References: Customer experience design and the voice of the customer

Customer orientation is something that product-oriented businesses and service-oriented businesses have in common. If a service is delivered with multiple customer contacts, however, there are more opportunities to “check in” to make sure the service is satisfying the client.

  • Customer experience go beyond the immediate tangible product, and even beyond service delivery, to the management of emotional cues.
  • The voice of the customer is balanced with other voices inside of the service provider to design appropriate capabilities with which customer requests are satisfied.

Customer experiences can be engineered, with an understanding of clues and emotional responses.

  • Leonard L. Berry, Lewis P. Carbone and Stephan H. Haeckel, “Managing the Total Customer Experience”, MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring 2002, Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 85–89, (See at MIT Sloan Management Review).

Innovation can be developed from the perspective of customer experiences.

  • C K Prahalad, Venkatram Ramaswamy. “The new frontier of experience innovation”, MIT Sloan Management Review. Summer 2003. Vol. 44, Iss. 4; p. 12. (See at MIT Sloan Management Review).
  • Abstract: ... the authors paint a picture of the “next practices” of innovation in which the locus of value creation will inevitably shift from products and services to “experience environments.” The intent of experience innovation is not to improve a product or service, per se, but to enable the co-creation of an environment in which personalized, evolvable experiences are the goal, and products and services are a means to that end. Profitable company growth will then result from individual consumers co-creating their own unique value, supported by a network of companies and consumer communities.

The customer experience concept originates from the strategic marketing literature.

The term "voice of the customer" has a specific meaning, coming from the market research literature.

  • Gerald Zaltman, How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Markets, Harvard Business School Press, 2003. (See at HBS Press).
  • Vincent P. Barabba, Meeting of the Minds: Creating the Market-Based Enterprise, Harvard Business School Press, 1995. (See at HBS Press).
  • Vincent P. Barabba and Gerald Zaltman, Hearing the Voice of the Market: Competitive Advantage Through Creative Use of Market Information, Harvard Business School Press, 1991. (See at HBS Press).
    • Supplemental: Ian I. Mitroff and Harold A. Linstone, The Unbounded Mind: Breaking the Chains of Traditional Business Thinking, Oxford University Press, 1993.
    • Supplemental: C. West Churchman, The Design of Inquiring Systems: Basic Concepts of Systems and Organizations, Basic Books, 1971.

These references are suggested as part of the Stadia 2006 International Service Business Management Sessions. Please respond with comments to suggest additional readings or express opinions on those above.

Submitted by daviding on Thu, 2006-09-14 01:40.