I love a smooth and easy customer experience – most of us do, and honestly, most of us don’t even notice the customer journey. Until we have a negative experience where things just don’t flow. I recently had a bumpy customer journey with Ikea (they are known for a good in-store experience, but the experience of trying to use their kitchen planning tool was next level frustrating). Read on below for the story, and how a few easy adjustments could have made it much smoother for me as the customer.
Are you losing customers with a sloppy customer journey?
Do you run a small or medium sized business? You have an advantage when it comes to the customer experience. This is where you can set yourself apart with a thoughtful and personal approach with your customer. I recently had a poor user experience with Ikea. And, since they are Ikea, there wasn’t really another option for me. But it felt frustrating.
Let’s start at the beginning of my customer journey. We wanted to add a small kitchenette in our basement and I noticed through an ad that Ikea’s kitchen sale was on and decided it was time. I love the planning process and after browsing around the kitchen section of their website I went to use their planning tool. I could open the tool in Chrome on my mac, but none of the features were working. Was I doing something wrong? I searched around to see if they specified which browsers it was compatible with and couldn’t find anything. There were no errors either. Before giving up I decided to try Safari and it worked – I could open the tool and create a kitchen plan easily. If they had specified at the beginning the browsers that were compatible with the tool it would have saved some headaches and improved the user experience. They could have also had a message just for browsers that were not compatible, so that I would have seen a warning based on my browser.
Another gap in the user experience? I wasn’t prompted to save my progress and there was no autosave, so when I got distracted and tried to come back later, I was logged out and my file no longer existed. If you have a form or other tool on your website where people may leave and come back later, make it clear whether or not they will need to start over or if saving is an option.
Once I finally had my kitchenette plan created I noticed that they had an option for an online appointment with a kitchen planning expert, and I love having an expert look over my work! I tried to book an online appointment but no locations had any openings for the foreseeable future. Was this no longer an option? If not, it should have been removed from the flow. Then when I switched to an in-person consult I kept getting emails reminding me to pay. I could have sworn I already did – did my credit card get declined? Did I forget to finish the checkout process? Nope. I checked my credit card statement and I had paid. Their email sequence was the same for someone who paid and someone who was going to pay later. Then my final reminder said to click the button above to pay. I had paid, and by this point I knew I had. And there was no button. (Maybe because I paid? Maybe it’s not there for someone who hadn’t paid either?). Check your email sequences regularly to make sure your messages are still relevant, especially if you have made any changes to how people enter your email flow.
This was all before my appointment to finish planning the tiny basement kitchenette I wanted to order through Ikea. It left me wondering if delivery would be as bumpy of a customer experience (turns out the delivery was ok – one item arrived damaged and it was not too hard to get a replacement). We are paying for an installer to do the work for us and are hoping that portion goes smoothly. I may still shop at Ikea for things like this small kitchenette. But the poor UX (user experience) has eroded my trust. So the upsells are now harder. Will I want the hassle when it’s time to redo our full kitchen? Probably not. And if they didn’t have a solid reputation already? I’d be running.
The moral of the story? Communication and an attention to detail are key during your customer journey. This is even more important if you are a business that has yet to build a big reputation. If someone feels confused at any point during the journey – like a tool not working as expected, or a prompt to do something that they have already done, or a booking tool with no spots available – that is a point where you will lose people in the journey.
If you haven’t gone through the user journey on your website recently, why not take 5 minutes today to see if there are any weak spots where you can make improvements? Better yet, have someone else go through your website with a specific goal in mind (like “try to book a free call with me” or “sign up for my new program”) and have them see how easy and smooth it is.
Attracting people to your website is a big job and most people realize the importance of promoting your site and your SEO. But once people are on your site, it is equally important that they have a smooth customer journey. Otherwise they will abandon your site or worse – you may be sending them directly to your competitors.
Have you been turned off by a poor customer journey recently? Try to use your experience to guide improvements that could be made on your own website.
