Back in the box experience

For years brand and product people have been talking about out of the box experience – or in layperson terms how the customer first engages with a product. In the early 2000’s consumers and industry would swoon over the latest out of the box experience from leading businesses. We now need to be better than just starting experiences well. We need to end those same products with off-boarding experiences.

Apple was a major inspiration for many companies in the tech sector. Their customers would go from a branded flagship store experience to home and the layered reveal of the Apple items as the box is opened. Where they experience the delicate pieces of semi transparent paper reveal a gleaming new MacBook or iPhone, further box layers revealed more functional items like chargers and instructions.

The experience continued the on the iPhone or MacBook. Were a similar branded look and feel began a set-up assistant. Where the consumer could migrate their previous account, set up a new account, add credit cards or social media. This swiftly got the person going on their phone or computer. It also set up secuirty like face recognition or finger print scanning. Many of these features were complicated and took a significant amount of effort behind the scenes to establish a simple consumer experience in the foreground.

Of course, it wasn’t just Apple that presented consumers with these well thought through on-boarding experiences, any companies worth their salt in customer experience where doing a similar approach to the beginning of the consumer lifecycle.

Where are we now

Consumers are now in a different place. Desire of a coherent and memorable out of the box experience is a baseline. People are looking at a businesses green credentials alongside the product offering. Businesses respond by communicating their initiatives around the environment. Maybe they tell the consumer about how much they off-set or what materials they use.

The problem with lots of the communication around these issues don’t involve the consumer directly. These issues are outside the consumer lifecycle. For example, a consumer does not experience any off-sets. They do not understand the nuanced difference between one material and another. This limits the brand benefit from any of these types of communication. And subsequently limits the success of environmental or circular strategies.

Is industry looking at the end

Currently the off-boarding of a consumer experience is not considered a place to express a brand. It’s left in limbo for the consumer to resolve. Material issues, such as recycling are dealt with by municipal companies and governments, who define broad basics of what a consumer can do via waste and recycling management.

Digital off-boarding is even less considered. Most consumers think if they delete an app all the information is stopped. Likewise, leaving a service is interpreted as just not using it anymore. The reality is data is sold or merged with other data bases by the business. Who will push the regional legal limits on what they can do with a persons data. The consumer has little knowledge of the wider system, what rights they have or what happens to their data.

What could we do

There is an enormous opportunity to capture this space as somewhere to improve, inspire and build positive brand experiences. For example some starting points could be…

• Building off-boarding assistance would help many people learn more about data and clear up their digital footprint. I created an example of what this might be like a few years ago which you can read about here.

• Reverse logistics is a growing opportunity for many companies. Not only to lengthen the engagement with the consumer, but also to build true circularity into a business and product experience.

• Alignment with Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions requires a business to measure downstream end of product life. This will be hard to do without being involved at off-boarding of the consumer experience and having meaningful engagements with the consumer.

• Out of the box experiences need to be balanced with back in the box experiences. Here a mirror world exists of product introduction that presents the product punctuation with a branded farewell to the consumer.

• Loyalty schemes that measure and celebrate customer purchases need to help the consumer measure their consumption and together with the provider deal with the fall out of off-setting of a product.

Here industry has a landscape of opportunity to deal with next few decades and be part of creating positive endings for everyone.