Digital transformation is half done

Many companies are wrangling their businesses on to a digital footing. Some have failed and gone under. Successful ones are celebrating their new found efficiencies, smoothness of customer sign up and integrated logistics. What is common amongst all of them is the sparse attention placed on the end of the customer experience. Why is this a problem?

Getting personal

Marketing has harnessed web technologies to understand nuanced consumer behaviour. That helps to deliver personalised experiences based behaviour. A purchase goes through a number of digital systems to build a customer profile, make a transaction, build a logistics plan and start shipment. This digital evolution continues when the consumer uses the product. It provides service support, tracks usage, behaviour, recommends improvements and monitors problems. These digital systems are continuously improving. Becoming faster, more integrated and cheaper.

Pervious century

When a customer attempts to leave a business they are transferred to a pervious century to do it. Gone is the slick navigating of functional components provided by digital transformation. Customers are often required to pick up a telephone (invented in 1876) and for the first time since joining the service speak to a real person. The following conversation is aimed at turning the customer around and blocking them from leaving. Instead of “Can I help you” the phone operators should be saying “How can I hinder you”.

Of course, no business wants to lose customers, but lack of clear thinking misplaces the right action at the end. Many business focus on stopping the trajectory instead of seeing and gaining benefits from this unique moment.

Dead is not enough

There are only two reasons people leave a business – the product does not align with current needs or external factors. The response should be really simple, show empathy and gain insight.

I have heard some terrible stories about bad endings with companies unable to empathise with a customers personal situation and their need to leave. For example the venerable elderly man who rang his cable provider to leave because he couldn’t afford it. Only to be talked in to buying more channels and increasing his financial outlay. Or the grieving family who tried to cancel their recently departed fathers account, only to be told the account owner has to shut the account.

Showing a lack of empathy at these delicate points will damage any positive experiences had elsewhere with the service.

Angry feedback

Most businesses regard customer feedback highly. Elsewhere in the consumer lifecycle information can be observed through digital systems. These react to consumer activity and often respond immediately. However at the end, activity naturally drops so more traditional methods like questionnaires and recommendations are used. These tend to get muddied if the customer has gone through frustrating routes to get to the end. Harry Brignull calls these Dark Patterns, “tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn't mean to”. There is a particular one that relates to stopping people leaving that Harry calls Roach motel, “You get into a situation very easily, but then you find it is hard to get out of it”.

When a departing customer is finding it hard to get out, their negative emotions increase. Tarnishing feedback with angry negative perceptions. In psychology terms this problem is called Mood Memory, proposed by Penelope A. Lewis and Hugo D. Critchley. It says that a persons memory of a previous experience can be recalled more easily if they experience an event of similar emotional value. For example, if a person has a nice experience leaving the consumer experience, it will be easier for them to remember nice experiences that happened elsewhere in the service. But if someone has become frustrated leaving a business, they are going to recall more frustrating experiences from the service.

Valuable honest feedback

Businesses that have streamlined functional endings by delivering a smooth and honest experience for the customer gain high quality and detailed feedback. Departing customers are honest and clear about what they enjoyed and didn’t.

One business I know was adverse to the idea of creating an easy ending. They had the cliched belief that “if it is easy to leave, more people will leave”. It was a nightmare for customers to leave this business. After eventually navigating the exit, customers were asked to provide feedback. The data was a mess of angry, hateful, insults.

A friend of mine suggested they create a simple and smooth ending. After a lot of persuasion the business agreed. Once implemented the quality of customer feedback increased dramatically. The business now see this as a critical place to gain consumer insights.

Transforming the end

Digital transformation needs to look beyond acquisition of new customers. It needs to provide smooth endings. Where customers are respected about their intentions to leave. The opportunities with digital transformation at the end of the consumer lifecycle are enormous. Better quality data, better consumer sentiment, smoother consumer experience, smaller service teams, higher brand retention. When your business talks about digital transformation, ask what does this mean at the end?