The Hundred Ten 4P Customer Experience™ Framework

Seeing the customer experience through this model will forever change your understanding of a good or bad experience

Creating and delivering an exceptional customer experience can be challenging and complex for business leaders. Identify which improvements will have significant impact or which problems to address and prioritize, can be overwhelming. Even a customer giving a review might not be able to put their finger on why they gave it the “stars” they did. Fortunately, analyzing any customer experience comes down to just four key areas: People, Process, Place and Product. 

Hundred Ten refers to these areas as the 4Ps of Customer Experience™.  The 4P framework is a simplified, yet all-encompassing model for understanding the most important aspects of the customer experience and can be applied to any customer experience situation for any industry or business. A good customer experience is when a person’s needs or expectations are met in these four areas. The experience turns into a good or bad one based on something going wrong or exceptionally well in one or more of the 4Ps.

Understanding what makes up each of the 4Ps of Customer Experience™ will provide clarity on the basic customer needs in any experience. 

The 4Ps of Customer Experience™

People refers to the customer's interaction with other humans during the customer experience. First, interaction with a company's employees is often at the heart of customer experience and encompasses what is commonly called customer service.  Interaction with the "People" of a company, product or service also comes in various forms of communication, whether face to face, on the phone or through email and other electronic forms. Second, the “people” can also encompass the other customers. People like to be surrounded by others that want the same experience. For example, being surrounded by like-minded fans at a sporting event or relaxing at the adult-only pool if one doesn’t have children.

Process is how a customer moves throughout the experience when purchasing a product or service, or engaging with a company. Customers often want to spend as little effort as possible for the greatest reward and don't want to waste time when interacting with a company, product or service. The process in a good customer experience does not necessarily have to be quick. There are plenty of situations where people want a positive experience to go on for a long time. But the experience shouldn’t require a lot of work and energy by customers just to have the experience. It is frustrating to have to spend time and effort contacting or accessing a business, having difficulty going through multiple steps, and unnecessarily waiting in line.

Place relates to both the physical or virtual environments and touch points where the customer engages with a company. The "place" of a customer experience interaction is heightened by a person’s five senses, all of which can add to or subtract from the promised experience. For example, when a customer enters a store, they form an opinion of the experience with subtle signals based on what they can see, what sounds they hear, textures they feel or walk on, or even the smell. When they connect with a business online, they make similar judgments based on the look, feel and organization of a website or app. 

Product is the good or service being purchased. The product of a customer experience might come in the form of a physical object to hold on to, or meal or beverage to consume. It also includes less tangible "products" such as the quality of music played at a concert or the signal reliability and clarity in a phone call. Customers expect what they buy to be reliable and of proportionate quality for what they paid.

Applying the 4P Customer Experience™ Framework

In each of these four areas, there are sets of rational and emotional customer needs that need to be solved.  Consider a real-life example of visiting a restaurant. A typical customer would expect that a host and server (people) be respectful and engaging, remember things you said, and be appreciative of your visit. They also would expect the other patrons (also people) to be looking for a similar experience. If one is having a romantic dinner, they probably don’t want to be seated by people being rowdy. The customer would prefer that reservations were simple, parking was easy, and food and beverage came in an appropriate time (process). Customers want the dining area (place) to have the appropriate ambiance, be clean and have the expected noise volume (a person might actually want it loud at a sports bar). Of course, the customer wants the food (product) to taste good and be of the quality they feel they paid for.

When a customer evaluates an experience, they are subconsciously going through an inventory of the 4Ps of Customer Experience™ and judging on the totality and impact of each area.  Just think of a recent experience you had. It could be a restaurant, a retail shop or a service. If you walk through the journey with the lens of 4P categories, you will see why you had a good or bad experience. Each comment in a typical feedback or review site can be connected to a 4Ps of Customer Experience™ category and provide clarity to a reader where the business succeeds or fails in meeting experience expectations.  Read some reviews on a travel website, Yelp or similar place where people have memorialized their opinions. All of them will naturally fall into one of the 4Ps.

If you start using the Hundred Ten 4Ps of Customer Experience™ model to analyze each time you have an interaction with a company, product, or service, you will quickly begin to understand where the experience met, exceeded or failed to satisfy your needs and expectations. Similarly, knowing which of the 4Ps are most important to you in an experience will help you know which recommendations are most valuable to your decision. The 4P Customer Experience™ framework will forever change how you see an experience!

Michael Pearce is a managing principal at Hundred Ten, LLC.