It's like putting sunshine in your pocket

An e-mail notification from Sungevity, a California based solar panel company, popped up on Jen’s screen while she was sipping her latte in the local Philz Coffee.

“When you open this e-mail you will find out how much you and your family can save if you equip your house with a solar panel. “Jen read loud.

Jen was intrigued and clicked the first link. She didn’t know anything about solar panels and much less about Sungevity; next thing she saw was a Google-Earth picture of her house with solar panels installed on the roof. She clicked the second link in the e-mail to calculate how much $ she can safe with the Sungevity solar panels. A few minutes later Jen forgot about her latte. She was hooked. Jen called a Sungevity representative to verify her saving potential and check the options "lease vs. buy".

This was the beginning of Jen Shih’s journey.

A few days later, after having her questions professionally answered by a Sungevity’s representative, Jen signed the leasing contract online . She became a happy Sungevity customer. She still is.

Did Jen have any plans to install solar panels?

No, not even in her wildest dreams.

So, what happened?

Sungevity proactively nudged Jen through every step of the journey. Sungevity orchestrated a seamless customer journey through communication, anticipation, personalization and automation.

Communication Sungevity did an outstanding job to communicate along Jen’s journey through the various touch points- from the initial E-mail to the panel installation. Sungevity didn’t let Jen ponder over her decision for a long time. They nudged her with personalized content and easy, automated steps. Sungevity knew at which step Jen is in her journey every time she contacted the call center.

Key take-away: Research identified consistent and clear communications as one of the most important elements of customer experience (McKinsey report)

How can you apply:

• People believe the more complex their communication towards customers is the more they “wow” customers as experts. Wrong!
• Personalize your communication through important moments of the customer journey and proactively communicate. Visualize a “guided step-by-step” to show the customer where she is in her
• Allow customers to reach you via phone, smartphone app, web, chat and ensure consistent communication across channels of their choice.

Anticipation along the customer journey- Sungevity provided Jen with 2 references in her neighborhood and sent her short installation videos. Sungevity anticipated Jen will ask “Can you provide me with names of customers in my neighborhood?” They also anticipated she would like to see how the panel installation would work out.

 Key take-away: Define the journeys of your customer and take them by the hand. Be proactive. Customers hate pain. If you manage to remove customer pains (emotional, physical), you appeal to customers’ natural instincts, says Colin Shaw in his blog, “Command Customer’s Attention”

How can you apply: Leverage journey mapping methodology to determine customer attitudes. Customer attitudes will help you define “moments that matter” and design meaningful proactive actions. Why are attitudes important? Because customers’ attitudes drive their behaviors.

Personalization- in the first E-mail communication, Jen saw a Google-Earth picture of her house with solar panels. This resonated with her. It was personal. Sungevity painted a picture “how could the future look like.”

Key take-away: “Companies should take information gleaned either from past interactions with a customer or from existing sources and use it to instantaneously customize the shopper’s experience”, from HBR’s great article “Competing on Customer Journeys” that inspired this blog to a very large extent.

How can you apply: Are you tracking the digital body language of your customers? Are you eliminating the noise- mistargeted ads and promotions your customers are bombarded with? Which technology are you using to derive insights and create hyper-targeted segments based on online and offline data?

Automation- many steps of Jen’s journey were automated, i.e. she signed her contract online, she could track the energy savings via an app on her phone.

Key take-away: Digitalization plays an essential role in the automation of many steps of the customer journey. Uber automates the payment process for you and saves you the headache to exchange money and be worried if you will have enough cash in local currency to pay for your cab ride.

How can you apply: The choice of technology is essential. If you decide to create an app, think what problem you want to solve for your customers, think of the user experience across various devices. How can you map complex back-end processes to ensure a painless customer experience?

What are the ingredients of masterfully designed customer journeys? Share your stories.

Note: The title of the blog is inspired by a line on Sungevity's webpage. No wonder why....

If you like this post, you will probably like this one: "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?"