Editorial
The Gist:
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Use the Peak-End rule to elevate CX. Understanding the Peak-End concept is essential to better customer journey optimization.
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Make the best moments even better. Improve customers’ memory of an experience by heightening their peak moments.
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Know that “the end” is not the end. Customer journeys don’t conclude when a company’s involvement is over.
Have you ever rented a car from an airport? For some, it may evoke feelings of stress and anxiety. The shuttle bus brings you from the terminal to a small island in a sea of cars, and as you step off the bus, you pretend (like the other passengers) that you’re not rushing to be first in line. But the truth is that you are rushing, just like everyone else.
When you make it to the check-in counter, only a couple of agents are on duty. A line quickly forms — you and the other customers deflate knowing that you’ll likely be facing a long wait.
Enterprise gives it about 15 seconds, long enough that you feel disappointed but not so long that your disappointment curdles into anger. Then, a door opens behind the counter and half a dozen smiling employees pour out, ready to help. Just like that, the line evaporates. Moods flip from disappointment and deflation to relief and elation.
I call this the Enterprise Pause. For the rental car company, it demonstrates a deft understanding of how to apply the Peak-End concept to creating customer experiences that are memorably great. Let’s take a look at customer journey optimization and the concept of the Peak-End Rule.
Related Article: Customer Experience Best Practices: One Airline Soars, Another Stays Grounded
Customer Journey Optimization: The Peak-End Rule
The world learned about the Peak-End Rule when Daniel Kahneman published his best-seller, “Thinking Fast And Slow.” Through several studies, Kahneman and his collaborators showed that memories of an experience were overwhelmingly shaped by the peak moments of either pleasure or pain. In other words, our memory is heavily influenced by the worst parts, best parts and last parts of an experience.
I remember talking to everyone I knew in the customer experience space when Kahneman’s book came out in 2011, and how we might apply the Peak-End idea to reimagine our customer journey optimization approach. For CX, the Peak-End Rule was going to change everything.
But looking back on it from 2024, it’s clear that the Peak-End Rule didn’t have the impact I and others thought it would.
Why not?
The Secret Third Component of the Peak-End Experience
Executed correctly, Peak-End experiences must include a third component that goes unnamed in the rule.
Think back to the Enterprise Pause. The peak moment is when the smiling employees emerge from the door and the line evaporates. But that peak is only possible because of the dip just before it.
The third part of the Peak/End experience is that most of the experience needs to be unmemorable — or even better — a little bit irritating or frustrating, to create greater contrast either with the positive peak moments or with the strong finish. Rendered more accurately, the Peak-End Rule would instead be the Peak/Valley/End Rule.
However, that doesn’t roll off the tongue the way the original does so just remember: There are no peaks without valleys.
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Use Peak-End to Create More Memorable Experiences
If companies are going to finally start applying the Peak/End Rule to design memorably great experiences, what should they do?
Step 1: Heighten the Positive Peaks You Already Have
Make them more memorable by evoking stronger emotions in customers.
For example, Cleveland Clinic noticed that patients really appreciated the hourly rounds performed by nurses. But the rounding process wasn’t as intentional or consistent as it could be, so they trained their nurses to ask more questions when they visited a patient, which made it easier for patients to tell them if something was wrong. As a result, their nurse communication and patient experience scores went up.
In sum, the hospital took a moment that was already a peak and elevated it to make patients feel like the nurses were more empathetic and providing more high-quality care.
Step 2: Smooth out Parts of the Experience Surrounding the Peaks
Placid, forgettable moments before and after a peak make these high points more memorable. This is because of a greater juxtaposition between the peak and the rest of the experience.
Going back to the Enterprise Pause, the line that forms enlarges the gap to the peak moment when the rest of the staff emerges. This makes the peak moment more memorable.
By simplifying large parts of the experience, making them easy and unmemorable, companies are focusing more of the customers’ attention on the peak moments they want them to remember. This further reinforces the salience of the peaks in the customer’s memory. This has the added benefit of simplifying the task for companies. When it comes to customer journey optimization, it is not necessary to nail every moment of the experience, especially since most will be forgotten.
Related Article: Airlines Need to Think Digital-First to Win and Retain Customers
Final Step: Understand and Take Responsibility for What Your Customers Consider to Be 'the End' of Their Experience
Companies often assume customer experience is over when their part in the experience concludes. But if you’re an airline transporting your passengers, the destination is not the end of the jet bridge. If passengers struggle to navigate their way through the terminal or get to their actual final destination, their memory of the trip is worse than your experience measures would have suggested.
Because of this, companies must figure out how to manage the ends of experiences they do not control. This could include offering to take over a part of the experience they aren’t necessarily responsible for. For example, some airlines have even gone so far as to staff security at airports when waits get too long.
It’s important to remember that service recovery is the ultimate opportunity to create new experience ends. Well-staffed, well-trained call-centers are your last line of defense to create new, better ends for customers when the rest of their experience has not gone well.
Thirteen years after "Thinking Fast And Slow" came out, the Peak-End Rule still offers an opportunity for companies to improve their customer journey optimization. Seize it!
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