Customers should love unboxing your product

When Apple launched their modern products (iPhone onwards), they made the unboxing into a surprising pleasure.

Unlike other companies' brown cardboard boxes with everything inside secured with wire twists or cable ties, Apple’s were sleek and smooth and easy. The boxes unpacked in layers. You lifted out a few things, then a tray, then another layer and so on. Everything was beautiful, and you were happy that you had spent some extra money with a company that cared about your experience.

Then YouTube unboxing videos became a thing, and companies realised that watching these is part of the purchase journey for many people. Most electronics companies put effort into their packaging now.

Back when we launched the AISFM university courses we wanted a similar experience with our university acceptance letter. Most universities here send basic letters that are poorly printed and are confusing about what to do next. We actually sent a box that contained the offer letter, guides on the next steps like preparing for the course and finding accommodation, a school t-shirt so the student could instantly feel like part of the community and other bits and pieces.

Students loved the offer letter boxes, but we got some feedback that they didn’t feel ‘official’ enough. Everyone was so used to getting the badly-printed confusing letters, that they didn’t think banks would accept our nice-looking ones for processing student loans. We tweaked the offer letters over time, but still kept the goal that students should love the experience of opening and reading the letter, and there should be no confusion about what to do next.

In your own company there are probably many customer touch-points that are completely un-optimized and inconsistent. Make a list and think about how to fix them.