Introduction
This week, I experienced a few events with software packages I have been using for quite some time. It has caused me to reflect on how critical it is for a Customer Experience to be practical, not only to reinforce the Product’s effectiveness but also to make clients reconsider their choices and decisions when one, or even more dramatically both, falter (Nobar & Rostamzadeh, 2018). In essence, this essay reflects the negative and positive Customer Experience experiences and how they can significantly impact customer retention and fidelity.
Negative Experience
For the past two years, I have been utilizing Adobe products. I have seen how their product experiences have evolved and developed over time and how their product portfolio has morphed and refined itself. I have also taught Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Dreamweaver, and the now-defunct Director classes on using and building digital solutions. As a daily user of the Creative Cloud, I have developed a long-standing relationship with the product offering, even though every product solution is flawed and has its fair share of flaws and faults. However, something happened to me last week that has happened several times (Zhang & Chang, 2021).
While working on a digital illustration, Photoshop and Illustrator may suddenly and unexpectedly display the message “You have been signed out of Your Account” and quit, sometimes even refusing to save the file I am working on.
As I previously stated, this has happened several times, with productivity crashing due to all the products closing and me having to log in to my Creative Cloud account again to get them to resume. To better understand this problem, I have triaged it, making sure there is nothing wrong with my billing statement, my hardware, or my internet connection and go over all the possible causes for such severe behavior. There are none, except that it tends to correspond with times when Adobe releases a batch of upgrades to their tools. This time, though, I decided to seek assistance with the issues at hand. This was a horrible event in and of itself. Their Help experience is littered with Dark UX themes (including Sneaking, Obstruction, Forced Action, Social Proof, Scarcity, Urgency, and the one applicable to this case, Misdirection).
Wanting to get some advice on this, I went to their FAQ section, where I could not discover anything relevant to my problem. After a good 5 minutes of browsing around, I eventually started a “dialogue” with a chatbot, who couldn’t understand the issue I was presenting and sent me to a human HelpDesk assistant after a series of queries yielded no solution. This individual took a long time to react to my questions, and after waiting 10 minutes for a response to my last query, she stated that my problem was more technical than account-related and that I would need to be referred to a technical help desk. I was put on hold once again, and no one responded to my inquiries on that chat service for the next 15 minutes, so I gave up.
Positive Experience
The Mac OS Big Sur is the second product experience worth mentioning. Apple is, of course, known for its flawless hardware, but its software is a mixed bag in terms of quality. This is especially true in Big Sur’s case, especially in the system conversation Windows (Wächter, 2016). Every time one of those windows shows, whether on the Finder or as part of another application, due to the need for awareness, I inevitably have to expand it to understand the labels linked with whatever is on the window.
By default, the size of that window crops most of the strings and labels that identify either the items on the computer or, more often, the hard disks attached to the device. This begs the question: for whom is this being constructed? We are living in a time of great challenge and difficulty. Still, now, more than ever, it is critical that we adopt attitudes of inclusivity, accessibility, and consideration of users who are not limited to specific demographics. Research is more crucial than ever before because it forces Product Design teams to consider how diverse audiences react to what they are creating. However, based on my experience with the Big Sur public beta, I ran on my M1-based MacBook Air, and now that I have updated to a 2020 27-inch iMac, Big Sur appears to be steady and predictable.
Compare and Contrast
When organizations make an effort to keep their employees happy and feel like they are a part of the team, they are also more likely to provide exceptional customer service. Customer service is also essential in the aviation business. The Mac OS Big Sur fosters a positive work environment that allows its staff to be happy and comfortable. They established a positive working atmosphere based on teamwork, work ideals, and motivation.
When organizations make an effort to keep their employees happy and feel like they are a part of the team, they are also more likely to provide exceptional customer service. Good client experiences are also crucial in the corporate world (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016). The Mac OS Big Sur for fostering a positive work environment that allows its staff to be happy and comfortable. They established a positive working atmosphere based on teamwork, work ideals, and motivation. However, despite Adobe’s attempts to create a healthy environment, it still stores personal customer data, which is always a target for malicious attackers.
Additionally, malicious hackers are regularly creating new malicious software for use on devices. These are potential security breaches that Adobe must solve to safeguard its brand reputation (Imbug, Ambad, & Bujang, 2018). As a result, Adobe should never overlook employee training sessions as an essential aspect of the business culture. Their products will be more effective in the market due to this, and customers will have a positive experience.
Customer loyalty is best built through excellent customer service. Interpersonal skills training, such as active listening and using nice words, should be part of your customer experience framework (Imbug et al., 2018). Listening to customers like The Mac OS Big Sur can help you grasp their needs and worries. It makes it easier to match your offerings to their needs. The same is true for food and beverage brands. To stand out, they must first identify their target audience. Adobe’s products and services are up against stiff competition worldwide, and they should put more effort into having feedbacks on their products from customers, which is rare for them.
Conclusion
The product experience is also part of the customer experience and some goods have onboarding experiences for new users. When major modifications to a digital product are made, they usually include a mechanism that alerts users of what to expect as a novelty. However, when providing new paradigms or when the solution itself needs to evolve and bring creative positions, Product experiences can become a difficulty, especially for users who have been using goods for a long time. This is an apparent difficulty, but usability testing and research in general play critical roles in informing some of the decisions being made.
References
Imbug, N., Ambad, S. N. A., & Bujang, I. (2018). The influence of customer experience on customer loyalty in the telecommunication industry. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 8(3), 103-116.
Lemon, K. N., & Verhoef, P. C. (2016). Understanding customer experience throughout the customer journey. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), 69-96.
Nobar, H. B. K., & Rostamzadeh, R. (2018). The impact of customer satisfaction, customer experience and customer loyalty on brand power: empirical evidence from hotel industry. Journal of Business Economics and Management, 19(2), 417-430.
Sundt, A., & Davis, E. (2017). User personas as a shared lens for library UX. Weave: Journal of Library User Experience, 1(6).
Wächter, M. (2016). Mobile Strategy. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
Zhang, J. Z., & Chang, C. W. (2021). Consumer dynamics: Theories, methods, and emerging directions. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 49(1), 166-196.