Risk and reward, modelling, value chain, CX, UX, optimisation, scaling, content marketing, influencers and countless other corporate buzz words surround our customers today. It’s all a bit impersonal. The ‘big data world’ doesn’t help either. It can encourage us to look at thousands, if not millions, of customers in binary terms. Will they? Won’t they? Do they have value? Do they not? As product managers, this might suit our world view. As marketers, we are in the brand of changing minds and, perhaps, need to fight this fatalist view. People can, and do change. In fact, we are in the brand of making it happen.
As any parent or dog owner knows, rewarding ‘good’ behaviour is the best place to start making changes The big question is what might applying this to customer relationships mean to our brand? Once we start down the road of making our customers feel different, better and rewarded, for example, can we stop?
In the world of gamification, loyalty, points and rewards have been valuable parts of our arsenals for decades now. They are very much baked into customer expectations. Moving away from them, as tools, is guaranteed to cause annoyance and disappointment. However, rewards are finite. There’s only so much we can spend and continue to get returns. How to square this circle? Our experience shows us that designing experiences carefully with a ‘quest element’ is an ideal work-a-round. If the process of earning a reward, in itself, allows players to find new things, learn new skills and experience new opportunities, the player’s sense of satisfaction on receiving it will improve.
That’s why successful customer experiences have inbuild elements that go beyond simple risk and reward. With a bit of imagination, it is easy to see that popular experiences take their users on a journey, through a mission or on an adventure. The journey itself becomes as, if not more, important than the destination. That should be aim of any experience designer.
We’d love to help you create better, fun and rewarding experiences that keep your customers engaged.
