Brand Experience Goals Guiding the Design of Multiple Touchpoints

Virpi Roto Abstract Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture This paper approaches multi-touchpoint experience Helsinki, Finland design from brand experience perspective and suggests [email protected] brand experience goals as the means for managing experience design in multiple customer touchpoints. Markus Joutsela The paper combines related works of the authors to Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture clarify the big picture of our position and introduces the Helsinki, Finland research topics of designing harmonious experiences [email protected] for the various touchpoints around a brand.

Maaria Nuutinen Author Keywords VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd. Brand experience; Multi-touchpoint experience design; Espoo, Finland Brand experience goals. [email protected] Introduction The most successful companies in product and service business are the ones that have been able to create a strong, positive, and unique brand image. User experience of the company’s products and services is Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for an increasingly important part in creating a brand personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are experience, but strong brands are strong in tens of not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that other customer touchpoints as well. copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or Service design takes a customer in the center and republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. designs a customer journey along different service Experience Design for Multiple Customer Touchpoints workshop in points. It is typical to focus on the smoothness of the conjunction with NordiCHI’16. October 23-27, 2016, Gothenburg, customer journey by optimizing the effectiveness and Sweden. efficiency of the service and thereby ensuring customer satisfaction. Plain removal of frustrating efficiency,

usability or technical problems is not enough today, but style. Third, many companies manufacture products Customer touchpoints emotional, i.e. experiential aspects could play a bigger that are targeted for multiple different audiences and, role in service design (Zomerdijk & Voss 2010). The therefore, aim for creating different kinds of Points of human, product, user experience goals for digital services are often experiences. Despite of the undeniable need for service, communication, usability-driven whereas in face-to-face service different experiences in different touchpoints, the spatial, and electronic encounters, many more experiential aspects come fore profound identity of the brand should remain coherent interaction collectively in interaction, such as friendliness, sensitiveness, and recognizable. constituting the interface respect, or humor. When digitalizing face-to-face between an enterprise services, the service typically loses most of its The profound identity of the brand can be described in and its customers over emotional aspects. Special effort is required in making company values, but often the brand values are closer the course of customers’ experiential aspects play a role in touchpoint design. to the internal codes of conduct than to the experiences experience cycles. that the company wants to convey to the customers. A The key idea behind multi-touchpoint experience design combination of recognized brand personality traits Dhebar (2013) is to aim for a harmonious experience across all (Geuens et al. 2009), or more specific characteristics touchpoints and channels. It is common to set user identified as typical for a specific company can be experience related goals for a digital product or service, utilized as brand experience goals as such, or as a but they are often isolated from the higher-level brand source for defining the goals in another form. Defining experience. There are few publications on taking brand touchpoint-specific experience goals based on the Brand Personality experience as the guide for service design, so brand identity is the key idea in enabling a harmonious Measure Clatworthy (2013) is our main reference. In this paper, brand experience whenever a person encounters a we call for more attention to the brand experience brand, via any touchpoint. Down to earth when designing for multiple touchpoints. Stable Setting Brand Experience Goals Responsible Designing for Harmonious Brand Experience The idea of setting experiential goals for product design Active Harmonious brand experience can realize when all is explained in Kaasinen et al. (2015). One of the Dynamic touchpoints convey a coherent picture of the brand, possible sources of defining suitable user experience Innovative thereby strengthening the brand experience to a goals is the brand. Before utilizing the brand in goal Aggressive recognizable one. This may sound like a simple setting, the brand character needs to be identified. The Bold principle, but there are obvious challenges there. First, brand personality traits (e.g. Geuens et al. 2009) as Ordinary customers’ needs and expectations for the service such are hardly specific enough to differentiate a brand, Simple experience are different in different touchpoints along so the brand experience goals should be set by Romantic the customer journey. Second, there are different types studying the brand identity. We have used a Sentimental of customers who appreciate different types of service participatory design approach to define experience experiences. This is a challenge whenever designing for goals for the whole company, and used them to guide Geuens et al. (2009) experiences, and focusing on brand experience actually design of touchpoints (Roto et al. 2015a). helps the customers to find the brand matching their

Setting experience goals not only for a single product outside the typical service journeys (Roto et al. 2015a). or service but also for the whole company brings the In summary, customer touchpoints can be identified experience aspects to the attention of the company from customers’ perspective or from company’s (or management. It is a strategic decision to define which service system’s) perspective. types of experiences this company wants to convey to the world. Brand experience goals can help bridging the Designing for experiences in a touchpoint possible gap between marketing and product In real life, there are many kinds of requirements and development, and introducing the experiential aspects limitations for designing touchpoints, and brand to the company strategy. experience is easy to forget. Recently, we have studied the process of experience design in the case of There is no single format in which the brand experience packaging touchpoint (Joutsela & Roto 2016), and an goals should be set. They can be broad and simple unpublished packaging design case is briefly described terms, such as Social value or Enjoyment (Roto & below. Rautava 2008). They can consist of the goal for design and the desired effect, such as Reliability for Trust or Epic Oy is a company delivering warm meals, soups Professionalism for Pride (Roto et al. 2015b). They can and salads to consumers. As a start-up company, Epic Figure 1. A mindmap excerpt of also be part of a Manifesto, showing the brand identity, does not have a well-established brand yet, but the role customer touchpoints around a the desired customer experience, and brand image of packaging is seen important for their brand image. A company (blurred for (Roto et al. forthcoming). confidentiality reasons) team of students in a packaging course was assigned a Customer touchpoint identification task to design a packaging solution for food delivery for

