3 Customer Experience Horror Stories That Could Have Been Avoided

Unfortunately, many brands struggle to create a positive, consistent customer experience for their users. According to Kampyle, 87% of customers think brands need to put more effort into providing a consistent experience. Want to make sure you're not scaring customers away? Here are 3 customer experience horror stories and how you can avoid them:

Virgin America Offered a Disjointed Mobile App Experience

A company's mobile app should increase convenience for your customers while also offering a complete experience. Virgin America created a fractured experience with their mobile app by requiring users to switch to their website to book a ticket. By comparison, most other airline apps allow customers to book flights directly from the app. This kind of requirement can make customers feel like they’d be better off visiting the website from their mobile web browser instead.

Apple Surprised Customers with Default iCloud Setting

When speaking about the security of customer experience, it's worth recalling what happened to Apple in 2014. The company was the subject of a major cyber-attack in which hackers were able to gain access to their customer’s iCloud pictures. This resulted in the private pictures of hundreds of celebrities being made public online. Security aside, the affront to customer experience was that most iPhone users had no idea their photos were being backed up to the cloud automatically. Even though Apple’s intent was for this new feature to be a treat for their users, it ended up being a trick. Creating a successful customer experience requires that your customers understand the services you are offering them. By creating hidden or poorly-announced features, you could create a level of distrust between you and your customers.

Dinnr Created a Customer Experience That No One Needed

Dinnr is a failed same-day grocery delivery service from the United Kingdom. The startup offered its clients to pick a recipe on the company’s website and have all the ingredients delivered to their doorstep the same day. After over 18 months of struggling to stay afloat, the startup failed. Later on, Dinnr’s founder Michal Bohanes shared a blog with the lessons learned from his failed product. He wrote that the number one reason for Dinnr’s failure was that they were not solving anyone’s problem. Bohanes shared that he conducted an interview-based research before he launched but failed to have a solid discovery to reflect the real state of the market. So, as it turned out later, there was no real market need for his service.

The ELEKS UX team has a vast experience of helping businesses tackle customer experience horrors. Our UX experts say, in most cases, poor customer experience is the consequence of no discovery or insufficient user testing before the development. An in-depth consumer analysis is absolutely essential for a product success. It allows to ensure a product delivers a meaningful customer experience and there is a real need for it on the market.

If you want to make sure your customer experience doesn't turn into another horror story, contact us at ELEKS. With over 26 years' experience, we'll make sure your site or mobile app doesn't leave your customers afraid and in the dark.