MUSINGS ON EXPERIENCE, TRANSFORMATION, STRATEGY AND MORE
 What if I told you that - as a leader - you were delusional, prejudiced and unable to make any kind of objective decision? You would probably take offence.
And yet, these adjectives apply to me on an almost daily basis. Is this where you worry about me? 
Predictions are a funny thing.
Ever since I started in retail 30 years ago, people have been telling me that physical stores are dying. As the metaverse is about to merge with the world of ecommerce, this prediction is louder than ever.  What is a good customer experience? And how do you make it great? Delightful? Fantastic? Supercalifragilisticexpialodocious?
Do you do it by adding more experiential components?  Most ‘inspirational’ customer experience cases focus on business-to-consumer companies.
We talk about Airbnb, Uber, Apple or my personal favourite, Lexus (yes, I’m biased, but still).  As my hunt for a (corporate) transformation algorithm goes on, I continue to put together my thoughts as they crystallise.
In this article, I look at three transformational truths too often ignored by leadership teams.  Almost every company wants to make life easier for its customers. Reduce that Customer Effort Score.
But when trying to easy-fy a customer experience, we often work on the wrong problem.  You’ve done the customer journey maps. You’ve built your Net Promoter programme. You’ve got more personas than you can handle.
But somehow the Holy Grail of customer centricity remains out of reach. Leaders aren’t fully on board. Employees stay in their silos. Budgets don’t show genuine commitment. And somehow that digital transformation is more about technology than about the customer. It’s not that anyone means bad. Or that they don’t care. It’s just that despite everyone’s best efforts and intentions, the pieces of the puzzle don’t match. Whenever I encounter these situations, I challenge myself to look beyond the tools of the customer experience trade and consider the bigger picture. Typically, I do this with three questions which don’t provide magical answers, but usually progress the conversation. I’m sharing them here, as they may also have some value for you.  There’s a dirty little secret in the land of corporate transformation.
While all of us in the trade talk a good game about mindset change, behavioural design and psychological safety, reality is that many change programmes aren’t really about transformation. As narrative design rockstar Christy Dena pointed out the other day, they’re about compliance. Mini-case: Blackbox by Brightfish  One of the quickest routes to market disruption
is to repurpose or reframe a product or service you already offer. It takes minimal investment. The risk of market testing is small. The payoff can be significant, and instant.  I have the privilege of regularly hanging out with theme park creators, immersive theatre producers, metaverse-builders, ritual designers and more.
Our conversations invariably turn to the stories they tell. These can be real or virtual world extensions of stories we know. Think Star Wars at Disney or a live theatre meets VR version of The Tempest I recently experienced. Stories of transformation from Meow Wolf or my friends at Punchdrunk Enrichment. Or stories that are simply fun, like The Girl on the Phone, which make you the protagonist in a journey to save a kidnapped woman from her captors in Caracas. |
AuthorAlain Thys is an experience architect who helps organisations drive profit and transformation through experience. Archives
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6/16/2022
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