It typically is an eye-opening exercise for a company to Epic. As in real life, there were many requirements and list all touchpoints in which the customer and company limitations for the design, and unique brand experience interact. This can include the current touchpoints but goals were hard for the clients to articulate. The design also new ones. The customer journey concept used in brief included functional and pricing constraints, but service design is an excellent starting point to also statements that highlight the important branding document the important touchpoints, and the key aspects, such as: customer journeys can reveal tens of touchpoints. It is Figure 2. Customer journey good to realize, however, that there can be tens of “Eating well should be the easiest option.” – map visualizes the service additional touchpoints outside the service encounters, Differentiate from fast food, still provide convenience. encounters along the such as advertisements, periodical customer surveys, customer journey in a various types of events, or even season’s greetings “Package is one the most important touch points to our chronological order (blurred (Fig.1). Therefore, we have adopted both customer and service” – The important service moments include the for confidentiality reasons). company perspective for identifying the touchpoints: online order, delivery, eating, and disposal. Packaging customer journey mapping to reveal the service plays a role in the last three, and possibly in images on encounters, and workshops where company people the web site for online order as well. from different departments identify touchpoints also

“How can the package support the dining experience” look natural with hand drawn food motifs and a craft- – Design beyond the delivery phase. In addition to how style logotype. The bright label-stickers in fresh colors things are visually represented on the packaging create an interesting bold contrast to the design, but surface, touch and sensations related to package use also provide a cost-efficient labeling and closure are also important for the experience. Packaging solution for the packer. The story of the brand and the creates a multisensory brand experience. service is communicated on the inside of the delivery bag. The innovative slip-on lid provides ease of use at “Delightful brand experience” – package plays an the point of filling for the chefs and easy opening important role in forming the brand experience. experience for consumers of the warm meal. The concave lids of the salad packages enable convenient Based on the design brief and additional information stacking of several packages at the point of delivery, sources, the students concluded that the brand serving but also a perfect fit for eating utensils. the food should represent itself as responsible, bold, innovative and simple, and these formed the brand Conclusions experience goals for the packaging solution. Service design is expanding to digital channels, which brings new challenges and opportunities for user In the execution of the design (Fig. 3 & 4), experience design. User experience design research responsibility is conveyed through use of sustainable needs to broaden its focus from a single user interface biodegradable board and minimalistic printing and design to the design for experiences in multiple material use. The simple black and white packages also touchpoints, to designing the customer experience journey through both digital and non-digital channels (Patricio et al. 2008). Experience design is highly user- centric, addressing both utilitarian and emotional user needs. The emotional needs seem to be rarely addressed in service design, but customer experience research often remains on the utilitarian side. However, maintaining a good customer relationship extends beyond the service encounters. This is obvious especially in B2B industry with long customer relationships. Yet, designing for a harmonious brand experience is rarely discussed in service design (Clatworthy 2012) or experience design research.

In this paper, we have summarized some of our works around using brand experience as the guide in multi- Figure 3. Delivery packaging Figure 4. Meal packaging touchpoint experience design. When customers’ needs

and wants differ, brand experience goals can guide i.e., how to build a harmonious service experience setting service- or touchpoint-specific experience goals. through touchpoints provided by different brands. Improving the customer relationship requires identifying the touchpoints also outside the service Acknowledgments journeys. This work was part of Brand New and ValuePack research projects, both funded by Tekes and company In summary, our perspective to multi-touchpoint partners. The student work was conducted by Laura experience design highlights touchpoints outside the Lundell, Henri Judin, Karolina Konieczna, Hengjia E, typical customer journeys and emotional aspects Roosa Melentjeff, and Annukka Reinman, and funded (through experience goals) more than typical service by MetsäBoard Oy. design. It also combines the user-centeredness of UX design and brand-centredness of omnichannel design, References and uses these two in designing for harmonious 1. Clatworthy, S. (2012). Bridging the gap between customer experiences via multiple touchpoints. brand strategy and customer experience, Managing Service Quality 22(2), pp.108 - 127

There are many open topics for further study in the 2. Dhebar, A. (2013). Toward a compelling customer touchpoint architecture. Business Horizons, 56(2), above viewpoint multi-touchpoint experience design – 199-205. some candidates below. 3. Geuens, M., Weijters, B., & De Wulf, K. (2009). A new measure of brand personality. International The interplay between the generic brand • Journal of Research in Marketing, 26(2), 97-107. experience goals and the more specific user 4. Joutsela, M. & Roto, V. (2016). Introducing experience goals (e.g. UX of the service journey or Experience Goals into Packaging Design. Proc. a single touchpoint). E.g., which influences which; Design Research Society 50th anniversary which level of abstraction works in goal conference, Bristol, UK. descriptions. 5. Kaasinen, E., Roto, V., Hakulinen, J., Heimonen, T., • Tool(s) for visualizing off-journey touchpoints, i.e., Jokinen, J., Karvonen, H., Koskinen, H., Keskinen, touchpoints outside the typical service journeys. T., Lu, Y., Saariluoma, P., Tokkonen, H., Turunen, Customer journey map works well for service M. (2015). Defining User Experience Goals to Guide moments, something similar is needed for mapping the Design of Industrial Systems. Behaviour & the rest of the touchpoints. Information Technology 34(10):976-991. • Long-term studies on how the brand experience 6. Patrício, L., Fisk, R. P., & e Cunha, J. F. (2008). develops after it has been used as a guide in multi- Designing multi-interface service experiences the service experience blueprint. Journal of Service touchpoint design. Research, 10(4), 318-334. • The role of brand experience in designing complex product-service systems including several brands, 7. Polaine, A., Løvlie, L. & Reason, B. (2013). Service Design: From Insight to Implementation. Rosenfelt Media, NY, U.S.A.

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