Experience architecture: A framework for designing personalized customer interactions

Design Management Journal,  Spring 2001  by Rose, David

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

Faced with swiftly multiplying and merging channels, the temptation is to retreat to the traditional, to concentrate on maintaining the quality of call centers and stores. But new channels may offer a company its most profitable opportunities. For example, Zagat's, the restaurant guide, could create a wireless phone service enabling users to get localized restaurant advice when they're out and about. And as Marjorie Connelly of CapitalOne, a credit card company, says, "A cell phone is just a credit card with an antenna. Both provide access to products and services." Shrewd credit-card company executives like Connelly know that in the future a wireless phone could be used to complete transactions via short-range radio. Finnish phone giant Nokia recently partnered with Tricon Global Restaurants, owner of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, to conduct an experiment in two North Carolina fast-food outlets. Using a mobile phone faceplate built by 2Scoot (a startup based in Kingston, New York), which acts as a wireless credit card near a 2Scoot network, customers in Raleigh, North Carolina, can pay for their tacos and chicken wings by waving their cell phones near a specially designed cash register.

Designing for all these channels means two things. It means taking into account such differences in delivery technology as screen size, sound capacity, CPU power, memory, and location sensitivity. And it means designing in such a way as to provide a single unbroken conversation between customer and brand. The consumer's multi-channel zigzag is both a design challenge and an opportunity to drive transactions.

Let's look at some examples. After retail site Lands' End introduced a Lands' End Live feature on their site, their cross-sell rate soared from 2 percent to 30 percent, a Lands' End executive claimed at The Economist magazine's January eCRM conference. Using Lands' End Live, visitors can get the advice of a customer representative via Web chat while they explore the site. Users with a second phone line or cable modem can enter their number to trigger a phone call from a sales assistant. Web shoppers are much less likely to dump their shopping carts if they can question store reps directly. Currently, nearly half of online shopping carts are abandoned.

In another smart move, Lands' End introduced a "Shop with a Friend" feature on its site. A horizontal toolbar at the top of the page allows visitors to communicate with a friend or relative via Web chat as they browse. The Gap is also exploiting the multi-channel zigzag: The company has installed Web-connected computers in its stores so that shoppers can order outof-stock items or things they just don't feel like carrying around.

Figure 4 shows some examples of these powerful "hybrid channels," such as store + Web, or Web + call center. In addition, stores will soon have the opportunity to transmit coupons to wireless devices as the customer passes by outside-another ripe opportunity to leverage hybrid channels to create compelling experiences and drive transactions.