For Customer Experience Professionals

Topic Overview: Customer Experience In A Down Economy

by Harley Manning, Moira Dorsey, December 12, 2008

As markets around the world continue to decline, credit stays tight, and job cuts escalate, making the case for customer experience will be even more of a challenge. But firms can ensure that the experiences they offer don't degrade — and hopefully improve . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Questions For Persona Creation Vendors

What To Ask Before Selecting A Vendor To Help With Personas

by Moira Dorsey, February 4, 2008

Personas can help build more effective experiences. But customer experience professionals can't expect to get those results from any vendor they hire to research and create personas. That's why companies need to ask prospective vendors about how they . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Persona Project Costs And Deliverables

Small Firms And Interactive Agencies Report On The Number Of Personas Created, Interviews Conducted, And Costs

by Moira Dorsey, November 27, 2007

Surveys of user experience vendors uncovered 18 interactive agencies and 30 small firms with significant experience creating personas. The two groups report averaging four personas and roughly 20 interviews per client engagement in 2006. Project size . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Interactive Agencies That Can Help With Persona Projects

Eighteen Vendors With Significant Persona Creation Experience Report Research And Industry Expertise Details

by Moira Dorsey, November 14, 2007

A survey of interactive design agencies uncovered 18 firms that have significant experience creating personas and conducting persona research. The agencies are using diverse research methodologies to create personas for a variety of design purposes for . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Small Firms That Can Help With Persona Projects

Thirty-Three Vendors With Significant Persona Creation Experience Report Research And Industry Expertise Details

by Moira Dorsey, September 12, 2007

A survey of user experience vendors uncovered 33 firms with significant experience creating personas. As a group, these firms leveraged a variety of research methodologies, and their persona experience spanned industries, with a high concentration in . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

How Personas Drive Experience-Based Differentiation: Four Examples

by Moira Dorsey, September 6, 2007

Personas help everyone with a stake in customer experience to obsess about customer needs. This healthy obsession is key for companies that want to differentiate the experiences they provide. A mutual fund company and its agency, Organic, used personas . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Cross-Channel Review Reviewer's Guide (927 KB DOC)

by Moira Dorsey, August 22, 2007

This is the Reviewer's Guide to go along with the Cross-Channel Review Scorecard. It will be featured on the Customer Experience Web site.

For Customer Experience Professionals

Persona Review Scorecard 2.0 (116 KB DOC)

by Moira Dorsey, August 2, 2007

The standard scorecard format for review criteria.

For Customer Experience Professionals

Best And Worst Of Personas, 2007

Forrester Applies Its Evaluation Methodology To Personas From 23 Interactive Agencies

by Moira Dorsey, July 19, 2007

To gauge the current state of personas, Forrester applied its persona evaluation criteria to reference personas provided by 23 interactive agencies. Most of the personas showed significant room for improvement — and problems ran the gamut in both type . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Using Personas To Inform Marketing And Sales Efforts: Three Examples

by Moira Dorsey, June 7, 2007

Personas are especially helpful in getting employees to understand and obsess about customer needs — the first principle required for Experience-Based Differentiation. While personas have been used to improve the quality of products ranging from software . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Best And Worst Of Phone Self-Service Design, 2007

Forrester Applies Its IVR Review Methodology To 16 Major Firms

by Moira Dorsey, May 25, 2007

Forrester applied its Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Review methodology to the phone self-service experiences at 16 firms — four of the largest credit card issuers, consumer electronics retailers, PC manufacturers, and wireless providers. None of the . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

How To Design The Right Channel Mix

Leverage Channel Strengths Based On User Behaviors And Business Goals

by Moira Dorsey, April 26, 2007

Customer experience professionals have a wide array of customer interaction touchpoints at their disposal. With so many options, how can they choose the best combination that drives customer satisfaction while keeping costs at an acceptable level? Executives . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Best And Worst Of Email Interaction Design, 2007

Forrester Applies Its Email Interaction Review Methodology To 16 Major Firms

by Moira Dorsey, April 23, 2007

Forrester applied its Email Interaction Review methodology to the email experiences at 16 firms — four of the largest credit card issuers, consumer electronics retailers, PC manufacturers, and wireless providers. Of the nine companies that actually responded . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Best And Worst Of B2C Site Design, 2007

