A New Twist on Emergency Alerts

Yesterday my smartphone started cackling like and old witch. I had never heard anything like that before. It certainly caught my attention! I picked it up, looked at the screen, and it was the National Weather Service alerting me to the fact that there were dust storms in the area and for me to take precautions.In the other room my wife was listening to the radio. The radio cackled as well and communicated the same alert.

I initially thought that what I received from the NWS was a text message, and I wanted to figure out how I could attach sounds to my text messages the same way. Alas, that is not possible, because this special feature is part of FEMA's Wireless Emergency Alert Network. The Notifications setting on the smartphone controls when it is activated. Not sure if it is based on my actual location or where I live. I hope it is the former.

What a cool extension of an idea that's been around since I was a kid, the Emergency Broadcast System. It certainly initiated some customer performance around my house.

Royal Nuances in a Subway

A friend just sent me this. The interior of the RER train that takes one from Paris to Versailles has been transformed into a replica of the palace itself. It is a great example of how nuances (Access) like this can surprise customers and set their expectations (Vision) for what is to come. http://trendland.com/parisian-rer-train-transformed-to/#.

You Can Lead a Person to Water, But Will They Purify It?

I was intrigued by a story on NPR this morning titled A Surprising Barrier to Clean Water: Human Nature. The story was about Innovations for Poverty Actions' efforts in Kenya to encourage people to purify their water. Most water comes from springs or wells, and it is contaminated. The co-creation of value story here encouraging Kenyans to add a few drops of chlorine to their water containers. The first design was to sell chlorine cheap at stores ($0.30 per month) with a social marketing and communication campaign. Adoption was very limited. The next design was to place chlorine dispensers next to the well or spring. 61% of water in Kenyan's homes tested positive for chlorine treatment, compared to 8% for a treatment group. A good trend.

From a customer performance perspective, the designers were primarily manipulating the Access component of the coproduction experience model by providing the tool (chlorine and its dispensers) and manipulating the interface (how and where it is dispensed). They also manipulated Incentive (making chlorine free). I assume that there is some customer education in the mix as well (it is not discussed in the project details I found), and the Vision, well, is self-evident: better health for kids and fewer deaths. You would think that would be enough for 99.9% adoption.

Isn't Being Healthy a Good Enough Incentive?

There has been a rise in news stories about new innovations in encouraging customers to stick to taking their prescriptions as directed. The motivation? It seems that Medicare is providing financial rewards to insurers and pharmacies for improving patient compliance. The latest story (WSJ, 5/21/13, p. B7) introduces a whole host of customer performance tactics, such as:

• Big data analytics (scan patient claims and clinical data to identify people with high non-compliance risk)
• Earn points and prizes for taking medicines as directed
• Including sensors in pills themselves that report to a mobile device when a pill was ingested (with reports delivered to doctors and family members)
• Including sensors in pill bottles to assess remaining medicine
• Designing a pill bottle that develops "banana" spots to indicate expiration

Big Mother!? Are You Kidding Me?

As reported in this blog, the past couple of years have seen a significant rise in devices, gadgets, and apps that fit the Vision component of the coproduction experience model, specifically around goals and feedback. Well, someone has coined a term for these solutions - Big Mother (WSJ 4/23/13, A1). If you are slouching, driving like a jerk, or haven't brushed your teeth, these solutions will remind you, nag you, nudge you, to change your behavior. Data about your various performances can be uploaded and tracked in the cloud, and if you so desired, beamed to your friends, even your mother, for that extra bit of social support that you need to achieve your goals.

The Beam Brush, for example, tracks the brushing of your teeth and publishes reports to your smartphone. The smartphone app praises you when you've met your goals (it even offers prizes), and marks your calendar with "missed brushings" when you haven't been so diligent.

Simplicity Drives Customer Performance

Simplicity is a key foundation for customer performance, especially within the Access domains of tools, interfaces, and information. A recent WSJ review of the book Simplicity examines the need for enhancing the simplicity of pill bottles (and instructions), end-user license agreements, processes (such as a hospital experience) and even the number of choices a customer is offered at a grocery store. The key principles of simplicity are empathy, distillation, and clarification.

Filling a Water Bottle For the First Time

Given the revolt of many people (including me) against bottled water, carrying one's own water bottle is slowing becoming a social norm. The trend has been noticed by drinking fountain manufacturers, who now offer water fountains that fill bottles, easily, without having to juggle the valve of a drinking fountain.

When I first encounter one of these bottle-filling fountains, I couldn't figure out how it worked. That's because I have years and years of conditioning that drinking fountains have buttons, and when you push a button, water is dispensed. So my bottle just sat on the platform while I searched for a button. Finally, someone took pity on me and showed me how it worked. You raise the bottle toward the fountain, and an electric eye detects the presence of the bottle and the water flows. Take the bottle away, and the water stops.

