Editorial
The Gist
- User experience analysis is key. Customer journeys require meticulous user experience analysis to ensure personalization without overwhelming prospects.
- AI assistants' varied impact. While some AI assistants enhance user interaction, others complicate the experience, highlighting the need for careful integration.
- Hope for 2024 UX strategy. 2024 could mark a significant shift toward improved customer journeys, with a stronger focus on user experience and thoughtful AI incorporation.
In thinking about macro marketing trends over the last few years, creating and optimizing customer journeys stands out. The idea is that a personalized experience journey is created for each prospect and customer that serves up the optimal content to move a prospect toward a purchase.
Orchestrated correctly, as a prospect I would receive information of interest and not be overwhelmed by unwelcome email, social and advertising solicitations. Brands are working hard to make this happen, and there is now a whole category of tools to help create and manage customer journeys using user experience analysis.
That said, I think we are a long way off from actually realizing the promise of a personalized customer journey; there’s still too much noise and poor use of behavioral data. How frustrating is it to start receiving ads for a product you’ve just bought? In addition, the customer journey folks seem to be at odds with those responsible for driving leads and sign-ups. How many times are you faced with a page take-over soliciting an email sign up when you just want to make a purchase or find information?
Let's take a deeper look at user customer journeys and user experience analysis.
User Experience Analysis: Customer Journeys Lagging in Digital Content Delivery
One of the things that’s inferred when we talk about customer journeys is that it will be a good experience for each prospect.
And while I think as a whole we are getting better at serving up the right content, it seems like how we serve up content (the user experience) has taken a backseat.
Some User Experiences and Customer Journeys With Flaws:
- The aforementioned page take-over of a solicitation to provide an email address in return for a discount. Bad enough that it appears but then you have to search for an “x” or a very tiny “no thanks,” which I need my reading glasses to find to get rid of.
- In the same vein, there’s the graying out of an entire page until you click on the consent button to accept the storing of cookies. Yes, I understand why these exist but most of us just click “consent” to get rid of the consent information, and it’s an irritation. We’ve been doing this for a few years now, surely someone could develop a more user-friendly approach?
- I’ve been a customer of a telehealth company for just over a year; my engagement started online with a mobile app designed as a secondary interface. Mid-year it announced that the app had been expanded and it was no longer going to support the web-based application. They shut down their website and moved everyone onto the app overnight BEFORE the app was bug free — it was a nightmare. Up until I canceled my subscription, the app was telling me to download the new app which I’d done several times.
- App upgrades, which must deliver some benefits to the creator, because the promised “new features” don’t seem to deliver any new value to the user. I’ve been particularly frustrated this year with travel-related app updates where all the menus have changed — why — just why?
- All the new Netflix messages, “Do I want to learn more about adding someone to my account?” and the only option given is to click on LEARN MORE. “Do I want to add a TV to my household.”
- On many sites and applications, finding someone to contact for help is both difficult and time-consuming. I’m OK with a lack of a phone number but it should be easier to find the help or assistance I need.
Related Article: Exploring the Crossroads of User Experience and Customer Experience
User Experience Analysis of Holiday Customer Journeys
I’ve become hypersensitive to these issues particularly since I’m doing a lot of online purchasing for the holidays. I realized one recent weekend I could probably launch a daily email with my latest bad user experiences.
It makes me question whether the rigorous user testing of applications and online experiences has gone by the wayside? Or, does the thinking about the customer journey not include an evaluation of how a prospect physically interacts with the brand and whether that experience is a good one? Perhaps decisions about the user experience are being made along the lines of “it’s worth not delivering a good experience in order to acquire an email address.”
Whatever the reasons, it’s clear that with all the capabilities at hand, and with the many applications available to us, user experiences are not uniformly good, not always intuitive and frequently annoying.
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Related Article: How Customer Feedback Surveys Shape UX Design
Generative AI Promises Enhanced UX Customer Journeys
The good news is that there’s hope on the horizon. Generative AI offers a means to greatly improve the user experience by introducing natural language processing in the form of a bot/assistant to guide and help users find and accomplish what they need to do in an application. We’re already starting to see the first generation of this in the form of more advanced chatbots.
Over time, I expect these systems to act more like a personal concierge — I dream of the day when I can type or tell an AI assistant where and when I want to travel and it does the rest without me clicking through a million screens.
Related Article: UI vs. UX Design: What’s the Difference?
Canva's AI Assistant Enhances User Experience
Canva is a positive example of this in action. I love working in Canva. It’s an intuitive application and easy to use. However, Canva has recently made a number of user experiences, which have required some relearning on my part. Along with these changes Canva has introduced an AI assistant that, in my experience, works extremely well. If I’m not sure how to do a particular function I just type in a “how do I’ question and the assistant responds with clear and comprehensive instructions. This negates any frustrations I have about not being able to do something the way I used to.
Related Article: Customer Journey Orchestration in the Age of AI
Some AI Assistants Hindering More Than Helping?
On the negative side, I’m starting to see companies introduce AI assistants to serve as communications intermediaries. My husband logged on to his health portal recently and was greeted by an AI assistant there to help with scheduling appointments. He wrote his request and the AI assistant responded with “I’ll let Dr. X’s team know and someone will get back to you.”
I had the same experience with VRBO. Now, if you want to modify a VRBO booking, instead of sending a message to the host, you make your request to the AI-assistant who responds with “a message has been sent to the host.” In both these cases it’s hard to see how these AI assistants have improved the user experience.
Related Article: Unveiling the Power of Customer Journey Orchestration
2024: Year of Renewed Focus on User Experience
It's time to get back to focusing on the user experience:
- Return to rigorous user testing before evolving a user experience
- Consider UX as a critical element in customer journey design as the content that is being delivered
- Seek to eliminate blockers to action (email sign-ups etc.)
- Introduce AI assistants with care and ensure that they add to the experience and not detract from it.
Without a relentless focus on user experience analysis, customer journeys are going to end up delivering a miserable experience regardless of what personalized content is delivered. I’m hoping that 2024 will be the year that companies prioritize how content is delivered as they embrace the capabilities of AI and shape their customer journey models.
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