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Purpose and Customer Experience
Ines Imdahl
– On the meaning of humanity in today's world.
#BeyondCXM
A psychological perspective
Purpose and CX in the same breath? With digitalization, CXM is experiencing a new hype. With Corona, purpose gets another boost. Yes, a new one and another one, because neither is really new.
Or didn't companies need a purpose before? Was brand or corporate management ever possible without a positive customer experience? Did customers have to be satisfied less in the past? Or maybe just now and then, possibly at selected touchpoints? Or is it even the other way around, that people are much harder to satisfy today?
As psychologists and market researchers, we not only ask these questions, but also want to understand why society and culture are intensively concerned with a specific topic at this particular point in time. What is the point of CXM and purpose being given increased attention right now? What is the point of the new hype about purpose?
Brand Education versus Customer Experience?
The 90s were the glory days of brands. Putting yourself in the center and celebrating was almost expected of brands. Nobody found it strange to call themselves "Premium" or "Ultra". Wearing a fat "Calvin Big" print on your T-shirt chest was just as much a status symbol. Whether Premium Pilsener or Ultra detergent - it was important for brands to demonstrate: "I am the best". It was simply assumed that people always want the best. Brand communication was geared towards education: today's 50-pluses grew up with TV brand education. They could sing jingles from Gard or the Maggie cooking studio. Multi-line. Brands not only "taught" us, but also offered solutions and orientations.
Essentially, brands were experienced through classic media and at the PoS. And of course in concrete product use. Size and importance as well as growth were seen as positive. Wall Street - the film - shows how important growth was. Expensive equals good, big equals successful. Profit equals purpose? Really?
The times are over in several respects. Digitization leads to a completely different brand experience. Customer experience is key. The young generation experiences brands - if at all - mainly online. Via Instagram, Tik-Tok the fashion and cosmetics brands via Youtube maybe also other products. Maybe. If there is no ad blocker. There usually is. A brand story, a development, a complex, holistic picture of a brand like in the old days in brand education is difficult. And then every touchpoint becomes an important, even bigger point of contact: it may stand for the only brand contact. For the only possible experience. Online, in e-commerce, in product handling - and often leads to a not very positive experience. Because the logistics are not right, the product does not work well or the customer service - as so often - is substandard. Customer experience as an underestimated Pars pro Toto for the brand.
The comfortable company: without purpose, no positive experience
Sure, companies think more about their own processes and structures than about the customer. "Please provide your order number, otherwise we cannot help you". Two clicks further are sometimes two clicks too many and you leave the page. Or they annoy you with exaggerated extreme targeting online, that borders on advertising stalking. What have they forgotten? Their corporate purpose. The reason why they are on the world.
Growth and profit are not a purpose.
No company is on the world to grow. That is a business basis, yes. But no corporate purpose. Every company foundation was once based on something, a core idea, an added value, a problem should be solved and that a human one.
Growth and profit are not a purpose of their own. But the focus on it is the reason why people in companies are increasingly calling for a purpose. They feel exhausted by the eternal hamster wheel. They are tired of always finding more of the same like 20 concepts and 5 innovations per year. The personal development thereby? More money, more power, possibly to get up in the hierarchy? No wonder that a change of company has become common every two years. Hardly anyone hangs on to a brand for which he works. The connection to the company: put on. Corona reinforces the already long-standing desire for more purpose and less profit. We were able to breathe in the lock-down, take a breath and had time to ask what we really want. The youth wants to get out of the eternal more of consuming in part. Fridays for future even proclaim: "Buying is bad".
Purpose instead of profit.
It is equally conclusive that now after the more, the why, the sense is sought. What is more obvious than to write climate protection, sustainability or diversity as a sense-rescue anchor on the flags. But that does not give the company an entitlement to exist. From a psychological point of view, that is not a purpose either. Ethical basic orientations of companies are obligation to exist. Without sustainability (feel free to add climate protection, diversity here!) no company can and may operate today. Sustainability must be equated with profitability. It must have the same value as growth. Taken by themselves, these topics give neither the company nor the brand experience meaning. And they alone do not create purpose or a positive customer experience.
Real purpose creates positive customer experience.
The question of the meaning of life is thousands of years old. But when exactly do we feel that our lives are meaningful? When the meaning of life is lost and people become depressed or suffer from burn-out, then at the latest psychology is in demand. And by the way: the dramatic increase in depressive diseases in Germany may also have something to do with the search for meaning. But it is also a psychological question when people define their lives as meaningful in a positive sense. Or just experience a corporate orientation as meaningful.
People no longer want to find their purpose only outside of a company today. Not only in their free time. They also want to find meaning within the company in order to stay and get involved.
That is, companies and brands should create meaning for people with their products and offers, offer solutions for their lives, their everyday life. And that must be noticeable in every touchpoint.
Purpose of a brand: It serves the motives of people at all contact points and offers meaningful solutions.
The question remains, how exactly does that work? How exactly does a brand touch people? Which topics should be addressed? Here are some search fields that brands can consider in their search for meaning.
Purpose search field 1: Recurring life themes:
People are initially moved by similar, major life themes and life transitions. Growing up, finding life partners and love, maturing, having children, aging and dying. Brands can be transitional aids: Always has developed a great campaign for girls on their way to becoming women ("Like a girl"). The number of dating portals probably speaks for itself. Aging, on the other hand, is meaningfully accompanied by few brands. No brand wants to go here. They are only products that are supposed to make life more bearable or aging less visible. There is a lot of meaning here that can be occupied, a lot of need that is left unused by companies.
Purpose search field 2: Everyday and inner conflicts:
We carry out conflicts with ourselves and others daily and constantly: persevering versus giving up, (chocolate) eating versus losing weight, feeling small versus the big boss, procrastinating versus immediate gratification. For all these inclinations, products can offer us solutions. Assistance, relief - they do not even need to create new needs. Better is, they deal with the needs already present in every human being. And one of the conflicts that delivers an inner struggle to us several times a day is: good versus "evil". How do we get our certainly not always friendly inclinations towards others under control? Yes and we all have them. On the highway just as on the bicycle. Who has not heard himself curse here, is lying. We think rather derogatory about bosses, also colleagues and yes also about our partners. It is a constant challenge to get this back into a culturally compatible measure.
Surgeons, for example, enjoy cutting. Cutting open people. If they are good, they do this with incredible precision. And with a great distance to the human. They prefer to talk about the "belly from room five" rather than about Mr. Müller. But they have brought their inclination into a culturally compatible form. Instead of many thousands of Jack the Rippers, we have many great surgeons.
In addition to the choice of profession to process our inclinations, products and brands can help us in everyday life. And then finally, they make sense for us! They are welcome to do so sustainably and they are allowed to make a profit in the process. But first and foremost, they must make sense for our soul budget! Brands with purpose meaningfully fit into people's everyday lives. And that at every touchpoint. Customer experience is then meaningfully controlled - from the perspective of people and no longer from the perspective of companies alone.
Want to know why - the way to purpose
Meaning and understanding belong together. Without a real understanding of the mental function, brands make no sense and customer experience is only accidentally positive. However, we must be careful not to shy away from understanding. Before the serious and deep examination of the meaning, the motives and the conflicts.
Purpose must not become a pose! And customer experience not an appendage or separate field in brand management: Because meaning makes sense - at every touchpoint!
