Degrowth: shifting purpose and employees to a better end.

As climate change becomes more real everyday we need to ask harder questions on the norms of our lifestyles. Many people are starting to see the need for degrowth, but business leaders are questioning how they do that and still add value to their consumer product experience. How do we refocus all those businesses to do better and grow less? It’s a big ask.

While consumerism has become more successful its characteristics have focused around improved features, that are consumer centric, delivered with convenience and speed. Accompanied by persuasive messages compelling the consumer to buy. The consumer experience, which is more curated at onboarding, reinforces of these emotional attributes that drive growth and over consumption.

A balanced consumer lifecycle

If we look at an ideal consumer lifecycle that is sustainable and circular we would see balance in the on-boarding and off-boarding experience. Where the emotional and engaging experience at on-boarding to show product benefits and encourage consumers to purchase, is balanced by emotional encouragement, support from the product producer. Who then bonds with the consumer on efforts to neutralise the negative impact of that consumption. Relieving societies burden of consumerism and shifting responsibility towards the consumer and provider.

A distorted consumer lifecycle

The efforts made over decades to drive growth has meant the on-boarding experience has grown enormously. Distorting a balanced consumer lifecycle. Along with teams, roles and techniques to deliver it. While off-boarding and the end of the consumer lifecycle been overlooked as a place to be responsible or innovate. Leaving a barren emotional wasteland at the end of the consumer experience. This buckles any balance between beginning and end. Often it leaves problems with the consumer and society to sort out. The consumer feeling abandoned and uninstructed. While societies mechanisms for resolving the fall out of consumption have been eroded by political timeframes and competing agendas.

Rebalancing the consumer lifecycle

Degrowth brings up some enormous and fundamental questions for business leaders regarding the shape and role of their organisations – ‘If we aren’t selling and growing, then what are we doing? And what do we do with all these people employed in product development, marketing, and innovation teams if they are not focused on sales and growth?’ We need businesses to shift attention to the off-boarding of the product experience. Those businesses need to think in different timeframes. Extending engagement with the consumer. Where they can be part of the solution.

Examples of this change could see phone companies supporting beyond the first cycle. Many phones can be resold, yet manufactures who sell the device, tend to disengage at the end of the first cycle. Breaking the original consumer/producer relationship and responsibility. Leaving it for the consumer to seek third parties who create new experiences around the following cycles.

Another example could be a holiday company that not only organises the experience of holidaying, but also helps over the following years with off-setting the impact – managing carbon, updating the consumer about progress on planted trees. Keeping the consumer engaged in the experience of the practicalities of mitigation and off-setting. Not just buying some random instant off-setting as part of the purchase experience.

It could even be a clothing company that not only tells the consumer about the ethical sourcing of product materials, but explains where the product waste will end its life, how it will get processed and make sure that people in clothing waste management have good healthcare.

Building experiences at the end of the consumer lifecycle is an opportunity space. A place to refocus teams and build great endings (you can read about Endineering teams and skills here). Degrowth can happen with longer term consumer provider engagement. Instead of growth businesses can add value, loyalty, build brand equity and purpose elsewhere in the consumer lifecycle that helps in neutralising the impact of consumption.

Bias Benevolence

Charity is said to begin at home, but it might be more accurate to say that it begins with a sale. It’s often at the point of purchase that a consumer finds it easiest to behave benevolently. Can we say the same about the end? Do we care as much about who dismantles our electronics, processes our waste, or recycles our plastic? Or do we find our charities surrendered to a consumption cycle like everything else.

By purchasing something, they can endorse themes like better working conditions, or healthier growing methods for food, or sustainable material usage or thousands of other well-deserving issues. These issues are communicated to them expertly using sophisticated marketing techniques. Many of these techniques have been established for decades, some even for centuries, and have been very successful at changing behaviours in the consumer, in businesses, in government and in international trade.

Examining this issue isn’t intended to criticise the good intentions of people and organisations who are trying to improve the world. They have certainly made the world a better place. But it is to question objectively whether we focus overly much on improving the on-boarding and purchase experience, while the ending, and ultimate consequence of consumption is overlooked. It might demonstrate just how deeply the bias of starting a consumer experience overshadows the proper and responsible ending of one.