Why this design? Why not button? The story is that to avoid germ fears, designers needed to make the fountain touchless. But like me, other users were baffled about how to fill their bottles. So the designers added graphics to illustrate what to do. I think there were graphics on the one I first used, but I was so into button-pushing mode that my mind completely ignored them.

But what is really cool (once you learn how to use these things) is that some models have a digital readout showing how many bottles have been filled (nice feedback for social norming. See WSJ, March 25, B1 for more. 

Help, Not Take Over

The wave of smart technologies is upon us, from smart meters and devices that help use better manage our energy use to a trash can that takes pictures of what we throw away to determine well our households are aligning with "green living." From a customer performance standpoint, these technologies fall into the Access component of the coproduction experience model, but deliver most of their benefits through the Vision component, namely through the principles of goals and feedback. The other elements of the model are represented as well. Take the trash camera. The goal is green living. The analysis of the trash is the feedback. Points are awarded if you are doing good (Incentive), and remedial instruction is offered if you are not (Expertise). And there we have it, a complete coproduction experience.

The debate, however, is whether the devices are "good smart" or "bad smart". Good smart devices let the customer stay in control. An example is the HAPIfork, which assesses your eating speed. Lights indicate when you are eating too fast, but it is up to you to make the decision to slow down (no, the fork does not retract its tongs, but it would be really cool if it did, to make you take smaller bites).

Bad smart devices don't give you complete control. An example of bad is a breathalyzer in a car. Blow a blood alcohol level of 0.8, and the car won't start. Socially, this is good, at least we think so. But the question is how far this idea can be taken. Several years ago, in the electric utility industry (where I do a lot of work), California regulators considered making programmable, controllable thermostats for commercial businesses mandatory, as well as the mandatory participation in electric demand response events which require customers to reduce their energy usage for a few hours on hot summer days. Needless to say, this didn't go over very well and the proposal was shelved.

In our own research, it is clear that for customer performance to emerge, customers feel that they are in control of the situations and performances in which they engage. We need to help them in most cases, and only take over in the fewest of cases. It will be interesting to see how this facet of customer performance balances out. See WSJ 2/23/13, C1 for more insights on this. 

Customer Performance and Credit Cards

Many monthly bills, such as from your utility, credit card provider, phone service, and so on, have for a long time been complex and confusing. New regulations and laws have started to address this problem, with the aim of enhancing customer performance - specifically in terms of having the information to make good decisions (Access:Information). Read more about what's being done to enhance credit card bills here. 

Get Feedback on Your New Years Resolutions

The strongest method for influencing customer performance is Vision, which focuses on designing experiences that have clear goals and rich feedback. At the Consumer Electronics Show this year, a number of devices that offer Vision to consumers for health and fitness activities where introduced. These devices included wristbands and armbands that measure various biometrics, and an electronic fork that measures how quickly a person eats. If one is eating too fast, then the fork vibrates to indicate to the eater to slow down. And, of course, all these devices enable consumers to upload the data that these devices collect to a computer, smartphone, or cloud-based service so that you can track and display the data, set goals, and otherwise geek out with our own personal big data set about you. About 30 million of these devices have been sold in 2012, with an expectation that the number will rise to 160 million by 2017. See also the WSJ article Marching to a Vibrant Drummer (1/15/13) for an article about related feedback devices.

A Spoon Full of Sugar - NOW!

When I was in graduate school, one of my possible dissertation projects was to investigate using customer performance methods to increase diabetes patients adherence to taking their insulin shots or pills, as the case might be. Similar to my interest in prescription adherence 20 years ago, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal explored a variety of customer performance aids to help ensure patients take their medicine when they are supposed to. These include blister packs that include labeling that indicates the date when specific pills need to be taken and wireless devices that alert a patient if they have forgotten to take a pill. These are all excellent examples of how the Access:Interface and Access:Information components of the Coproduction Experience Model can enhance customer performance.

Good to the Last Drop

Are you one of those people who always want to get the last drop out of a container? I know I am, whether it is the toothpaste tube, dish soap bottle, or jelly jar. To meet this customer requirement, manufacturers are modifying their packaging to enable customers to get the last drop, and other companies are providing tools that enable customers to get the last drop out of packages, such as the Squeeze Ease sold at the Container Store. See the Wall Street Journal article for more details.

Monitoring a Driver's Performance

Automobile manufacturers are integrating a variety of sensing devices into vehicles that monitor a driver's performance, with the intention of increasing driver safety. These includes sensors that measure brain waves, sweat, heart rate, sleepiness, heart rate, glucose levels, breathing, alcohol level, and so on on. Based on what these sensors detect, a vehicle could respond to enhance safety, such as turning off a radio, blocking a cell phone call, or some other actions.

Movie Theater Experience - Norming Deviant Customers

My wife and I went to the movies last night, something we rarely do. After all, with a big-screen TV and Netflix, one's home is a movie theater.

