Most toy buyers are ‘occasion’ shoppers, wanting age-related gifts for birthdays and Christmas - so why aren’t toy stores organised around ages? Why? Because it’s convenient to stock shelves when organized by type (puzzles, dolls, etc). It’s really convenient for the shop, not the customer.
A chain of high-street office suppliers had super CSat numbers - but found sales steadily declining year on year. Consultants made a discovery; CSat numbers pulled from exit surveys were seeking answers to questions about store cleanliness, staff politeness and other hygiene matters. Customers rated these highly. But it turned out that customers didn’t rate that the shops were located in city centres, small, difficult to access and to get purchases back to base. Customers voted with their feet. When management moved the stores to out-of-town locations that were easy to drive to, park at, with largest and bulky items stacked nearest the exits to carry purchases away from, revenue rocketed. What management assumed was important wasn’t driving footfall, and what they thought would be inconvenient was, in fact, super convenient for the customer. Management had been asking the wrong questions and failed to talk to their customers to find out what convenience they wanted.
Customers want to purchase food on a flight. On some airlines, it’s only possible with a credit card – no cash, please. Yet another airline is cash only. There are probably operational reasons for such practices but they leave customers frustrated and confused and inconvenienced.
Airline passengers, after a two-minute walk from the aircraft to baggage collection, were near-zeroing their NPS scores for their inconvenient eight-minute wait for luggage to arrive on the carousel. When management moved the aircraft gate an eight-minute walk from baggage collection, with the baggage wait shrinking to two minutes, the overall NPS score soared. The perception of time spent and what was inconvenient was changed.
What’s convenient is in the eyes of the beholder.
Customers want convenience on their terms
If we constantly think of convenience in isolation rather than as part of the full brand experience we’re missing a trick. In fact, despite assumptions that delivery is ‘more convenient’, consumers still prefer the in-store experience across all categories. Bottom line: consumers are the final arbiter of convenience. They determine their willingness to be inconvenienced. Convenience is a value equation.
Convenience is about speed, predictability and ease. Consumers buy convenience brands to achieve something quickly and well. They know the Sainsbury convenience store on the corner is more expensive than the Sainsbury supermarket a 10-minute drive away, but it’s convenient to pop in for something forgotten, knowing that convenience is worth paying a little bit more.
Customers want convenience on their terms, not ours. That may sometimes be speed. Or environment. Or to have an experience.
With busier schedules, comfort with e-commerce, immersive in-store shopping, customers are choosing those brands that provide convenience in the way they like – not the other way around. If you are among these brands, then you understand that customers want convenience on their terms, not yours.
Before you start making changes to your experiences to make them more convenient , think first of these considerations:
Things to Consider
1. Ease Of Choice.
Make your brand easy to choose. We’re in a world of too many choices. Is the best toothbrush for buy a Hard, medium, or soft-bristled one? Battery, plug-in, or hand held? Crest, Colgate, or store brand? Oscillating, fixed, or vibrating?
When the consumer’s time and mental effort is exhausted, they simplify; by taking the one they previously chose because it did the job well enough before; by the one in front of them; because someone they know uses it. So reduce choice complexity. How many brands of soap or toilet paper or toothpaste do we really need?
Its our role to take put convenience into choice.
2. Ease Of Use.
Make the product or service easy to use. Make it easy to learn how to use it. Overly complicated products and services cause consumers to feel inept or inadequate. One of the genius insights of the design of Apple products was to make them easy and intuitive to use. J.D. Power surveys show that problems with DTU (difficult to use) are much more frequently occurring than quality problems in car purchasing. Their studies 50 years ago were full of mechanical malfunction issues. This is not the case today. Now, the surveys are rich with DTU problems.
“Even if a feature works as designed, if it is not intuitive, consumers will ding the vehicle’s feature as having poor quality,” J.D. Power
3. The challenge with convenience is not the what, but typically the how.
Businesses often only look at convenience as “slightly easier” than what’s available. This creates many missed opportunities to attract and keep more customers. They want ease in many areas – not just the main transaction. Focus on convenience as a driver throughout your customer’s experiences.
4. Convenience creates loyalty?
Convenience doesn’t necessarily make consumers loyal. The value of a convenience brand doesn’t lie in what the consumer gets directly, but in what they don’t have to keep doing, or what they can do with the time saved that they would otherwise have spent inconveniently.
When you think about the behaviours you want from your customers, what are you looking to lock in – a philosophy or a habit? Do you want your brand to be one people share, or one they reach for without thinking twice? Are you too focused on the ease of the transaction at the expense of the payback?
5. Don’t underestimate the importance of the IRL experience
Plenty of startups are gaining traction based on adding convenience through online and mobile channels. But convenience online only creates loyalty if the ongoing real-life experience exceeds expectations, too. Ordering or booking online might be very convenient, but a customer will not return if the experience in the overall experience was not up to expectations.
6. Consider your customer’s life
The consumer wants convenience because they have a life. There are many ways retailers and others have tried to offer convenience during the typical experience. The game changers, however, are the smart brands who created new ways of interacting with their customers whilst building conveniences that are wrapped in engaging experiences.