The on-boarding experience incorporates a significant quantity of persuasion tools with branding and marketing. These locate the benevolent cause in the context of a consumer experience. The consumer experience has been developed over decades. It has established behaviours that limit interest and responsibility past product usage and rarely live onto the off- boarding experience.

We can define these in to two areas, one is an ascending trajectory towards the consumer. This is well organised and persuasive. The other is a descending trajectory away from the consumer. Which is chaotic, overlooked and emotionally repulsive.

Circularity 23, highlights

I was invited to speak about Endineering and run a break out session for this years Circularity 23 in Seattle. It was a great conference. Big, 1400 delegates. Lots of major companies. Well run, and a diverse range of subjects from chemical identity systems to improve sourcing for circularity and avoid greenwashing, to art exhibitions made out of waste plastics found on beaches.

Highlights for me…

Plastics treaty

I am sure we all feeling pretty overwhelmed about plastic pollution issue. Hearing more about the pervasive nature of it across the world – found in the stomachs of whales, to the ice of Antarctica. It is everywhere.

A treaty is being currently negotiated to stop plastic pollution. Which given the difficulty of recent negotiations, I didn’t feel hopeful about.

A panel at the conference had delegates from the treaty negotiation in Paris. They seemed very upbeat about the progress. Apparently already getting a first draft together. Which is pretty good progress. They have an aggressive timeline. But they seemed hopeful and the attendees of the treaty negations appeared engaged and willing. It was reassuring to hear.

https://www.greenbiz.com/events/circularity/2023/sessions/navigating-negotiations-update-global-plastics-treaty-0

https://www.unep.org/events/conference/second-session-intergovernmental-negotiating-committee-develop-international

Resell market

Another panel focused on the resale market. Which has grown enormously over the recent years. Chaired by Cynthia Power, and expert in circularity and second hand market. Panelist included people from Amazon which by the way has a pretty successful electronics refurbishment business, Patagonia, Trove a technology company specialising in resale infrastructure.

Discussion covered aspects of responsibility, trust in product refurbishment, and building reverse logistic infrastructure. There were some pretty impressive number quotes in term of growth of the sector. They also talked about the changing buying habits of younger generations who are looking at second hand options before new options in lots of product categories.

https://www.greenbiz.com/events/circularity/2023/sessions/navigating-resale-explosion

https://trove.com/how-it-works/

https://www.amazon.com/Warehouse-Deals/b?ie=UTF8&node=10158976011

https://wornwear.patagonia.com

Digital Product Passports

The use of Digital Product Passports is set to expand with new legislation emerging that counters greenwashing. A surge in traceability is required, that can track not only a finished products, but also individual parts and even raw material sources.

The panel was chaired by Phil Brown, Director or Metabolic. Panelist included, Nana Fujishiro from Kasei, Omar Terrie from Neste, and Mesbah Sabur founder of Circularise.

Discussion talked about the capability of identifying plastic types to create passports at source. How Blockchain captures events, transactions and volumes. How Digital Product Passports help in dis-assembly.

https://www.greenbiz.com/events/circularity/2023/sessions/digital-product-passports-insights-and-actions-field

The dated design mantra and a future with less stuff.

Heavy stuff
Human stuff out weights nature stuff at current trajectory of creation. Human made objects - buildings, boots, cars, tables, phones and such like, is going to have more mass than nature made stuff - flamingos, krill, elephants, grass, fungi, trees and such like. ⁠1

Credit: Amanda Montañez; Source: “Global Human-Made Mass Exceeds All Living Biomass,” by Emily Elhacham et al., in Nature. Published online December 9, 2020

This is a disturbing statistic of over consumption and resource depletion. Let’s look at this through the lens of product creation, design, and consumer experience.

Historically the culture of product creation in pre-industrial times, would see an individual creator produce an individual item. Industrialisation empowered the creator to make multiple amount of items. Vocabulary emerged alongside this new purpose for producers. It expanded to include selling, pushing growth and producing more items. Then enhancing that product through iteration and selling an update year after year.

