5 learnings from Pokémon GO on how to increase Customer Experience!

By Fabian Zetterberg

5 learnings from Pokémon GO on how to increase Customer Experience!

What’s the secret to launching an overnight worldwide success? 20 years of practising! Pokémon GO has done a lot of things right, and we thought it would be interesting to look into some of those things and see how we can apply them to Customer Experience and Inbound.

Endorphins

By rewarding customers immediately after interacting, you sustain initial motivation to continue. Usually, we need to do something physically to get these chemicals going, but with a swift reward, e.g. getting an offer by email after downloading a content offer, you can achieve a similar result.

Social Cohesion

Another way to accomplish that endorphin rush is social interactions. Human beings have a deep drive to being part of something. By putting your customer in touch with their own personal support rep, or just by addressing them as being part of a selected group, you can create that feeling of belonging.

Pokémon GO, Customer Experience and social interactions

Understanding the functionality

For years we have transposed things from the offline world into the digital and online world in order to better understand its functionality. For example, the place where we throw away our computer files looks like a trash can because that is a metaphor we understand. But, as we spend an increasing amount of time in front of computers, tablets and smartphones, the reverse is starting to happen. We’re taking the functionality of those devices and transposing them into the offline world.

As a direct result, it’s today crucial to have a well thought through mobile strategy when communicating with your customers. For example, getting your boarding pass delivered automatically to your phone before arriving to the airport is today commonplace and airlines that don’t offer that feature are viewed as being old-fashioned.

Soon, Augmented Reality (AR) features could play the same role in many industries.

Low barrier of entry

It must be easy to understand what to do when visiting your touch points (e.g. website, LinkedIn page, events). More often the technology might be rather complex, but what you experience on the outside must be easy to grasp. Your services must be accessible on all devices, in all required languages and at every given time.

Listen to the audience

When launching Pokémon GO, they made it super easy to submit reviews and feedback for their early adopters. Make this communication channel an important part of your online presence and integrate it as a natural part of your R&D process. Also, be quick to reply to those who made the effort to contact you. The latter is especially important on your Offsite touch points (Social Media) since everyone else will notice if you respond in a timely fashion or not.

Conclusion

  • Customer Experience is a holistic experience. It’s not just what happens on the screen, but also where the person is located, what time it is or the present feelings. Going mobile means you might be interrupted, and therefore it’s important to e.g. have the possibility to continue your order or conversation at a later time.
  • Although a long time coming, I believe that Augment Reality (AR) has a huge part to play in the future. When we bring the digital functionality into the offline world, we need to develop more immerse and expandable mobile experiences.
  • Our Neurological rewarding system is a compelling factor. As a result of digitalisation and ‘Onlinification’ our attention span has diminished and we expect and demand feedback quicker. Respect the power of endorphin and build for instant gratification.

Have you tried Pokémon GO? What’s your learnings on this and how could you use your experiences? Please leave a comment below or feel free to contact us about Customer Experience.

Talk to an expert

Fabian Zetterberg
Inbound Specialist at Zooma, 2015-2021.
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