Digital Frustration: How to Create Valuable Experiences for Your Customers

You may not even be very familiar with the nuances and possibilities that are included in the term “digital”. However, you certainly understand what “digital frustration” means.

If you’ve never had a digital experience that negatively impacted you, you’re very likely to know someone who has.

That’s exactly why you must be very careful when thinking about a digital solution for your business. Frustrated users are customers who don’t come back: just one bad experience is enough for them to open another browser page and run to a competitor.

Proof of this was the research conducted by Tricentis, an Austrian company specializing in software quality control. In 2017, the corporation identified the following data:

• 314 companies;
• 666 software failures;
• 3.7 billion people impacted;
• 1.7 trillion dollars in financial losses.

When failures impact users, they directly affect the company’s reputation and, consequently, billing.

But how to prevent that? How to guide your business to a user-centered strategy?  Let’s talk about the reasons to prevent digital frustration and how your company can turn its perspective toward its customers.

Why do we need to pay attention to this?

Data, digital solutions, applications for the most varied functions, omnichannel platforms, connected devices. That’s the reality we live in and digital experiences increasingly need to keep up with this movement.

We no longer have room for sites that don’t work, applications that don’t feature solutions and platforms that aren’t responsive. More than ever we have to create actions to align applications with users’ needs and desires. And solve, in fact, their problems.

Pain, solutions and impacts

Let’s think about the challenges of each sector in this scenario. MJV has digital transformation, business innovation and strategies aimed at consumer experience in its DNA. That way, we couldn’t help but talk about user-centered solutions that can position your company as a market leader.

Financial sector

Challenge: The financial sector is known to be more formal. From policies to applications, a tendency for technical language and specific terms are perceived. 

Impact: The user is unsure on how to do digital transactions with their money. This causes the loss of credibility of the financial institution and makes room for fintechs, such as Nubank. 

Solution: Get to know your users better to anticipate their needs and make them more secure.  Design Thinking is the ideal methodology for gathering information about real end-user problems, understanding their journey, and proposing tangible solutions. Immersion is the first step in collecting data and turning it into relevant information. 

Retail sector

Challenge: Trying to make a purchase and not being able to is one of the most frustrating experiences a consumer can have.

Impact: Much more than in the case of banks, from where customers cannot switch so easily, stores are easily exchanged to a competitor. The competitor is one click away, and if this move is because of a bad experience that has a direct impact on billing and brand reputation.  

Solution: Omnichannel Strategy. It is not enough just to be present on all digital channels. They need to talk and pass on unified information. For example, the customer can be in the physical store and search for the desired merchandise on the digital platform, or you can purchase a product through the store’s chatbot on Facebook Messenger and request a pickup from the actual store. There are many possibilities for crossover services between digital and physical channels. For retail, this is a powerful strategy that can make all the difference to the user experience. 

Educational sector

Challenge: Let’s give only two examples among the various options that can happen in this sector. 1) Millennials are digital natives: people who were born in contact with technology. For them, learning can be present on several platforms, because its logical to learn and absorb content more quickly and dynamically. 2) There is a public that wants to join an educational institution but has a restriction on physical access, such as attending classes, taking exams, being present at a certain time several times a week. Maintaining the traditional teaching model is important but investing in new platforms is essential when distributing education and reaching new audiences. 

Impact: Decrease in admission to schools, colleges and courses with traditional teaching models; lack of student retention; high drop-out rate after enrollment or during the course. This has a huge financial impact, which can even cause the bankruptcy of an institution. 

Solution: Facilitate and democratize access with 100% digital solutions. Here you may remember the Distance Learning model – commonly called EaD. It’s not exactly that. 100% digital solutions will remove human interactions from the course – which can often represent the withdrawal of impediments, bureaucracy and difficulty in solving problems. In EaD, some interaction with the institution may be required, such as showing up for performance evaluations or having to call the secretary to ask for information or to solve problems. Solving everything simply and online is the best strategy to bring the student’s institution closer and distribute education. 

Health sector

Challenge: Balancing patient satisfaction rates and team performance is a task that requires a careful look at redesigning the user’s trajectory whenever necessary. A long journey, with many stages, leaves patients exposed to possible negative experiences. At the same time, when we talk about health, to maintain the excellence of the institution, humanization in care needs to be the fundamental pillar. 

Impact: Lose or decrease the humanization of the team or excellence in care to accelerate patient care.

Solution: The first step is to apply Design Thinking in order to understand the relationship of the patient with the hospital, in addition to mapping the contact points along their journey.  We can also talk about Tele-medicine: the use of IT solutions on the part of medical care through consultations via videoconferencing. We can think of different application scenarios. In each of them, it will be possible to implement unique health care resources. This paves the way for new business models. It is Digital  Transformation in the health area.

Three rules to not frustrate your user!

The search for excellence in user navigation should always be the company’s goal and there is no other way to provide a good experience if not by mapping the user’s journey and considering the possible difficulties that may arise along the way and hinder the process.

An experience without frustration should be the main goal. But it’s important to pay attention to some rules. Follow the thought process!

1) Evolve always!

Websites, platforms, applications, and services provided virtually need to be ever-evolving systems. It is impossible to provide a good experience without constant maintenance and improvement.

2) Retain customers through good experiences

For the potential client to make the first move within the platform and become, in fact, a client, investment is needed. And that’s exactly why providing a seamless experience is important. With a good experience, the consumer is loyal and will always return, bringing financial returns and adding value to the brand.

3) Zero frustration?

Zero frustration is virtually impossible. Competition is always improving its services, so it’s only natural that better experiences are being created all the time.

One of those responsible for the high expectation of users was GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple). The conglomerate of technology giants has educated the market so that they always propose improvements in experience and consumers seek the same type of experience they have on their platform.

The tip is: prioritize your failures and resolve them in order of severity.

Conclusion

This maxim is important: all customer frustrations are a missed opportunity to bring revenue to your business and the logic of the current market is a reactive movement: companies expect to have a problem (such as declining billing) and do not think about improving the user experience.

The mechanism needs to change. In the world of data in which we are currently inserted, it is essential to be one step ahead, anticipating the needs of the user.

What about you? Are you prepared to guide your company to new customers? 

Watch our webinar and find out how Design Thinking + Agile as well as strategies in Digital Transformation projects, increase productivity and deliver valuable customer centered results.