Hunting for a Good Experience
	Posted by Brandy Reppy at Jan 13, 2009 12:22 PM CST Categories: Usability

Recently, I've been looking apartment hunting - a tedious process at best. I knew this was coming, so I've been looking for a while. I've scoured Craigs List, rental companies, real estate agencies, and even done quite a few neighborhood drivebys. I'm not usually this thorough, but I don't want to have to move again in a year, so I wanted to be sure that my next place was a keeper.

After some preliminary hunting a couple of months ago, I realized that I'd have to sit down and make a list of the things I was looking for in a new place. After that, I created a list of things I don't like in my current place, and was amazed at what I discovered.

The fact is that I love my current place. It's spacious, it has a yard, it's close to work but also not far from downtown. The neighborhood isn't top notch, but it's not the worst, either. With the washer and dryer connections and businesses close by, I really struggled to come up with much that I don't like about it.

Then, I figured it out; the thing I like the least about my place is the management company I deal with. From the beginning, they have fought me on a couple of fairly basic requests. They have been inaccessible when I have had emergencies and curt when I've needed repairs. I'm not a demanding tenant - to be honest I do most of my own repairs - But, time after time, I've felt jilted by them. And because of that, I'm taking my business elsewhere.

This is a classic example of a user experience that completely changed the way that I interpreted a situation. On paper, there's nothing wrong with the apartment. All of the qualifications of what I want in a place were met. They did everything that they said they would do. However, if we look at my level of trust in the company, and the way that our interaction shaped my perception, we'll find that there's a lot more to the way we worked together than is evident on paper.

The reason that I bring this up is that I find it helpful to keep these sorts of interactions in mind when I'm thinking about user experience. There's a tendency to partition the idea of user experience into customer service, website usability, donor relations, and call centers, But in actuality, these are all trying to accomplish the same thing - helping people to trust your organization and to feel valued. Whether or not that trust is gained or that feeling of value is met can be the difference between renewing or rethinking a relationship. That's a pretty important consideration.

Of course I realize that my current management company will go on without me; they'll re-rent the place and keep getting paid. But, they'll never get my business again, and I certainly won't be recommending them any time soon. In economic times like this, that's pretty much not going to cut it if they want to continue to thrive.

So what can we learn from all of this? Sometimes it's important to draw on the experiences you have had, both good and bad, and use those experiences to help you to make decisions about your constituents' experiences with your organization and your website. Introducing those levels of empathy can make a really big difference when it comes to how you and your constituents interact - and hopefully it will keep them coming back to your organization for years to come.

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