Design mantra
Over these centuries we have been maturing a mantra for design and product development that essentially says “If we make this new thing, life will be better in the future.”

To a large extent, this has meant a great deal of improvement in peoples lives over centuries. Refrigerators, cars, washing machines, mobile phones, and a variety of other devices have helped ease daily burdens. The mantra was strong. There was real belief that life could be improved by a new thing. But now the benefits are becoming smaller and the risks becoming greater. The mantra is dated and exhausted.

Hacking the mantra to fit
I was at a circularity and climate change event recently. The majority of the audience were from the design industry. Although, well meaning the proposed solutions still broadly pushed the traditional design mantra, but now with a worrying rephrasing of the original to be less damaging.

“if we make this new “circular” thing, life will be better in the future”

The problem is, these hacks of the mantra have come and gone in the past - “if we make this new “faster”, “bigger”, or “cleaner” thing...”. Each fulfilling the consumer need of the time. Now consumers want to damage the environment less, so design adapts the mantra to fit that new purpose. And so justifies creation of a new products with this new “circular” characteristic. Maybe we should look at other parts of the design mantra to change.

Where should design look to in the future?
One aspect of design that is taking a different path is the area of Design Fictions. A space where almost no new products are made. Instead a fictional world of products exists to show alternative futures. Design fiction requires no new manufacturing sites, no new sales packs, or social media campaigns with influencers. An updated mantra that Design Fiction fulfils could be “If we fake this new thing, life will be better in the future.”

We could also change another part of the phrasing of the mantra in relation to endings “If we end this thing properly, life will be better in the future.” Avoiding a new product and eliminating an old one. Reducing the weight of human made stuff in the process.

1 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/human-made-stuff-now-outweighs-all-life-on-earth/

Brand equity ends like this.

Brands lose lots when a customer leaves. Not just the revenue of a loyal customer, but, arguably more important, the brand equity. Gargantuan effort, resources, and money at the beginning is lost at the end.

Ask any consumer, who found it a difficult to leave, what they think of that brand after departure and you will always hear their promise of ‘never again’.

At least once a week on Twitter someone call my attention to a nightmare experience they have had leaving a brand. Maybe a subscription service, or some gym, or occasionally a digital service.

Let’s consider brand equity over the consumer lifecycle.

For any business that is doing a decent job on their marketing, they have attracted a target user, and converted them to a customer.

Then, hopefully that business has built a good product and the customer is happy with their commitment. Continued satisfying experience could potentially end up with that peak of brand ambition loyalty. But eventually, this will end. And the consumer is going to transition through the companies off-boarding experience.

The end

Many businesses fall somewhere between ignorance of their customers experience at the end or are so scared of people leaving have put enormous barriers in the way. Neither are good. Both result in a loss of brand equity.

If for example a customer has signed up for a service and the website makes it super hard to leave. Making the consumer feel misdirected and trapped. A normal human reaction might be anger. Resulting in a severe drop in brand equity. Which might take a long time to forgive. Zendesk believe a bad consumer experience can result in brand avoidance of up to two years by the customer⁠1.

Another example could be a customer of a physical product. From a brand that neglects the consumer at the end. Maybe that customer now feels abandoned and alone when they need to dispose of that item. We see this type of thing happen with coffee makers and their capsules. Or printer ink cartridges. Or mobile phones, when people would rather store the product than put it in the wrong place. Customers then feel alone not knowing what to do. Although these brands might receive a less extreme reaction to their brand equity, it will be dropping.

Brands can do better. There are plenty of ways to change the engagement at the end of the consumer lifecycle to one that is a positive brand experience. Not only to minimise the damage, but to maximise brand equity, lay down positive memories and long term brand preference.

1 https://www.zendesk.com/blog/the-impact-of-customer-service/

Proud of your brand?

Worked a lot on those Brand attributes? Words like transparency, consistency, smooth, aspirational. You know, the ones that you come back to every few years. Get an agency to run a workshop. Then argue about the semantics of words for two days.

