Making the customer experience outstanding is something that a car-sharing company takes seriously

Be it for multichannel, multi-device phenomena or for consistent tracking of feedback across all touchpoints, travel entities have to embrace a cohesive strategy.

Experts believe the key lies in spotting those ‘moments’ where the impact is maximum. This helps to build a process that charts out the main areas of influence throughout the customer journey.

Here EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta talks to Lesley Mottla, executive vice president, product and member experience, Zipcar, about initiatives to craft a customer experience that works.

EFT: What is the key to crafting an experience that is in line with an entity’s marketing or branding strategy?

LM: Key to crafting an experience that is in line with your brand strategy is to actively design the end to end experience, checking and asking yourself if each key interaction or moment of truth aligns with your brand.

At Zipcar, our brand focuses on delivering our mission of enabling simple and responsible urban living and doing so in ways that are enjoyable and provide a sense of freedom. Designing a mobile application that enables you to reserve anywhere, anytime and unlock and lock your car with a smartphone conveys all of those things that our brand stands for- the mission, simplicity, freedom and fun.

EFT: How mature are customer experience initiatives in the travel industry today?

LM: Typically, I look across the interactions because a great experience is how customers feel about the sum of all the interactions they have with your product or service.

For example, I’ve engaged with one airline that has a great, on brand, intuitive web experience for making a reservation. However, when I had to contact the call centre to make a change, that interaction was negative and unproductive – a long delay in getting to an agent, poor focus by the agent to help me solve my problem, and an unsatisfying resolution.

The companies that have a more advanced focus on customer experience, know the customer moments of truth and are designing out pain and designing in meeting or exceeding basic expectations. 

EFT: What factors need to be taken into consideration while working on app design and delivery?

LM: There are a variety of factors that need to be considered in app design and delivery.

Some of the key factors include thinking about when and where people will use the app, and if the app is the product or if it is a key enabler to your service. If it is an enabler, you need to understand the goal the customer wants to accomplish, and designing the interface so that the customer accomplishes the goal quickly, easily, without confusion and with confirmation and reassurance.

Focus on the basic goals of your customer and address those first and address them well. Prototype with paper, test, measure and refine.

EFT: What is key to attaining consistency while delivering a similar experience across various touchpoints?

In order to attain consistency across touchpoints, you need to be able to track and constantly get feedback at these key touchpoints. Identify the key moments of truth and start measuring and getting feedback through observations of customers interacting with you at that touchpoint.

EFT: Can you provide an insight into how to combine basic business fundamentals with designs that delight?

LM: First and foremost you need to make sure you, and everyone in your company, understand the basic expectations of your customers and make sure you are meeting those basic expectations in a way that aligns with your brand. You can add delight to the basics or then start to go above and beyond but delight in a purposeful and personalised way. During certain holidays, we’ll send personalised cards to members from the last car they drove (we name some of our cars).

EFT: What challenges crop up while working on customer experience-related programmes?    

LM: If you need people from a variety of functions in the company to help make improvements or evolve the experience, bring those functions in early to the discussions and make sure they have exposure to the customers to see or hear issues and opportunities firsthand, so that they can help define solutions. If you don’t get folks involved early or give them exposure to the customer view, it will be difficult to make experience improvements.  

EFT: What role does data play in customer-centric experience design?

LM: When combined with ethnographic and other customer-centered methodologies, data helps to pinpoint significant customer issues and typically helps to prioritise where you should focus your attention. Using data alone may not provide the full story about customer behaviour, thought process, and emotional reactions when interacting with your product, service or company.  

EFT: How should one prepare today to deliver a truly desirable customer experiences?

LM: Focus on people first – customers and employees – understand their behaviours, motivations, goals, why they would use your service over alternatives. When you have a good view of your customer journey and the supporting ecosystem, start to look at technology solutions that help to strengthen the good and eliminate the bad across the ecosystem.