Experiences: Service Experiences

When I talk to companies, customers, and colleagues about UX strategy and the importance of understanding the end-to-end customer experience, I often tell stories about seemingly trivial parts of an experience with a brand that can have huge impacts. Small things can have significant impacts on customer acquisition and loyalty—and companies often overlook or under-prioritize them. For example:

• The process of exchanging a pair of shoes to get the right size may be so cumbersome that you don’t even want to bother with it.
• A meal that you have at a restaurant leaves a bad taste in your mouth—not because it wasn’t delicious, but because the server was inattentive and rude.
• Navigating a company’s interactive voice response (IVR) system to speak to a real person on the phone becomes a test of rage restraint, because it’s so abundantly clear that they want to make it as hard as possible.

Read More

Most people are aware of the evolving state of healthcare today—whether they’ve personally experienced the plethora of issues that healthcare presents or have read the many news reports covering the industry. As a service designer who is constantly identifying and solving problems, I have always been fascinated with the truly wicked problem that healthcare presents. Considering the broad scope of healthcare and its many stakeholders—including the government, healthcare providers, payers, pharmaceutical companies, and pharmacies—the problem seems almost impossible to address.

But patient demand is driving big changes. People’s experiences across industries are elevating their expectations of the healthcare industry. As a consequence, companies are reinventing themselves through acquisitions and partnerships to address the healthcare system’s legacy issues. Examples include CVS’s acquisition of Aetna and JP Morgan Chase, Amazon, and Berkshire Hathaway partnering to create Haven. Plus, people are taking more ownership of their health and are adopting digital health technology such as wearables and remote tracking to support their expectations and behaviors. Read More

Recent months have brought an extraordinary number of simultaneous crises—from the global pandemic of COVID-19 to high unemployment and economic uncertainty to systemic social injustices. Any one of these events alone would be destabilizing. Taken together, they place individuals and societies under unprecedented strain.

More than ever, empathy matters. More than ever, user experiences matter. Even as some states and countries lift restrictions relating to COVID-19, for the foreseeable future, we’ll have significant limitations on our personal interactions and experience potential challenges in meeting our foundational needs. As many essential activities have, by necessity, gone online or transitioned to virtual formats, UX designers now have a unique role to play in the changes occurring in the everyday lives of millions of people. With that power comes responsibility. Read More