BIZ104 Customer Experience Reflection: Comparing Service Experiences

This report reflects on two distinct customer experiences: a positive encounter with a furniture hardware store and a negative experience at a hotel. The positive experience involved prompt and satisfactory resolution of a product defect, exceeding the customer's expectations and highlighting the company's commitment to customer satisfaction. In contrast, the negative experience at the hotel was characterized by disorganized service, long wait times, and negative employee interactions, leading to customer dissatisfaction. The report analyzes these experiences through the lens of Customer Experience Management (CEM) concepts, including the importance of 'doing it right the first time' and actively listening to customer feedback. The report also includes proto-persona profiles to identify pain points and goals, comparing the two experiences to highlight the factors that contribute to excellent customer service and the detrimental effects of poor service.

Running head: CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 1
Customer Experience
Name
Institution
Author’s Note

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 2
Customer Experience
Customer experience is always an essential parameter that nearly every customer is still
concerned about (Hauk & Schulz, 2012). Moreover, when talking about customer experience, it
is still the customer's perception regarding their experience with a given product or service that is
still offered by a given organization (Heuchert et al., 2019). I recently had one of the most
memorable customer service experiences that I will forever live to remember. I came across this
experience a few months ago when I ordered some furniture from one of the most reputable
restoration hardware. Just after I had received the furniture, this was when I came to realize that
one of the cushions that were being placed on the couch had some issues with it. It had a small
tear, which could end up giving it a bad picture with time since there was a high probability that
the tear could enlarge with time. Upon sending the photos of the tear to the management
department of the hardware, I was impressed with the action that they decided to take. They
immediately made an order for another new coach. Since they were worried that a cushion
replacement would lead to unwanted conditions of mismatch, this made them come up with a
decision of ordering the replacement of the entire couch. Interestingly, they even allowed me to
keep the couch as I waited for the ordered one to arrive. I was impressed with the kind of
customer service that the hardware-implemented. I had never come across such an experience
before since they were able to go beyond and even exceed my expectations regarding the
replacement of the product.
There was also another experience that I encountered with another organization. This
time around, it wasn't an exciting experience, but instead, it was full of a lot of disappointments.
There was this one time when I decided to walk into a hotel to have my lunch after a long day of
work. The kind of customer service that I was able to receive in the hotel was not pleasing at all.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 3
Everything seemed to be disorganized right from the waiters to the cooks who were working in
the kitchen. There was no appropriate and reliable coordination that was taking place between
the cooks and the waiters, thus leading to a terrible customer service that kept the customers to
wait for long periods before the food could arrive. The lucky ones who were able to receive food
ended up getting what they did not order at all since there was a high level of confusion in the
hotels. Me being part of the unlucky customers, we had to wait for more than thirty just to
receive what we had ordered for, it was very difficult to guess what might have gone wrong
since, during the time of order, the waiter gave an assurance that the meal was ready and could
not take more than five minutes. This was totally an empty promise that looked like a convincing
strategy that was being taken into consideration to make sure that the customers were kept intact
as they waited for the food to be prepared. It was quite unfortunate that whenever I tried to raise
any complaints, either one of the waiters or the cashier at the counterpoint could respond with a
lot of negativity. According to the customers meant nothing where they even went ahead to
develop a very bad perception that they could efficiently operate the organization even without
the existence of customers like us. The kind of negative responses that I was able to get from the
hotel employees when I complained about their delays wasn't that impressive. This made me
walk out of the hotel, even without receiving what I ordered for.
Thoughts/ Actions during the entire customer journey
Since I decided to relocate from my parents’ house to start my own life, I was aware of
the cost of buying furniture. When the quotation was done by the hardware, I was really happy
with the services it offered since the price appeared to be very low. This was one of my best
experiences. However, during the purchase, I came to realize why the price was slightly low. The
hardware had its own experts who were well versed in making the furniture. During the

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 4
purchase, I was not expecting then to accept any refund of their product which made my
expectations to really low. AS soon as I came to realize about their product refund policy, I was
able to develop a thought that it was indeed value for money service.
Before I ordered for food in the hotel, I become very suspicious with the disorganization
that was taking place within that environment , I decided to raise complains regarding the poor
service in the hotel, however, the employees appeared to be too arrogant and were not ready to
listen to my opinion as a customer. Since I realized that they were not ready to listen to their
customers, I decided to walk away with an intention of looking for better alternatives which
could meet my expectations.
Application of CEM concept
Organizations should always work hard towards understanding their customers (Steiner,
Kindsmüller & Thomaschewski, 2017). CEM is a collective process used by various
organizations to manage appropriate interaction with customers (Tiffert, 2019). It drives an
organization towards the direction of its goals and objectives (Temple et al., 2016).

