The importance of micro-moments
The rising power of the micro-movement involves the ability to fall in or out of love with a brand based on the experience of a simple interaction. We look at how we helped NS&I leverage their brand to drive and define the digital experience on and offline to create valuable customer interactions.
Attracting new customers and keeping those you already have. It’s the eternal struggle for brands as they seek a winning formula. Macro-moments – how loud you shouted, whether your product was the most competitive, if you knew where to find your next customer – these used to be the challenges keeping brand and marketing managers up at night.
Of course, these things still count. But what has shifted is the rising power of the micro-moment. Or the ability to fall in or out of love with a brand based on the experience of a simple interaction is more important now than ever.
Call centres first pushed the boundaries of the customer experience – you could speak to real people, any time of the day or night. If they listened, were helpful and friendly, it could be a moment of pure brand-in-action delight. But more often than not, we remember the ten-minute (at least) wait time, the really loud ’80s hold music, or the call handler that just didn’t get it. With the post-call survey adding insult to injury. Our mental image of the brand just got deconstructed in the space of a few minutes.
Then digital came along and with it, opportunities to delight or divide went through the ceiling. Not just more opportunities for a customer to interact with a brand, but often, no choice other than to interact this way. Add different levels of digital comfort and ability amongst customers, and differing levels of brand investment in this area, and you have a new level of complexity.
Simple, micro-moments can become mountains when you have to work it out yourself. And when this stands between a customer and their money, it becomes an even bigger deal.
Working with NS&I on their website, central to enabling and encouraging more customers to interact with them via digital, went right to the heart of this challenge. In this instance, the call centres had set the bar high. To successfully deliver this channel shift, a brilliant customer experience was not just an aspiration – it was going to be essential.
So, we had to leverage the brand to drive and define the digital experience. We had to understand the customer journey, where each potential interaction with the brand on and offline could happen. And we had to make sure the brand values, purpose and design principles ran through all aspects of not just their online but also their offline – existence. Throughout the design process, we constantly challenged ourselves to ensure we were building an experience that was refreshingly simple and above all, intuitive. The reality of the smallest things making a big difference.
