Republishing here the latest edition of my monthly newsletter on LinkedIn (The Punk CX Dispatch – Insights from the frontlines for those ready to smash the status quo and create experiences people actually love.)

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The Dopamine Hit Of Perfect Customer Service

Have you heard of “dopamine sites”?

I hadn’t til about 3 weeks ago, when I read about them in a RestofWorld newsletter.

Apparently, a new trend has emerged in South Korea, where a series of websites have been set up offering simulated consumption experiences. For example, you can search for and ‘buy’ everything from food to an expensive watch and many more things in between. You then get to checkout and track the delivery of your item all the way down to tracking your order’s progress on a map.

The trick is that you don’t actually spend any money and you don’t actually receive anything.

What these sites offer is all the dopamine that comes from shopping without the financial cost, and they are particularly popular amongst younger South Koreans who are facing rising living costs amidst an environment that is constantly encouraging them to consume and buy now.

When I heard about these sites, I wondered whether this phenomenon would spread to other parts of the world, given that many young people elsewhere face similar pressures.

Now, some may argue that it’s already here and has been here for a while, with, according to Baymard, global e-commerce cart abandonment rates averaging between 70-77%.

However, I’m not sure that’s right.

These sites offer something different…… an almost complete experience without the actual stuff and the cost.

And apparently they are having a positive impact on some consumers too.

According to Psychology Today, some users of these sites report that the sites have helped them reduce compulsive and impulse spending, and, as a result, they have had a positive impact on both their well-being and finances.

That’s great.

However, critics have suggested that while they may provide some temporary relief, they could exacerbate “the underlying sources of stress, loneliness, financial insecurity, or compulsive shopping behaviors.”

I’ll let you make up your own mind about what you think about these sites and this trend.

But the thing they did make me think about, though, was this….

Given the plethora of research that is out there that reports that significant numbers of consumers are increasingly frustrated with the interactions they have with bots, how long they have to wait to be helped when they have a problem that a bot can’t answer, how many transfers they have to endure before they can get the help they need and how many times they have to repeat themselves in that process….I could go on……

…it did make me wonder if there was ever a scenario where someone would set up a fake customer service site, like the aforementioned dopamine sites, or maybe even just an extension of one, that would just work.

Where customers could go, perhaps following a poor customer service experience, say, to experience service that was just smart, easy, quick, effective and available.

I wonder if they would get a dopamine hit off of such a site.

I wonder what that would say about the digital service experience many brands currently provide to their customers.

Discuss.

One thing before you go…

Don’t forget to check out last month’s episodes of the Punk CX podcast:

Why your contact centre cost model is broken – Interview with Robert Bradshaw of WiserOwl

Reinventing the organisation to drive better customer and employee outcomes – Interview with Ricardo Semler

Why contact deflection creates quiet loyalty erosion – Interview with Pasquale DeMaio, VP of Amazon Connect Customer

See you next month 🙂

Image credit: Photo by Shawn Day on Unsplash