how they are carried out, what emotional impact they have and what reward they bring.

In the next few days, I’ll look at how these “water tank” analogy can explain the complexity of the 5 questions above.

There’s a third level in which we can look in more detail at what drives the physical and emotional work and rewards. A great way to look at this is by Alan Mitchell of research house Ctrl-Shift. He uses the acronym OPTIMAL to represent a way of looking at effort. We’ll also visit this third level later in the week.

What do you think of the tank analogy?