Before the movie started, the screen displayed an ad for a new service called CineMode. CineMode is an app for your smart phone that, when activated, puts your phone in a sleep mode. But here's the customer performance kicker. If your smartphone remains in CineMode for the entire length of the film, then you'll earn a reward. - a digital coupon for treats, movie discounts, and so on.

The whole aim of CineMode is to influence customer performance, specifically that of deviants who text and do other things with their phones that impact the quality of the customer experience for other movie goers. Obviously, setting customer expectations didn't work. So some stronger medicine was needed. However, after displaying the CineMode ad, the theater then displayed a stronger message: if you use your phone in the theater during the movie you will be asked to leave. Which incentive do you think will be more effective? The CineMode reward or the threat of removal from the theater?

In my customer experience class, my students conducted fieldwork several years ago that explored this kind of deviant behavior. They set up situations in which a confederate's cell phone rang in three situations: a public area, a quiet room in the library, and at a diner that has large signs prohibiting cell phone use. The "customer norming" in the first situation was none; in the second, it was non-verbal expressions and glances shunning the behavior; and in the third it was both verbal and non-verbal actions by both other customers and staff to shun the behavior.

But the classic theater behavior modification is John Water's short that informs people about smoking policies in theaters. You can see it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnpofBtijF8.

Sweet Sounds

Buried deep in our coproduction experience model, at the top of the Access pyramid, is an element called Nuance. Nuance is the model's link to the emotional side of customer experiences, specifically in the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. I was excited when I came across the WSJ article on Sweet Sounds that Sell (10/24/12, D1), which examined the various ways sounds are integrated into coproduction experiences. The scritch of a Sharpie pen as it writes. The click of a cosmetic container. The music a dishwasher plays when finished.

From an emotional standpoint, sounds enhance the esthetics of a coproduction experience. But there is also a rational angle to sounds. Sounds provide feedback that help customers recognize when they are performing well (for example, the click a container makes when it is closed, to signify that it is closed properly and won't spill the contents, or the pop of a container to signify that it is open (and that it is sealed and fresh, as well - Snapple uses this technique).

The Smelly Bill

Puget Sound Energy has a very creative campaign called "Stinky Bill". The aim of this campaign is to raise safety awareness of natural gas by teaching customers to recognize the smell of gas. A brochure that includes a scratch-and-sniff circle is included in the customer's monthly bill. This campaign nicely illustrates the coproduction experience elements of Expertise and Access:Nuance (using the sense of smell to develop customer performance).

Don't Get Run Over!

One of my students posted this image to our online discussion about the Vision and Access components of the Coproduction Experience Model. It was taken on a street in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It appears that if you want to more safely cross the street, you grab a flag, start walking and waving it like crazy, and then place it in the flag hanger on the other side of the street. Not sure of its effectiveness, but it sure has a lot of customer performance elements.

Okay, can't resist. I can easily see pranksters turning this flag thing into something like Monty Python's "The Semaphore Version of Wuthering Heights."

You know you have a customer performance issue when...

Your customers have to post a video online that explains how to complete a task with your product. One of my students turned me on to this. http://screencast.com/t/g4jyZMOPTZwg. Enjoy!

All My Cars Are Old - And I'm Not Baffled

All of the cars in my family are 1998-2001 models. And they are wonderful because they all lack one key feature: the crazy array of dashboard electronics now found in today's cars.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, car owners are so baffled by "proliferating dashboard electronics" that automakers like GM have had to beef up call centers to support customers. Call centers have even gone so far as to install a dashboard simulator in the call center to customer service reps can sit in a simulated car while they are talking with the customer so they can better explain how to use certain features. The photograph below illustrates this.

Over the past 15 years we've suggested (and developed) similar kinds of resources and simulators. One was for a scientific instrument that analyzed DNA. We provided call center representatives a simulator of the user interface so they could navigate the product along with the customer. Same thing with our utility clients, strongly suggesting that functioning simulators of in-home energy displays were available in the call center so that reps could provide better customer support.

So, while one can applaud GM on providing great resources to their call center representatives so they can better help customers perform, it still doesn't get around the interface issues that are the root cause of the customer performance problem in the first place.

While our family might not have the nicest looking cars on the block, we certainly aren't baffled by them.

Goals and Feedback

I came across this TED talk as I was doing some research for my class to help students better understand the Vision and Access aspects of our Coproduction Experience Model. In the talk, Thomas Goetz talk about the re-conceptualization of medical information provided to patients. The core of his talk is the feedback loop, and around the fringes he alludes to the concept of goals, especially with the speed sign + radar feedback example. But more of what I find interesting about his talk is the connection between the feedback part of our Vision model and the information/nuance part of our Access model. You'll see this in the redesign of medical lab reports. http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_goetz_it_s_time_to_redesign_medical_data.html