A recent study in Holland revealed that half of so called 'faulty' new electronic products that were returned to retailers actually worked perfectly well. The consumer of the product just simply could not figure out how to operate their new electronic device and assumed it was broken.

Worse still, an American research suggests that around 10% of consumers damage or even destroy their high tech gadgets out of frustration. In one case, it was discovered that a restaurant manager had thrown his laptop into the deep fryer, ruining both the laptop and deep fryer.

High tech products aren't the only things which people get angry over. The BBC reports that 90 percent of people feel frustrated or angry after talking with a call centre representative. I felt this last year when I was moving house as it took 167 minutes spread across 2 days and 9 phone calls just to get the phone switched over to the new address.

What amazes me even more is that companies spend so much on advertising a product or service and very little on advertising its ease of use. Ultimately, if a consumer has had a terrible experience with a particular product or service, chances are, no amount of advertising could persuade them to use that particular brand again.

Instead, companies need to focus more on improving the consumers' experience. This involves things like understanding and meeting the customers' expectations and the quality of their interactions across all products and/or services of that company.

Understanding expectations is about knowing what customers want to do, and how they would like to be treated. These expectations can be entirely different, depending on the nature of the visit. A customer ringing for support may have very different needs to one looking at the website, wanting to buy the product. Customer expectations can be driven by word-of-mouth, advertising and their own previous experiences.

In this day and age, companies and organisations now offer various ways to interact with them. Mediums such as email, call centres, websites and even local branches all need to make sure they give out the same information appropriate to the constraints of that medium. Different people are persuaded by technology in different ways, and some channels are just more suited for some interactions than others.

If a company can get its customer experience right, the results are obvious; increased customer satisfaction will lead to more sales. A product/service differentiation will also create an important competitive advantage and improved or better brand perception will lead to an increase in market share. On the other hand, bad customer experiences can lead to angry customers, a fading brand and of course, lost revenue.