What is a minimum viable experience?

A Minimum Viable Experience (MVE) refers to the feeling that a brand’s Minimum Viable Product (MVP) evokes when customers use it. Its purpose is to encourage customers to re-engage and eventually become ambassadors of the product when the manufacturer releases the full version.

Using MVPs means that designers don’t have to build the whole expensive product and then launch it on the market without guaranteeing that people will buy it. Instead, they make a product with the minimum set of features needed to start learning about what the market expects. The experience that customers have with this product is the minimum viable experience. Even though an MVP is an excellent way to learn about the true worth once it is launched in the market, it often neglects the customer’s perception of the product and the brand.

How an MVE Functions

Unlike an MVP, a minimum viable experience does not focus on what customers accomplish with a product but rather on their experience. This is because the experiential value is increasingly becoming crucial for any brand’s success. Here are some core elements of MVE:

• Sales and Onboarding – Having a great sales process can help to boost the confidence of your product and win over new users.
• Marketing and Branding – Customers value brand experiences. Positioning yourself as a brand sets you apart and shows potential customers who you are. When creating an MVE, you have to consider what messages your brand sends to customers and how you can build an engaged community of users to enhance their experiences.
• Customer Support – When customers face poor customer service, i.e., unanswered emails and calls and a lack of someone to answer questions regarding a product, you are likely to lose them even before you launch the full version of the product.

Benefits of MVE

It’s okay for an MVP to do the minimum as long as it serves the purpose it is meant to achieve. However, if the manufacturer also does the bare minimum in serving the customers, it creates a bad experience. MVE helps companies to understand what customers expect to have an all-around experience. This is what sets brands apart from their competitors.

Without paying attention to the core elements of MVE, brands have nothing to motivate customers to choose their products. MVE believes in product management teams that the experience is what customers need. This is because they already understand what the product can do according to the experience of previous users.

When customers are happy with the experience of using a product, they give feedback on what makes them happy about the product. This information is crucial for manufacturers to develop similar products and better ideas to create better experiences.

Who Does an MVE Benefit?

New digital brands and startups can use an MVE to measure their overall success in product management, customer service, and marketing.

Having a successful MVP is a huge boost for these companies, but without an equally impressive MVE, there is still a long way to go. As product management becomes increasingly user-centric, MVE continues to grow as relevant criteria to evaluate new product offerings.