How emotions influenced me not to buy "the apartment of my dreams"!

Last week I was at a preview of an apartment. I was overwhelmed, and I really could see myself live there with my family.

Therefore I immediately went home to my family to tell them about how perfect this apartment was, how much I wanted to move there and so forth. I also started to calculate if we could afford this apartment. The broker made a great impression so we even contacted her and asked her to evaluate our apartment.

Two days after, me and my husband decided to make an offer on the apartment before the original display. The broker was very interested to hear our offer. It was well above the accepted price for the apartment. Without asking the seller she turned our offer down though explaining that they already had indications of an even higher amount from some other speculators. AND that the seller wanted to have a traditional bidding process. Why then did she even listen to my offer?? This is where my emotions changed from being excited to me being upset with the broker’s ignorance and later her lack of competence.

Theory discloses that our emotions will influence the purchase decision and our loyalty. It did.

My purchase decision took a U-turn. I went to the next display of the apartment, but this time I ended up finding fault in the apartment. My calculations ended up being less risk averse. I had a lot of contact with the broker and I experienced our contact as vague, not straight forward and her really pushy. I explained the situation to her, that we were not that interested any longer. I felt she pushed me to make another offer. I did not. I could have seen between fingers for all of those things if my emotions at that time was not affected. I ended up being critical towards the apartment and the broker. We canceled the meeting with the broker regarding our own apartment. And we ended up pulling us out of the bidding before someone even made a bid on the accepted price.

In the end we made a more thoughtful decision, with less risk, and perhaps better for us.
Yet they lost a potential buyer.

Overall a bidding is quite stressful for anyone participating in it. This area could definitely benefit from a CX overview.

The experience of having lunch at my daughters school

Last week I planned to visit my daughter at school and have a pleasant lunch with her. She just started a new school in a preschool class. I wanted to see how everything worked in the new environment, what the food tasted like, meet her classmates and her new teachers.


Unfortunately my lunch at school did not live up to my expectations (even though spending time with my daughter was as wonderful as ever).


I found the environment really stressful. I meet them out on the schoolyard, and before entering the cantina the children should gather up, walk to another building, wash their hands, gather up again and walk to the cantina. The adults were continuously on the children about standing in the line, walking faster, following the other classmates tempo, moving away from the corridor where the elderly pupils were running their errands, hurrying up to stand in another line, not walking to slow etc.


When finally arriving at the cantina, about 30 kids, their teachers, and me, had 30 minutes to find our seats in the cantina, then wait for our turn to take food ourselves and then go back to our seats. The children are 5 or 6 years old. It took 17 minutes before all of us had food on our plates. Then we had another 13 to eat and clean the table, meaning that all of us should bring back our tray with the plate, cutlery and glasses on. Adults normally have about 1 hour to finish their lunches at work.


The teacher had a chant saying "1, 2, 3,4 ,5 ,6, 7, everyone quiet now" ("1, 2, 3,4 ,5 ,6, 7, alla tysta nu."). After that was said everyone had to sit quiet for 5 minutes to have time to eat. Have you ever sat with your colleagues at lunch quiet? That felt quit awkward.


Before everyone was ready and out of the cantina a new class had lined up outside the door to the cantina to begin with the same procedure as we just had. The food lady controlling the cantina had a few busy rounds to go.


After lunch all of us went out to the schoolyard. The kids had the chance to play there for about 10-15 minutes before they had to line up again. This time a day they did a trip to a playground a few hundred meters away. The reason was that the pupils from class 6 was soon to enter the schoolyard, and that could be a little bit "hectic" for the kids. Isn’t the schoolyard there for all pupils to feel safe and play?? Do we have to take our coffe at work somewhere else than in the coffee room just because the environment there is to hectic?


Let´s just say that I was not very happy with my visit at the school. I know that what is a bad experience for someone might be good for someone else. I just hope that my daughter and I do not share the same experience from this lunch together.




Worried mum
Gabriella

 

Getting started with the study again!

Many thoughts are running through my head right now. While trying to design the best experience ever for the customer of my company I am reflecting over what really matters? Every single customer looks different from the other and yet my ambition is that every single customer should get the best experience ever. While aiming for this I am concentrating really hard not to create to many possible choices for the customer in the design. That in itself would probably not be a good experience.

I am Gabriella, CX Design Manager, and I just recently started to engage in the customer experience area. Well, 8 months ago. Time moves fast. My biggest challenge is to simplifying technically heavy products. Designed by engineers. To be used by real customers. My ambition is to give the customers the best start in their journey with our company, by looking over and designing the touch points; buy, receive, get started, use and pay. Naturally also aligned with the adjacent touch points need, change and leave.

In my aim to create a WOW experience for our new (and current) customers I am now entering this course at KAU. Understanding Customer Experience. I need to deeper my understanding within this complex area. My expectation on the course is to build a new network that can help me & my colleagues to reflect on our companies challenges and to build a platform of knowledge that my department can use while we take on this fruitful work.

Excited and expectant.

Gabriella