Having ranted on for some time now about the importance of customer experience, and the role of design in same, I felt quite joyous at the latest issue of Fast Company, which is all about design.
If you aren't a regular reader, you should pick this one up. The "Proctoids" anecdote alone is worth the cover price. [What P&G would do with Altoids if it acquired the brand]
My prediction is that this anecdote replaces the "glove story" in John Kotter's "Heart of Change" book as the favored anecdote to make a point about change.
Designing a customer experience means going deep into what is happening now, how people feel before, during and after. It means looking for emotional connections, not just rational ones. It means adding things in that might not "make sense" in any classical business sense.
I'm beginning to hear the phrase "branded customer experience" a lot more these days. Well, there are a few of them out there, but not many. Ritz-Carlton. Starbucks. Disney, of course, the experience granddaddy. Probably quite a few universities and private schools have a branded customer experience -- Harvard, Oxford, Queen's, Eton ... no doubt there are many more there.
It's a small club -- there's still time to be a charter member. What are we waiting for?