Brand attributes are the promises a company attempts to inspire consumers with. A sort of guideline for characteristics. Although not mentioned directly to the consumer, the brand attempts to deliver these through brand behaviour. Alluding to them in advertising, marketing and through a products design, function and interaction. At least that is what’s meant to happen.

Brand attributes tend to dissolve pretty quick when the customer wants to leave. All of a sudden, where there was clarity, there is now avoidance. Where there was transparency, there is fog. Where there was honesty, there is now mis-direction.

Some brands are realising they have to do better with their brand at the end. Certainly they realise that bad endings will shatter brand equity, and limit customer engagement to one sales-cycle.

Customers will realise how hard it is to end the relationship with a brand. They will think twice about being a customer again. The companies brand attributes now become - entrapment, mis-direction and denial. Your departing customers will see this with clarity, anger and mistrust.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Some of the companies I have written about in the Endineering book have embraced their brand attributes to create better off-boarding experiences for their customers. The end of the consumer lifecycle can be an enormous benefit for a companies brand equity. It can solidify brand attributes with the customer at the most meaningful time. The end can be your brands greatest moment.

The rabbit hole is endless scroll. There are no bunnies at the bottom, just more hole.

There is something poetically appropriate about endless scroll and its role in consumption. Where other versions of consumerism have certainly aimed for an infinite delivery of a product or services to the consumer. None have succeeded to balance the content so well with the distribution method. Endless scroll is the high-fructose corn syrup⁠1 of your social brain, served through lit screen until your battery dies or you emotionally break under the strain of FOMO.

Scroll history

Scrolling allows the user to move across an asset when the screen is to small to show the whole item. It is a useful function to extend a long text article for example. The consumer could scroll further down the page to continue reading. Eventually the article would end and the reader moved on. Or it could be implemented horizontally to pan across a large panoramic landscape picture. It changed significantly with the needs of social media. When consumers needed to be engaged for as long as possible. Having a finite limit to content was not enough.

Infinite Scroll.

Infinite Scroll, also called Endless Scroll, or Continuous Scroll, was invented by Aza Raskin, an interaction designer in 2006. Its first implementation is widely believed to be on The Humanized Reader app. Aza Raskin talked about it briefly at the Interaction Design Conference 2008 in Canada.

Infinite scroll allows users of social media to carry on consuming content. Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter, amongst others, use it to great effect. It is especially relevant for mobile use. Instagram is a particularly good example.

Social media

Infinite scroll is the perfect interface for social media. Its endlessness captures the essence of a digital societal norm. It’s lack of tangible ending is the perfect metaphor for the wider consumer experience of social media. Effort required to pull yourself away is many multiples of brushing your thumb across the screen.

According to the productivity tool Freedom, that is helping people manage their media consumption, the endless scroll “exploits a heuristic or mental shortcut that many people naturally use — the unit bias. Human beings are naturally motivated to complete a unit of something. The tendency is to believe that whatever amount we’re given of something is the ‘right’ amount, so we try to finish it to gain satisfaction.”⁠2

Drag yourself away

I remember in my youth having a similar relationship with MTV, the music channel. It was easy to wait for the next video (the unit) to roll. And very hard to pull yourself away to do something more purposeful. MTV had a natural pause with Ad breaks. Then was your opportunity to break away. Where the social media version hides the Ad within the content so it is smooth delivery of content forever. Their is no break. No moment to reflect. The focus is locked.

Aza regrets his invention now, tweeting in 2019 “One of my lessons from infinite scroll: that optimizing something for ease-of-use does not mean best for the user or humanity”.⁠3

The Hook Model

Endless scroll requires additional help in making it addictive. It won’t work when it is full of junk, so the content has to have meaning to the viewer. This is where the Hook Model comes in. Together they balance pace and content. According to Product Plan, a product management software company, the Hook Model is a “is a four-phase process that businesses can use to create products or services used habitually by customers.”

