Make It Easier For Customers, Or Force Them To Jump Through Hoops. You’re Choice…
A while back (during a UK Lockdown reprieve) I was out on the town in a few beer gardens
Despite the ‘new rules’ it was pretty seamless; table orders only, pay there and then with card and depending on the bar, the drinks were brought out or we had to walk up to the side of the bar and pick them up.
It didn’t actually feel too different to normal – simple and pretty much effortless ordering of drinks/food, sun blazing down, good vibe in the air, good chat with a mate…
This was the experience in 2 beer gardens, and then onto another bar where we sat inside for an hour watching the champions league, with table service and pay at the point of order…nice and easy.
On the way home we decided to nip into an old favourite place, a cheeky ‘one for the road’.
Alarm bells went off slightly when the bouncer at the door took what felt like 20+ seconds to describe ‘protocol’ of how to order. Not really taking this in we were met with another person once we went downstairs, who explained it all…
Here are the steps we had to take to order a simple drink:
1 – Log onto the wifi (this was a downstairs bar, and has never had a natural phone signal)
2 – Go onto the website, figure out the structure, navigate it and find what drinks you want to order
3 – Type in your email address as part of your order
4 – Get your card out and pay with your card on the website using what i’m pretty sure is an unsecured WIFI
5 – Wait for drinks to be brought to your table
Think of all those steps!
Picture the scene here: the bar holds about 100 people, it had about 10 in it – I could have done laps and not went near anyone, but I wasn’t allowed to approach the bar and use my card.
About 30 seconds in to starting my order, I was still trying to figure out how to navigate the site. I found the spirits section but the mixer section wasn’t obvious, I had to come out of that menu, into another menu and select, another 10-15 secs.
Then I had to type in my email address.
At that point my friend and I looked at each other and walked out.
Let me ask you – do you own a business? Do you serve customers? If you do, do you make it this complicated, time consuming and difficult for your customer to actually give you their money?
This was quite frankly a hilariously terrible customer journey.
Rory Sutherland (who is a brilliantly engaging speaker and exuberant advertising man, with Ogilvie in the UK – tonnes of stuff on youtube, check him out) talks about Choice Architecture when designing customer journeys, helping the customer make the decision you essentially want them to make, and ensuring the process is simple, straight forward, pain free and even enjoyable.
If you wanted to make the process complicated, unnecessary long, annoying, off-putting and designed to actually make customers want to leave, then follow this bar’s example…
…and good luck creating an experience that will retain and bring back those customers and have them spread the good word.
They have no excuse really – I had been to 3 places prior to this and it was a doddle.
The next day I was back in town, this time with the wife and daugher, a nice family day out. we went to the Apple store to look at watches for the wife’s birthday. I wasn’t an Apple man myself at that point, I was on my third Galaxy here, however the wife is a fan.
Whilst in the queue I was asked for my name and the reason for the visit today which was captured on an iPad. 20 mins later I walked into the store where I was introduced to Duncan, who after a little bit of small talk says “Ok Paul, you’re in to find out about our range of watches”.
I advised it was actually my wife who wanted to see them and Duncan proceeded to listen and then talk through and show all the options.
It was a slick, effective and personal experience. Minimal effort on our part.
An established bar chain vs Apple; it’s not exactly apples for apples comparison when you consider financial clout, but the difference in our experience was light years apart.
Both these companies ‘created’ their customer journey and designed it – it wasn’t done ‘to them’, it was internally designed ‘by’ them.
The bar got it badly wrong, lost our sale and I have no desire at all to go back.
I’m a decent guy otherwise i’d be telling you exactly what chain this is.
Apple got it right, and here I am (don’t own a single Apple product, not a fan boy) selling the experience to you and talking them up.
Business success in large part is about marketing…and marketing is about creating creating compelling experiences in your customer and making it not only easy for them to give you their money, but make them happy to do so…and come back for more.
Make things difficult, complex and challenging where the customer has to actually work to make a purchse, and you will lose.
Some of you might be thinking IKEA here as a counter example – however the shopping and purchasing aspect of IKEA is easy and straight forward, the hard work comes when you get home.
Customers have so much power now because they have options; they will simply go elsewhere, even more so in the bar industry
Make it easy for customers to do business with you. That’s your challenge if you have a business or products to sell.
Paul