Customer Experience: Future Trends and Insights

The book gives an overview of what the authors call experience psychology (how psychological theory and practice can be used to improve a customer’s perception about your experience) and advances the premise that this is the key to understanding your customer. Through it, they give examples (top 10) of how the psychology of an experience, rather than the items we buy, impact on its value. They go on to devote a chapter to experience psychology research covering topics such as interviewing techniques, emotional segmentation and goal mapping, along with many examples of their own research done over the years in their consulting practice.

The book seeks to expand on their previous work, tying it to future trends (social networking, neuroscience), at times seeking to reference them back to their idea of emotional signature. In the process, it comes across as somewhat disorganized and randomly structured. The book lacks an overview or references to the “4 Clusters” of the customer experience which was covered in the first book, instead it introduces three trends shaping the future of customer experience. It devotes a whole section to social media as a new channel to market (and “community marketing”) with a needs-based approach to analyzing, without much of a roadmap for applying. The book ends with a chapter intended to give the reader “an assessment of where customer experience stands today,” referring the reader to a survey and webinar they conduct regularly, seemingly making the book a pitch for the authors’ consulting services.

The quality of customer experience has become more important in recent times as businesses struggle to differentiate themselves. But what are the emerging trends that businesses should focus on today? The authors explore the growing trends that progressive businesses need to understand to give themselves a competitive advantage.

While high in theoretical content, the book provides a good overview of trends for any reader interested in customer experience knowledge. The research examples such as interview techniques and neuroscience overview will be of interest to anyone in the field.  For more on this subject, see the Senteo review for Infinite Possibility.