It works by fulfilling these attributes.
1. Trigger (External or Internal): This is the actuator of behavior. It cues the action that then builds a habit.
2. Action: Behavior executed in anticipation of the reward.
3. Variable Reward: The problem that’s solved because of the action taken reinforces the cycle of behavior. Reward types include Rewards of the Tribe (social rewards based on connection and acceptance), Rewards of the Hunt (search for material resources), and Rewards of the Self (personal gratification in the form of mastery or self-realization).
4. Investment: An action that improves the product or service in the future. 4

Together, Endless Scroll and the Hook Model have created the perfect addictive experience for consumers. An endless reward system for engagement. But the cost is significant. The inventor of endless scroll, Aza Raskin, estimates that the infinite scrolling we do online wastes over 200,000 human lifetimes daily. 5

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup

2 https://freedom.to/blog/infinite-scroll/

3 https://freedom.to/blog/infinite-scroll/

4 https://www.productplan.com/glossary/hook-model/

5 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/i-m-so-sorry-says-inventor-of-endless-online-scrolling-9lrv59mdk

You can’t do don’t. Endineering your EPR

Extended Producer Responsibilities (EPR) is an environmental regulation that came in to force in France and Germany in 2022 and will probably be rolled out elsewhere. It places the responsibility on producers for the entire lifecycle of the product including waste collection and recycling. ⁠1

Pardon me while I yawn and imagine another meaningless symbol on some packaging. Imagining another invisible back door logistical solution. And imagine millions of confused consumers, who just want to do the right thing. Is EPR going to be a consumer experience? Will it be actionable by the consumer?

A recent article by Goran Janjic, CEO at Western Balkans Green Navigator⁠1 showed the complexity of voluntary sustainability initiatives and frameworks. It is quite overwhelming.

Goran Janjic. Sustainability and Business Strategist

Years ago I worked for the worlds biggest mobile phone company. At the time the European Union was looking at implementing a policy that placed responsibility on producers to capture electronic waste at end of product life. There was lots of discussions, deals and we ended up with the WEEE Directive.

The WEEE Directive
The Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE) is a European law that relates to the disposal of electrical goods such as washing machines, fridges, telephones, TVs, keyboards, etc. According to The Global E-waste Monitor 2020, published by the United Nations University “In 2019, the world generated a striking 53.6 Million tonnes of e-waste, an average of 7.3 kg per capita. The global generation of e-waste grew by 9.2 Mt since 2014 and is projected to grow to 74.7 Mt by 2030.”⁠2

At its inception, one of the early intentions was for the “...creation of collection schemes where consumers return their WEEE free of charge. These schemes aim to increase the recycling of WEEE and/or re-use.⁠3”

But what is the consumer experience of the WEEE Directive?
They see a symbol of a wheelie bin with a cross through it. What that says to the consumer is “Don’t throw it in the bin”. Which is not an actionable instruction. So the consumer is uninstructed. They are not shown what TO DO. They are told what NOT TO DO.

So we have low capture rates.  A recent study estimated that 5.3 billion mobile phones will be thrown away in 2022. Also, people tend to hoard their stuff without instruction.⁠4 Another study found that in the UK there are 55 million old phones are hoarded⁠5 in homes.

We have symbols, we have legislation, we have compliance, but limited success because the consumer experience of the end isn’t working.

The Green Dot
The Green Dot scheme is run by the PRO Europe (Packaging Recovery Organisation Europe), founded in 1995. It is the umbrella organisation for European packaging and packaging waste recovery and recycling schemes. They describe the purpose of the Green Dot on their website as.

“The Green Dot is the financing symbol for the organisation of recovery, sorting and recycling of sales packaging. When you see the Green Dot on packaging it means that for such packaging, a financial contribution has been paid to a qualified national packaging recovery organisation.”

Recycle Now, who are the national recycling campaign for England, clarify how unclear it is to the consumer. “The Green Dot does not necessarily mean that the packaging is recyclable, will be recycled or has been recycled. It is a symbol used on packaging in some European countries and signifies that the producer has made a financial contribution towards the recovery and recycling of packaging in Europe.”

Here we have a symbol and a business club that supports logistics in the background. Again, the consumer experience is minimal and misleading.

