So why is the digital equivalent of uncivil behavior acceptable for brands?

Consider this scenario: When I walk into a physical store, it would be rude to step in front of me and put a sign in front of my face asking me to sign up for the newsletter to receive 10% off my purchase. Yet, websites are still doing this same thing. The dreaded modal that blocks my path, which now is layered on top of a cookies acceptance message, layered on top of a chat window that is open that I don’t want, nor did I ask for. Physically running into me with a sandwich board would be marginally preferable to dealing with this cacophony on a mobile device.

At the beginning of CourtAvenue, we defined what tenets have to be true for a human-centered experience but as a digital innovation organization, we strive for a remarkable experience. Spoiler: it isn’t surprise and delight. We considered what it would mean to be truly human-centered and pressure-tested it against many industries. In particular, I worked on patient and professional education for a cancer biotherapy for four years - I actively reject surprise and delight as a principle of user experience because it is not appropriate for the goals or needs of people in all situations.

Here’s what we believe needs to be true for a digital Customer Experience to be remarkable: 

Frictionless The user should be able to accomplish the task at hand, in the way they want, on a device that is natural to their journey, often this is referred to as omnichannel. They should be able to seamlessly move through the brand’s ecosystem without disruption or disparate interactions. Analytics and user research inform how these channels intersect and where we can relieve pain points.The user should be able to accomplish the task at hand, in the way they want, on a device that is natural to their journey, often this is referred to as omnichannel. They should be able to seamlessly move through the brand’s ecosystem without disruption or disparate interactions. Analytics and user research inform how these channels intersect and where we can relieve pain points.

Intuitive There is a concept called Jakob’s Law, “Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.” Now, that doesn’t mean they want the 10% modal but they do have expectations of how interactions function, mental models for information organization, and an expected level of information persistence or personalization. User research is critical to understanding these factors.

Contextual We believe the most valuable document a digital team can have is the research-backed Customer Journey Map. This document creates a holistic view of customer goals, their actions, thoughts, and emotions, and more critically the pain points and friction to the goal. When working on the aforementioned cancer therapy, the understanding that the patients had generally received five rounds of treatments before ours elevated empathy significantly in the team. The understanding of the phases of the journey and associated behaviors helped us to help the patients and caretakers by surfacing the right content at the right time with sensitivity and consideration.

Purpose-driven This tenet is three-fold with the point of the experience as well as the content and design of the experience. Everything should have a point, and the point of an experience should be the benefit of a human. Content should be developed according to how people consume content online, the design should assist humans in navigation, consumption, and comprehension of the information and assist with their ultimate goal rather than distracting or limiting understanding in trade for aesthetics.

Singular Every experience should feel like the organization it is coming from - through look, tone, feel, down to micro-interaction. Frequently in digital, a logo can be covered up and a brand site can look like five other brands - if a singular brand presence is coming through - the experience is ownable and identifiable, not mistaken for anyone else.

Conscientious We care. In human-centered design, this is a presupposition to all of the work that we do. It has to be inclusive and crafted with the user’s needs in mind with responsibility to the user’s interests and data.

The brands that are doing these things are winning; customer experience leaders outperform peer revenue growth over two times. Additionally, CX strategy by its nature is purpose-led and we know that employees who have purpose perform better and increase profitability. In CourtAvenue work, we have seen page optimization performance improve with engagement rates by as much as 400% by holding ourselves accountable to our Experience Tenets. By continuously reminding ourselves to act charitably toward those around us and those who are on the receiving end of our decisions, like our users, we can see that in fact, being respectful is good for business.