According to Accenture, 87% of organizations say traditional experiences no longer satisfy customers. A โgoodโ experience is ok, but for your business to break through with customers, it needs to stand out.
An unforgettable experience means customers talk about it. They recommend it, and prefer it. And the Peak-end Rule is the psychological principle that can help us do that.
โPeople will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.โ - Maya Angelou
What is the Peak-end Rule?
How do we create an experience that stands out? First, it helps to understand how our brains create memories. Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman explored this subject in a study about how people remember pain. He asked people to rate their discomfort of colonoscopy procedure. Kahnemanโs team then compared the patientsโ โrememberedโ pain experiences with data recorded during the procedure.
To their surprise, the team found people rated the pain of the entire experience based on only two points: The intensity of pain at its worst point, and the pain at the end of the procedure.
Kahneman discovered that our brains canโt remember everything, so they use mental shortcuts (called heuristics) to pick out whatโs important. One of the most important heuristics is emotion โ the more intense and more recent the feelings, the more memorable the experience.
These findings are the foundation of the psychology principle known as the Peak-end Rule.

Image via UI Patterns.com
The Peak-end Rule says that people judge an experience based on how they felt at its peak and its end, not the average of every moment of the experience. And thatโs true whether the experience was good or bad.
For brands, this means customers will remember their whole experience based on only two moments โ the best (or worst) part of their experience, and the end.
Thatโs great news because, according to science, thereโs room for error in your experience. To transform peopleโs memories of your brand, you only have to perfect two moments โ the peak and end.

Source: Chick-fil-a
Real-world Examples of Brands Using Peak-End
The drive-thru can be a stressful place. Youโre not quite sure what you want, thereโs pressure from the cars behind you, and youโre afraid your order will be wrong when you finally get your food. Chick-fil-A has eliminated the most stressful points of the drive-thru by introducing humans. The crew members:
- Come to you (reducing time pressure from other cars)
- You can ask them questions (no more worry about the accuracy of your order)
- They end every interaction with the delightful Chick-fil-A trademark phrase, โItโs my pleasure.โ
2. Aldi: Home to the worldโs fastest checkout
At the discount grocery chain Aldi, you wonโt find fancy displays or ornate decorations. The shelves are ugly metal racks stacked with mostly store-brand products. But the most memorable part of Aldi? Its lightning-fast check-out process.
Aldi has long been home to the worldโs fastest checkouts โ a huge pain point (and emotional low) in most grocery stores. But because Aldi sells owned-brand products, they can create packaging with multiple UPCs on different panels. Cashiers never have to search for where to scan, rarely look up an item code. Theyโre even scored based on the length of their average checkout. Aldi has turned an industry pain point into an opportunity to create an unforgettable customer experience.

Source: Zappos.com
3. Zappos: Fast and free returns
The secret to Zapposโ success lies in how they handle the number one challenge of buying shoes online โ what do you do if they donโt fit? Because of their liberal return policy, Zappos quickly built a thriving business. In this case, the peak and end of an experience are tied to the same moment โ returning an item. Knowing that Zappos happily takes returns created brand advocates, drove trial, and increased repeat customers.
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Why is it important to create an unforgettable experience?
The Peak-End Rule is like the 80/20 shortcut of customer experience. 20% of your experience drives 80% of what peopleโs memories of the experience. And the more unforgettable the experience, the better the customer:
- Theyโre loyal. Customers who had a โvery goodโ experience are 3.5x more likely to repurchase. According to Temkin Groupโs 2018 research, CX has three components โ success, effort, and emotion. They state, โwhile all three elements impact customer loyalty, an improvement in emotion drives the most significant increase in loyalty.โ
- Theyโre advocates. Customers who had a good experience are 5x more likely to recommend the company. In fact, โthereโs a 21-point difference in Net Promoter Score between consumers whoโve had a very good experience with a company and those whoโve had a very poor experience.โ
- They drive revenue. Temkin also built a model to estimate how โa modest improvement in CX would impact the revenue of a typical $1 billion company across in 20 industries.โ On average, these companies stand to gain $775 million in value over only three years.
Peak-end Rule: The Bottom Line
CX projects take a lot of time, money, and sweat equity to complete. Theyโre rarely small and always cross departments. That means lots of stakeholders, which translates to lots of resistance.
But the beautiful thing about Peak-end is that you can start applying it to your strategy today.
Find the biggest pain point in your customer journey. Attack it, and you wonโt just improve that moment, youโll enhance your entire experience.
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