Scope 3
Similarly to EPR legislation above, Scope 3 Green House Gas emission targets end of product life. Where Scope 1 covers direct Greenhouse Gas emissions – all greenhouse gas emissions generated by a company. Scope 2 covers indirect GHG emissions – consumption of purchased electricity, heat or steam. And Scope 3 covers other indirect GHG emissions. These are upstream activities (goods from providers, business travel, services bought by the business) and downstream activities (distribution of sold products, use of sold products and end of life treatment of sold products).

Although I celebrate these initiatives – they are a critical part of the finding routes out of consumerisms failures. I do however wonder if we are repeating application of the same treatment and expecting better results. We need to create consumer experiences around these initiatives. EPR can’t end up being a symbol on a piece of packaging. We cannot solve problems with consumerism through symbols on packaging that consumers don’t understand.

The consumer needs to experience change.
We need to create consumer off-boarding experiences – endings, that embrace the consumer as part of the wider solution. That instructs them in what to do and how to do it. Consumerism is a consumer problem. Lets create consumer experiences at the end.

1 https://epr-info.com

2 https://ewastemonitor.info/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GEM_2020_Executive_summery.pdf

3 https://www.impel.eu/en/projects/implementation-of-the-weee-directive

4 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63245150

5 https://www.giffgaff.com/hub/check-your-drawers/

Sustainable product? Until purchase, or the end?

Where does your sustainable purchase end up? Who cares if you bought a sustainable product from a sustainable company? What happens after doesn’t matter.

Wrong.

For centuries industry has been assembling logistic, manufacturing and distribution routes across the world to deliver products to the consumers door. During this period aspects of the system have become more mature, allowing for more detail and definition. Details of workers rights, chemical usage, organic quality and many more terms can be defined and captured. It is a sophisticated system with high levels of control and surveying. For some items consumers can even be told the name of the person who completed the product. Which brings a warm glow to the bonding between brand and consumer.

All of this is funded by the transaction. Which also migrates ownership and responsibility to the consumer. Who looks after the product, manages it until they have no use for it.

The off-boarding route to the waste stream removes product definition and breaks the connection to the consumer and producer. What was a clearly defined product, with details, features, sourcing, ownership, branding, now becomes a faceless entity in a mass of waste. It becomes a meaningless item in a sum of parts without a source. This is where defining a product as ‘sustainable’ stops.

Waste streams are managed by regional and national governments. The most considerate regions will try to recycle and reclaim what they can. The worst will landfill lots of products, and ship waste across boarders to countries that have minimal standards of safety. In the worst cases sorted by workers without rights, sometimes children, who are exposed to incredibly hazardous materials. This ugly part of your products journey is hard to monitor. It has changed definition and ownership. No one calls this bit sustainable.

Businesses will argue that “We can’t manage the end of product lifecycle. Globalisation has meant products end up in regions with vastly different disposal methods, laws and expectations.”
But, I would argue that if we go back 70 years the beginning of the consumer lifecycle was like that too. We can achieve better sustainability if we have ambition to take it to the end.

So when you see a product that says “sustainable”, ask yourself to what point? To purchase or the end?

Digital transformation is half done

Many companies are wrangling their businesses on to a digital footing. Some have failed and gone under. Successful ones are celebrating their new found efficiencies, smoothness of customer sign up and integrated logistics. What is common amongst all of them is the sparse attention placed on the end of the customer experience. Why is this a problem?

Getting personal

Marketing has harnessed web technologies to understand nuanced consumer behaviour. That helps to deliver personalised experiences based behaviour. A purchase goes through a number of digital systems to build a customer profile, make a transaction, build a logistics plan and start shipment. This digital evolution continues when the consumer uses the product. It provides service support, tracks usage, behaviour, recommends improvements and monitors problems. These digital systems are continuously improving. Becoming faster, more integrated and cheaper.

Pervious century

When a customer attempts to leave a business they are transferred to a pervious century to do it. Gone is the slick navigating of functional components provided by digital transformation. Customers are often required to pick up a telephone (invented in 1876) and for the first time since joining the service speak to a real person. The following conversation is aimed at turning the customer around and blocking them from leaving. Instead of “Can I help you” the phone operators should be saying “How can I hinder you”.

