In recent decades major brands have undergone a massive shift.
Customers used to put ‘stock’ mainly in a brand. Sure, they judged products and whether they fulfilled their purpose, but the ‘perceived value’ of a company’s brand was open to significant influence through advertising.
In recent times the emphasis customers place on brand has been accompanied by the value of experience. This shift commenced 20 years ago as the Experience Economy emerged and has now become mainstream.
Major innovators of today – Uber, AirBNB, Netflix – do not rely on advertising. They let the experience of their products sell their product, because they know this is what their customers will talk about. For these companies, advertising is a way to supplement their service, not justify their service.
Lately I’ve started to see something new in products. Products are increasingly providing a sense of assurance to customers through small micro-experiences that bolster the product’s brand value. We can refer to this emerging trend as “experience assurance”.
Experience assurance reinforces a variety of intangible attributes of a product – from quality, safety, through to the alertness (ie. the product is ‘listening’).
The role of experience assurance is to provide feedback to the user that reduces anxiety, instills confidence and reinforces the connection between the user and the product. We can consider experience assurance as one of the factors available to companies to incrementally disrupt an industry’s value chain.
Consider these examples:
- Dyson Vacuum: when various tools of a Dyson vacuum cleaner “click” into place, precisely and audibly, this affirms the user’s perception of quality and reliability
- Apple iPhone: in recent years Apple has explored the connection between it’s software and physical attributes. When Apple let customers change the haptic feedback of the Home Button for iPhone 7, this increased the physical connection and feedback between the user and their phone.
- Ember: the award winning Ember travel coffee mug alerts you when you coffee reaches your desired and perfect temperature, acknowledging that your preference has been fulfilled
- Amazon Alexa: when Alexa’s light comes on and circles the cylinder, we know Alexa is alert and listening. We might be reminded of the spinning wheel on Apple Mac or the timer on Microsoft Windows. This same pattern that used to exist on software alone, has bridged to the physical product, and provides assurance back to whomever is speaking with Alexa.
A trait of experience assurance examples is that their presence in a product’s design is discreet, elegant and simple.
What will be interesting with the emergence of the internet of things, is that we will see experience assurance gain importance even when the product is not in the physical vicinity of the user. Products will stay connected and interact with us, so that we know they are doing the jobs we need them to, and these virtual connections will build upon the value we place on the physical products that produce them.
