Customer Experience: The Opposite of Convenience May Surprise You! #cx

Customer Experience: What is the Opposite of Convenience?

If your answer to this question is — inconvenience — you may be losing customers without knowing it.

Customer Experience: Image is a road with a crack.

Customer Experience: What is the Opposite of Convenience? Image from Istock.

Image licensed from Istock.com

To a customer the opposite of convenience isn’t inconvenience.


It’s a reason to be angry.

It’s a reason to rant on social media.

It’s a reason to consider your convenient competitors.

It’s a reason to leave.


Customer Experience: What is the Customer Actually Buying?

A fast food customer service story about a very upset customer is all over the Internet. A drive-through customer stressed “absolutely no ketchup on my burger”. When the customer left the drive-through and opened the bag, there was ketchup on the burger. The customer then came inside and raged on about the mistake.

Why is the customer SO upset?

It’s not because of the inconvenience of the mistake. The customer is very upset because they bought convenience and received everything but that. When a customer considers where they will eat and chooses a fast food drive-through, it’s not just for the food. It’s for the convenience! Convenience represents ease. This customer experience was difficult.

The Customer Experience Convenience Connection

Customers expect convenience whether your brand is directly selling convenience (like fast food chains) or not. Customers like to connect with brands that make the experience easy! Convenience feels good. It brings customers back.

Find the inconvenience in customer experience and replace it with the convenience connection.

Where to look …

  • In your standard procedures. Businesses spend a great deal of time training employees on standard processes in the hopes of ensuring a consistently high quality customer experience. Yet not every customer wants the same thing. To deliver convenience, think flexible not standardized. Train employees on listening for special requests and following through.
  • In confusion. How do your employees act in the midst of confusion? Do they resort to standard procedures or do they ask questions to clear up the current confusion? The former can create customer unrest. The latter delivers superior customer experience.
  • In the micro view. When employees perform the task without knowing the true purpose of the task, customer experience suffers. Fast food drive-through lanes were not invented because people prefer eating food from a paper bag. Convenience sells and sells and sells! Do your employees know that?
  • In your silos. Customer experience convenience evaporates when teams are not working together. Do cross-teambuilding to ensure a convenient customer experience.
  • In lack of attention. Superior customer experience requires great focus on each customer’s request. Do your sales teams hear each customer’s true need before closing the sale? If not, the fulfillment teams will be generating inconvenience. The customer service teams will face the irate customer. Seek and destroy robotic thinking and replace with true attention to superior customer experience.

Where else have you found a lack of convenience affecting customers?

It’s a critical question. Never underestimate the value of convenience in any price point of customer experience. From budget products and services to high-end elegance, convenience and ease is key!

I would be pleased to work with you and your teams to increase the ease your customers have with you and your business.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™

Featured image on the summary page from thisisbossi via Flickr Creative Commons License.

Related Posts:
Superior Customer Experience: Are You Using the Power of Empathy With Customers
Super Customer Experience: Immediate No Cost Improvements

©2013 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com for permission and guidelines. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.


Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results. Kate also invites you to connect with her on Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter. She welcomes your interaction!

9 Responses to “Customer Experience: The Opposite of Convenience May Surprise You! #cx”

  1. Khalid says:

    “Find the inconvenient in customer service and replace it”

    I loved how simple and powerful this statement is!

    Sometimes when we get used to the service we deliver it becomes just work to be done! We forget the reason why we do things!

    The statement above is a wake up call to all service providers!

    Stop and think…

    Thanks Kate for the enlightment 🙂

    Khalid

    • Kate Nasser says:

      Khalid,
      I love your addition to this post … “sometimes service becomes ‘just work to be done'”. You captured one of the main reasons service fails — routine habit.

      Thanks much for your comment.

      Always grateful,
      Kate

  2. Mila Araujo says:

    Excellent article Kate, I’ll be sharing this with my team. I think we often strive for convenience as service providers but lose track of what that really means when little things like ketchup go wrong. Having easy access to an answer or having someone listen when a customer calls with an issue – it’s all about making access to service, information, a product or satisfaction easy.

    We ask ourselves why are people so angry, the answer is often in our own reactions to them. Here’s to remembering best practices in the little things in our day to day – like ketchup… It’s the little things and the attention to detail that really make the difference. Thank you!

    • Kate Nasser says:

      Thanks for your comment Mila — I am glad this post will help your teams and all your customers! As you say “It’s the little things and the attention to detail that make the difference” and make service easy for customers!

      Regards,
      Kate

  3. Bill Leinweber says:

    Hi Kate,
    Another post that is right on target. So many businesses are internally enamored with their own products or services that they fail to consider anything else. Ease of doing business (“convenience”) is a huge part of the customer experience equation! We have a local pizza/restaurant chain whose current TV motto is “The taste says it all.” But who cares what the food tastes like if the online ordering website is a mess, the delivery is late, food is in poor condition or preparation instructions are not followed?? Despite what companies try to solve with customer surveys, the challenge for many businesses is in viewing their customer experience from the outside-in. But, as customer experience experts, that’s where we can help, right? Awesome post.

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