Of course, no business wants to lose customers, but lack of clear thinking misplaces the right action at the end. Many business focus on stopping the trajectory instead of seeing and gaining benefits from this unique moment.

Dead is not enough

There are only two reasons people leave a business – the product does not align with current needs or external factors. The response should be really simple, show empathy and gain insight.

I have heard some terrible stories about bad endings with companies unable to empathise with a customers personal situation and their need to leave. For example the venerable elderly man who rang his cable provider to leave because he couldn’t afford it. Only to be talked in to buying more channels and increasing his financial outlay. Or the grieving family who tried to cancel their recently departed fathers account, only to be told the account owner has to shut the account.

Showing a lack of empathy at these delicate points will damage any positive experiences had elsewhere with the service.

Angry feedback

Most businesses regard customer feedback highly. Elsewhere in the consumer lifecycle information can be observed through digital systems. These react to consumer activity and often respond immediately. However at the end, activity naturally drops so more traditional methods like questionnaires and recommendations are used. These tend to get muddied if the customer has gone through frustrating routes to get to the end. Harry Brignull calls these Dark Patterns, “tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn't mean to”. There is a particular one that relates to stopping people leaving that Harry calls Roach motel, “You get into a situation very easily, but then you find it is hard to get out of it”.

When a departing customer is finding it hard to get out, their negative emotions increase. Tarnishing feedback with angry negative perceptions. In psychology terms this problem is called Mood Memory, proposed by Penelope A. Lewis and Hugo D. Critchley. It says that a persons memory of a previous experience can be recalled more easily if they experience an event of similar emotional value. For example, if a person has a nice experience leaving the consumer experience, it will be easier for them to remember nice experiences that happened elsewhere in the service. But if someone has become frustrated leaving a business, they are going to recall more frustrating experiences from the service.

Valuable honest feedback

Businesses that have streamlined functional endings by delivering a smooth and honest experience for the customer gain high quality and detailed feedback. Departing customers are honest and clear about what they enjoyed and didn’t.

One business I know was adverse to the idea of creating an easy ending. They had the cliched belief that “if it is easy to leave, more people will leave”. It was a nightmare for customers to leave this business. After eventually navigating the exit, customers were asked to provide feedback. The data was a mess of angry, hateful, insults.

A friend of mine suggested they create a simple and smooth ending. After a lot of persuasion the business agreed. Once implemented the quality of customer feedback increased dramatically. The business now see this as a critical place to gain consumer insights.

Transforming the end

Digital transformation needs to look beyond acquisition of new customers. It needs to provide smooth endings. Where customers are respected about their intentions to leave. The opportunities with digital transformation at the end of the consumer lifecycle are enormous. Better quality data, better consumer sentiment, smoother consumer experience, smaller service teams, higher brand retention. When your business talks about digital transformation, ask what does this mean at the end?

There is a recession coming. How will you say goodbye when people can’t stay?

The coming recession will mean a lot of people leaving. Your business might be one of the expenses that people can’t afford. How you say goodbye to these people will say a lot about your business and its morals and might even influence how well you recover after the recession.

I heard terrible story once about a cable company who was really “good” at retention. In fact it would be more accurate to call their approach entrapment. One of their customers, who was quite venerable, wanted to leave because they couldn’t afford the service any longer. Which sounds simple. The request should have been embraced with a positive attitude and a great ending. But the company didn’t simply let-people-leave. They had drunk so much “retention” cool-aid that they were blind to their customers needs at the end. This company only allowed people to leave by enduring a 1 hour ‘exit interview’ with a professional sales person. On the call they battered them with perceived benefits, promotional gimmicks and the hard sell until they surrendered their intent to leave. Succumbed, they would sign a new contract with the company. For this elderly gentlemen that meant agreeing to a new sports package that he didn’t require and couldn’t afford. No doubt the cable company met it’s agressive retention targets that month.

There are only really two reasons customers leave - poor product fit, or external factors. What external factors people have going on in their lives is hard to design for in detail, so businesses only need to apply empathy in this case. But poor product fit you can improve with knowledge. A good place to hear feedback is when customers are leaving.

