The X factor: a better way to deliver

The X factor. Everyone is looking for it. Simon Cowell is looking for it on his show. You are probably looking for it, too—in your attempt to deliver an excellent Customer Experience (CX) or User Experience (UX). Yes, it’s the X—’the Experience’ that you should think about in delivering to your customers.

When we develop and market our products and services, we tend focus on features and benefits. While these are great there may be a better way to convey the value of our products and services are. Think of the X factor as ‘What experience are you promising to deliver to your customers? What journey would they go through if they are with you? What problems are you going to solve? What solutions are you providing? 

We think about ourselves, so do they!

Let’s be frank! Although we may not want to admit it, most of us think about ourselves first. Customers think about themselves and their problems first, too. Then if you are lucky, they will think about you later. So if you are focusing on saying how good you are (‘look at all the features we have’), you may not get their attention. Their current problems may be so overwhelming that they cannot listen to your reasoning.

Take a step back! Think about the X factor—promise them the ultimate experience, deliver them the solutions and make their problems go away!

The iPhone 7 experience

I love iPhones. They’re the best thing since sliced bread. I am considering getting an iPhone 7 and used YouTube to do research on ‘iPhone 7’. Here are the top 5 results:

Here is my quick summary and analysis of the video views:

If we take video 1 out of the analysis (since it’s a review, it is not clear whether it’s about ‘experience’ or ‘features’), you may notice that videos that promise an experience gain significantly higher number of views than the ones indicating facts and features. 8 million vs 2-3 million. (They were all released 4 months ago, so the lifespan is consistent)

As an iPhone buyer, I like the ‘unboxing’ experience. ‘Unboxing’ is the first touch point—all the excitement and anticipation accumulated from the time I researched to the time I swiped my credit card at the store to make a purchase (video 2). I also would like to it be waterproof in case I drop it into the water or when I go swimming and forget to take it out of my pocket (‘solving my problems’—video 5).

So again, remember the X factor!

Have we got the X factor?

At SilverStripe, we are incorporating the X factor into our products and services. Take SilverStripe 4 as an example. This highly anticipated CMS/Framework uses the latest front-end technologies such as ReactJS, Bootstrap 4 and TinyMCE 4. We are not trying to add as many features as possible to SilverStripe 4. Instead, we improve your experience by establishing solid foundations backed by the new technologies to help you edit content faster, manage files and collaborate better. You also have a simpler and cleaner look-and-feel with SilverStripe 4, which hopefully will give you a seamless experience with the CMS, even if you try it for the very first time.

SilverStripe Platform is another way where we strive to give you that X factor. If you get woken up at 2 a.m. because your site goes down; if you have to spend hours doing mundane maintenance and upgrades; if you sweat whenever there is a new security threat that may break your site, SilverStripe Platform may take most (or all) of your problems away. With excellent deployment tools and our expert team looking after your sites, you will finally be able to sleep easy at night—wouldn’t that be a ‘dream experience’?

These are only a couple of examples of how we aim to get the X factor in the way we work at SilverStripe. This doesn’t mean we’ve already nailed it down. We still have a long way to go. One thing for sure is that we are constantly improving our work and the way we deliver an outstanding experience to our customers and users.

If you are interested in working with us to deliver that X factor, send us a message!