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 5
Figure 1: Components of CEM
The positive encounter can be fully connected to the first component. The component talks about
doing it right the first time (Holland & Ramanathan, 2016). As a service organization, the
hardware was able to evaluate how to treat its customers even if they are meeting you for the first
time. The negative experience, on the other hand, can be linked with the fourth component. The
component is majorly focused on different aspects of listening and learning (Kreutzer, 2018).
The hotel employees could have solved the situation by listening to my concerns as a customer
and learning from their mistakes. It was quite unfortunate that they ignored the situation, which
is likely to put them at high risk in the coming future.
Proto-Persona profile
Just like any other customer, some of my potential pain points need together with goals
that have been adequately covered in the persona profile that is captured in the appendix.
Concerning the proto persona diagram for a negative encounter, the two major pain points are
closely related to the known process pain point together with a support pain point. I am very

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 6
unhappy with the provided customer service about the feedback process of the customer. Again,
all the pain points appear to be directly related to all my needs together with goals.
Comparison of the two customer experiences
When comparing the two conditions of skills that I had come across, it is much easy to
determine what is likely to make an excellent customer experience. In my positive experience,
the hardware was able to exceed customer expectations by offering a faster response towards the
replacement of the product within the shortest time possible. Just as it was indicated in the
organization's website, "customers are our first concern," this is what exactly the organization
does. Concerning my negative experience, even after raising a lot of complaints regarding the
poor services that were offered in the hotel, there was no one who was willing to learn from and
even admit the mistake that the employees were doing which emerged as a clear indication that
they were not concerned with issues related to customer quality services. It is essential to put
more focus on customer satisfaction (Masuch, 2020).

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 7
References
Hauk, J., & Schulz, C. (2012). Customer Experience Management für
Telekommunikationsunternehmen. In Customer Experience (pp. 385-406). Gabler
Verlag, Wiesbaden.
Heuchert, M., Barann, B., Cordes, A. K., & Becker, J. (2019). Entwicklung eines Entity-
Relationship-Modells und eines Verknüpfungskonzeptes–eine Betrachtung des Omni-
Channel-Managements aus einer Information Systems-Perspektive. In Digital Customer
Experience (pp. 53-67
Holland, H., & Ramanathan, N. (2016). Customer experience management. In Dialogmarketing
Perspektiven 2015/2016 (pp. 83-101). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.
Kreutzer, R. T. (2018). Customer Experience Management–wie man Kunden begeistern kann. In
Customer Experience im Zeitalter des Kunden (pp. 95-119). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.
Masuch, C., Nguyen, F., Stolz, A., & von Thaden, C. (2020). Ökonomisierung des Customer-
Experience-Managements mit dem „Return-on-Experience “-Ansatz. In Digitales
Marketing–Erfolgsmodelle aus der Praxis (pp. 417-436).
Steiner, M., Kindsmüller, M. C., & Thomaschewski, J. (2017). Das Zusammenspiel von
customer experience und user experience. Mensch Und computer 2017-usability
professionals.
Tiffert, A. (2019). Grundlagen des Customer Experience Managements. In Customer Experience
Management in der Praxis (pp. 15-19).
Temple, P., Callender, C., Grove, L., & Kersh, N. (2016). Managing the student experience in
English higher education: Differing responses to market pressures. London Review of
Education, 14(1), 33-46.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 8

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE 9
Appendix
Appendix 1: Poor experience
The two major pain points that were encountered in the experience mainly included the
delay in service together with negative comments from the employees which makes it difficult to
go back to the organization to seek for any kind of service. They were not able to meet my needs
of quality services and customer satisfaction. As a result, my goals were not obtained during the
encounter.
Customer
poor
experience
Pain points:
Delays in services
Negative response
Goals:Ethical
consideration,
undwerstanding
people
Needs: Quality
services, customer
satisfaction

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
10
Appendix 2: Pro persona diagram of positive experience with the organization
As far as the positive experience is concerned, I was able to meet all my needs in terms of
getting quality services together with employee satisfaction from the organization. This made me
to develop a clear understanding of how the company operates under various conditions.
Customer
positive
experienece
Pain points: Delays
in services
Negative
Goals:Ethical
consideration,
undwerstanding
people
Needs: Quality
services, customer
satisfaction