If you listen, empathise, and deliver a good ending, maybe they will return to your business when they can afford it. Designing an ending can help your business leave departing customers with the right impression. A company to trust and one they will recommend. Alternatively, they will feel conned. And after the recession your business will wish it had a different ending.

How bad am I? Anonymity at the end.

Alongside last weeks Measurement article, Consumer Identity has been a recent focus in the Endineering work. The difference between beginning and end is astonishing.
The beginning is layered in complex, data driven, celebratory reinforcement, that embeds individual consumer privilege – “Thank you for purchasing, [insertNAME] are a valued customer!”.
At the end consequences are relinquished from the consumer and left for a faceless, faraway victim to endure. This has left consumers experiencing indifference about their personal role in the worlds biggest pollution problems. And why consumer Identity a critical issue for a better, more just future?

Victims without identities
Let’s start with the people who will ultimately deal with the fallout of consumerism – the worlds poorest and least identified. A report by the World Bank found “An estimated 1 billion people worldwide do not have basic ID credentials—including as many as 1 in 4 children and youth whose births have never been registered—and many more have IDs that cannot be trusted because they are poor quality or cannot be reliably verified.” Many of these people will be among the first victims of climate change, in regions that can’t mitigate the coming catastrophe.

Birthday privilege
Beyond the wealth of presents many people experience on their birthday is the cornerstone of consumer identity – a date of birth. From here identity gives access to citizenship, healthcare, and education. Education can lead to knowledge, qualifications, skills and to a job. Then an income, that will provide money into a bank account. Getting money and spending it on stuff can of course be done with cash, but that won’t help your credit rating. Regular income to your bank account, regular spending, then paying back debts all are great for trusting you as a good borrower. Buying more will put you on loyalty databases, that will be shared to other marketers, that will target you within your demographical grouping for promotions as a good potential customer. Much of that targeting coming through subtle cues in social media advertising.
Social media will of course be building more levels of identity. Some can provide a mask when you want to be invisible, especially useful for cowardly twitter trolls. Others help flatter your face with filters and fashion photos. Instagram adds to the layers of identity. If you hit all the algorithms and followers you will be known as an “influencer”, pushing product endorsements with more clicks and more consumption.
Amongst the many layers of identity that establish you, many help endorse you and start your journey as a consumer.

Hiding impact
At the other end of the consumer lifecycle, where responsibility should lay, there is little recognition of identity. Here identity is removed. Responsibility heaped on to society and the environment to deal with.
Whenever a consumer throws a piece of clothing in the trash, no one knows. Whenever a person gets off a 12 hour flight, no one knows. You can impact the world with consumption and be relinquished of ownership instantly.

Hidden effort
But equally, and unjustly, whenever a person chooses to do good they are not recognised for it. People who are vegan and avoid the carbon created by cows, are not recognised. Whenever a person takes the train instead of the plane, they are not recognised. When a person off-sets their carbon, they are not linked to it’s success. Whenever a person removes dated, hateful comments online, no one celebrates.

Comparisons need to be personal
Consumerism is driven by comparisons. Whether that be between this season and last season, or people you know, or celebrities you don’t. These comparisons are often data rich, the latest 8K TV, the best camping gear, the fastest engine, the best strappy sandals of 2022.
Comparisons between consumer and victim are rarer. These are often reduced to national generalisations. As Pakistan grapples with the impact of climate change, the Foreign Minister tries to explain this unfair comparison. "We consistently see climate devastation in the forms of floods, monsoons, extensive droughts, extreme heat waves, and frankly, the people of Pakistan, the citizens of Pakistan, are paying the price in their lives, their livelihoods for the industrialization of rich countries that has resulted in this climate change."⁠
Comparisons are made between countries, but rarely does this get personal to you or I as individual consumers. Therefore it is easy to remove oneself from being directly responsible.

• We need to have identity attached to consumption at the end of the consumer experience.

• This information should be private to the consumer. Similar to bank details that we can share when we need to.

• It should be linkable to common consumer behaviour, for example to an airline. Like if I attached my credit card details to a profile.

• It should be universal, people in other regions of the world should have the same system. So we can break away from the national averages of know our impact.