Customer Experience (CE) Testing Lucy Heenan and Mo Shannon
AGENDA Introduction What is Customer Experience (CE) and why do I care? How is a CE constructed? CE Testing different from traditional testing? Test Example Winning over your testers what s in it for them?
What is CE and why do I care? Essentially, it s the sum of all the experiences a customer has with a supplier of goods and services. It can also relate to an individual experience over one transaction. How simple was it to order and pay for? Was it delivered when promised and is it working well? Is it easy to use and does it meet your needs? Did you handle any queries or issues effectively? Were the people you dealt with helpful? What story would I tell my friends?
What is CE and why do I care? Think about a recent example in your own life where you were the customer and you had a bad experience Pretty easy to think of an example?
What is CE and why do I care? You can t not have an experience! Individual customers decide whether they have had a good or bad customer experience. This impacts their future buying decisions and whether or not they will recommend us to friends or family. Customer Experience is the path to more recommendations. Organisations need to view a good recommendation as an outcome from a good experience. Forrester Research
What is CE and why do I care? Why should firms focus on Customer Experience? Because it s important, complex, and broken. That s why firms should head toward Experience-Based Differentiation, a blueprint for customer experience excellence. Forrester Research Eighty percent of companies believe they deliver a superior customer experience, but only 8 percent of their customers agree." Harvard Management Update, January 2010
What is CE and why do I care? A new report, The State Of Customer Experience, 2010 examines survey responses from 141 executives from large North American firms. 90% of respondents think that customer experience is very important or critical to their 2010 strategy. 80% want to use customer experience as a form of differentiation. Only 11% have a very disciplined approach to customer experience. Forrester, February 2010
What is CE and why do I care? Customer Experience is even more important during an economic downturn Customers always have a choice whether to buy or use something at all, or whether to buy or use someone else s product or service. In hard times customers are likely to be less forgiving of a poor experience and with less disposable cash available, more likely to take notice of advocacy and other s recommendations. Mulberry Consulting
What is CE and why do I care? 90% of unhappy customers will not buy again from a company that disappointed them 70% buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated 7 out of 10 customers who switch to a competitor do so because of poor service 92% of all customer interactions happen via the phone - 85% of consumers are dissatisfied with their phone experience (Gartner)
What is CE and why do I care? Delivering great or spiky Customer Experiences requires buy-in and understanding from all members of staff and leadership and sponsorship from senior management. It also requires them to put themselves in the customer s shoes. Customer Experience Alliance
What is CE and why do I care? Internet Tolerances - 0.1 second (one tenth of a second). Ideal response time. The user doesn't sense any interruption. - 1 second. Highest acceptable response time. Download times above 1 second interrupt the user experience. - 10 seconds. Unacceptable response time. The user experience is interrupted and the user is likely to leave the site or system. Jakob Nielsen on UIE.com - the most popular websites he studied took an average of 8 seconds to download, whereas the pages of the less popular sites took an average of 19 seconds to download
What is CE and why do I care? Lastly please note: Great Customer Service Great Customer Experience Customer Service Customer Experience How do I train my staff to make good eye contact? vs Do my customers want eye contact? How do I reduce call waiting times for the service desk? vs How do I stop customers calling the service desk?
Yes, great customer service is often defined by how a business responds to inevitable and, in some cases, unpredictable product and service failures. But the best organizations prevent those problems from occurring in the first place. Tom Asacker - www.acleareye.com This is where you come in Employees are the custodians of Customer Experience
CE construction Systems Transaction view Customer journey Exception handling Data available in real-time Engage real end users Communicate honestly Process People Great customer experience Minimise pending orders and queues Strong business owner Training and development People plan Testing People and system capacity Speed of transaction processing Self-service and automation Capacity management Factors that will cause rejects Simplicity and usability
CE Construction A great customer experience is one which is designed in from the start systems/process/people Design testing around 5 top tips for a great customer experience: Know what matters to your customers informs risk-based testing Keep any promises you make can you test these promises? Spot potential problems and fix them -! Communicate clearly and simply test the communication e.g. error messages Take responsibility when things go wrong test the fix processes too, test how you take responsibility
CE Testing different from traditional testing? Traditional testing documented requirements documented design Agile testing constant customer involvement progressive agreement and sign-off CE Testing testing holistic solutions not just systems looking at solutions in terms of their ability to work for our external customers. asking whether they help us deliver the best experience for our customers asking whether they help us to retain existing customers and attract new customers.but just who is the customer?
What is it about? We still need to do the technical testing to make sure that the solution works as designed. But we need to add an extra dimension. A good analogy is to imagine a pair of magical glasses that allow us to see everything from the customer s point of view. That is what we need to add. The best option - get a real customer involved in testing. Second best get your test team to use their personal experience to help. But remember that the perfect experience for you is not always the perfect experience for your neighbour.
Lets look at two different customers and understand how they differ. Meet Ann and Tricia - they both want to buy the same new laptop
I want to order by phone and speak to someone knowledgeable who can help me with the order
I want to order online and place my order quickly and efficiently. I don t need to speak to someone
I want to pay the whole costs by credit card whilst I m on the phone placing my order
I want to spread my payments over 12 months and pay by Direct Debit
I want it delivered to my door, and an engineer to set it up and transfer my data. I am prepared to pay for this option.
I want it delivered by the cheapest possible option. I will set it up and transfer all my data myself.
I want an annual support option that gives me access to support at any time of day. If the laptop breaks down I want a collection/ replacement service
I want an on-demand pay-as-you-go support option. I can fix most problems myself so I don t want to pay for something I might not use
So the same laptop but that is about all that is the same. When we test the solution for this sales process we need to test that it supports both customers.
Summary Some customers want a higher level of support. But even if your business decides that they are only going to provide an online service, the solution needs to meet different customer requirements The $300Million Button see www.uie.com
Winning over your testers what s in it for them? Testers reluctant to embrace the concept and practice of CE Testing. They are uncomfortable with a less defined discipline than traditional pass/fail testing. However, the benefits are: More interesting and challenging work for testers Testers gain more respect due to improved intelligence they supply When testers say don t release this they are taken seriously Your business sponsors will see a better customer experience delivering improved customer satisfaction.
Started the journey but not there yet CE has been around a while now, but in testing it s still new It s going to be uncomfortable Testers: testing culture Sponsors: where s the return on investment? Best way to get there is to have a go!