Forrester Applies Its Web Site Review Methodology To 16 Major Firms

by Moira Dorsey, March 30, 2007

Forrester applied its Web Site Review methodology to the site experiences at 16 firms — four each of the largest credit card issuers, consumer electronics retailers, PC manufacturers, and wireless providers. As a group, electronics retailers outperformed . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Learning From Wal-Mart's Web Site Redesign

How The Walmart.com Team Managed The Redesign Process

by Moira Dorsey, March 13, 2007

Walmart.com recently launched a major redesign. To understand how they went through the process, we spoke with Walmart.com's marketing director and vice president of user experience. These execs answered the following questions: What were the goals of . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Best And Worst Of Cross-Channel Design, 2007

Forrester Applies Its Cross-Channel Review Methodology To 16 Major Firms

by Moira Dorsey, February 16, 2007

Forrester applied its Cross-Channel Review methodology to the experiences at 16 firms — four of the largest credit card issuers, consumer electronics retailers, PC manufacturers, and wireless providers. While Dell and Circuit City received the top overall . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Top User Experience Flaws On Financial Services, Retail, And Automotive Sites

Forrester Taps Its Database Of Web Site Reviews To Find Top Flaws By Industry

by Moira Dorsey, January 11, 2007

We looked at the results from Forrester's database of Web Site Reviews to find the top failures on sites in three industries: financial services, retail, and auto manufacturers. What did we find? Illegible text and absent contextual privacy and security . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Web Best Practices At Fidelity, Staples, And UPS

Panelists Share Design Insights At Forrester's Consumer Forum 2006

by Moira Dorsey, December 28, 2006

Forrester's Consumer Forum 2006 included a panel of senior managers from firms that achieve Web site effectiveness through disciplined design processes. Fidelity described how the use of metrics to consistently measure results enables the firm to consistently . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

How To Choose — And Use — A Primary Persona

by Moira Dorsey, December 28, 2006

Firms typically have three to five personas to guide the design of a Web site. While the resulting design should ultimately satisfy all of the personas, designers should start by satisfying the needs of just one: the primary persona. Firms should pick . . .

For Customer Experience Professionals

Match Channel Capabilities To Customer Goals

Grading Six Essential Capabilities Of Commonly Used Channels

by Moira Dorsey, October 12, 2006

Companies want to differentiate products and services by improving customer experience. They also want to cut costs by shifting more customers from human-assisted channels to self-service channels like Web sites and phone self-service systems. Their dilemma: . . .

Executive Q&A: Cross-Channel Reviews

by Moira Dorsey, September 19, 2006

Cross-channel reviews uncover flaws that prevent users from accomplishing goals when their paths take them across multiple channels, like Web sites and interactive voice response (IVR) systems. To get the most out of the results of a cross-channel review, . . .

Common Persona Misconceptions Debunked

Understand What Makes A Valid Persona To Avoid Failures

by Moira Dorsey, September 6, 2006

Personas are valuable tools that enable firms to correct misconceptions about users and make quicker, more reliable design decisions. But even as firms seek to take advantage of the benefits personas offer, misconceptions about what makes for valid personas . . .

Death By A Thousand Cuts Kills Web Experience

When A Large Number Of Flaws Add Up To A Major Problem

by Moira Dorsey, August 10, 2006

When asked about the most important attributes of their favorite sites, online consumers say that ease of finding content and function and legibility are more important than superior content and function. But high-quality navigation and legibility are . . .

Voice System Personas Improve Customer Experience For Phone Self-Service

by Moira Dorsey, June 20, 2006

Humans form opinions based on voices — even when the voices are an interface to a computer. Specifying a system's intended behaviors with a voice system persona helps ensure that phone self-service interfaces convey appropriate personality traits and . . .

Best Practices For Improving Phone Self-Service With Speech Interfaces

by Moira Dorsey, June 16, 2006

Firms want to shift more customers to phone self-service, but it ranks low on consumers' preferred list of channels. Deploying well-designed speech interfaces can close the gap by offering usability advantages that touchtone systems can't. Firms can realize . . .