Customer experience, by design.

Creating work for myself has always been a challenge. It’s easy to get sucked into the possibility of the project and all it could be. I’m reminded of this challenge when I ask a client or colleague to define their first-ever creative brief. I empathize with the ways in which that’s a difficult task to take on.

So much is unknown. And with the unknown, it’s easy to let the fear of failure, making the wrong choice, or saying the wrong thing stop us from starting in the first place. The process can be paralyzing. Small business owners have many first time experiences and so many more places where they can run into those roadblocks of doubt and fear.

With so much at stake and so many things on a small business owner’s mind, we can imagine that the multifaceted, decision-oriented process of building a website would be quite intimidating. So intimidating that a business owner might not want to even start. Failure might seem imminent in the mind of an overwhelmed, over-stretched business person.

As designers and creatives, we know that with failure comes immense learning. Through learning comes iteration. And while iteration takes time, something our customers are very limited with, it can lead to growth. And we can’t learn unless we at least try.

So in our day-to-day experiences we should ask ourselves: How can we create an empowering environment for new and existing customers to take a first step and try? To iterate? What can we do to ease the process and reassure them that we’re here for them?

Design isn’t just about the products we create or the visuals we make, it’s also about the experience of our customer’s journey. If we’re familiar with the emotions of that journey and serve those needs, we may be able to create a strong bond with our customer.

If we can harness this power, we’ll create satisfaction and loyalty for the short term and the long haul. Time, and time again.

Photo by Cherry Laithang