Nice post. I'm still surprised at how few people have read Experience Economy.

Firms would be well-served to remember that "behind the scenes" does not mean "back stage." The organization is always on stage when a customer is about, even if it's in the caves tasting wine out of the barrels.

As such, the stagers need to be as attentive to creating the behind the scenes experience as they would to creating the exerpience at the front counter, whatever it may be.

As much as I like Tom Kelley's comments, and agree with him on a great many things, I think we have to part company when it comes to defining things as "The CompanyName Experience." Tom says "ask any loyal customer" so I did. I asked every single person I encountered in the past few days if they'd describe any interaction they'd had with a company as a "Starbuck's Experience" or a "Macy's Experience" or whatever (for the record, there is no " 's" in Nordstrom, and never has been one; accordingly, there will never have been a "Nordstrom's" Experience).

As one might expect, most people looked at me nervously, some clutching their purses tighter to their bodies, others looking for a quick getaway. Those that answered were almost universally consistent. In the words of one of my responders, "to me, calling it "The Nordstrom Experience" is like remembering "The McDonald's Incident" or bringing up "The Mother-in-Law Issue." I have to agree.

In addition, there's a bit of a chilling effect when you raise a basic customer interaction to an "experience." First of all, that's a lot of pressure to put on a person, to raise the bar on performance from just having a cup of coffee, or whatever, to engaging in an experience, although, at six bucks plus for my coffee my way, I WILL say that it certainly feels like I'm paying for more than just a cup of coffee.

But there's more, as you would expect. First of all, I can't get over the fact that "the experience", whatever it is, resides totally inside the head of the customer. So, no matter what, MY "Starbuck's Experience" is never gonna be exactly the same as YOURS, because we're not the same person, and we all experience things differently. But more importantly, from a customer-focused perspective, it's just exactly this kind of bloated, self-important, tiredly prosaic noodling around with language that makes customers (and me, if I may say so) testy, and sometimes impertinent. Some would say they find, in their experience, that I'm a little cheeky.

If you came at me with "The Arby's Experience," I'd probably laugh in your face. Even if I was invited to have a delightful "Bellagio Experience," I'd walk away giggling, just a little. I can't even imagine what's going to happen when my local hospital, dizzily enticed into using this type of alembicated prose, invites me to "Partner with them in sharing the Colonoscopy Experience." I'm always left to wonder if experiencing an experience makes it more or LESS of an experience, and, if so, as I get MORE experienced, if I'll experience those experiences LESS. Or, uh, MORE.

I'm not sure why, but the idea of being an Experience Architect strikes me as an amazing disconnect. First of all, you can't design an experience, really. . .only YOUR vision of one. If you're really REALLY smart, you'll ask customers what they'd like to have, see, want, taste, and feel, but even pretending that those elements make it into a particular experience is not only tantamount to putting the cart in front of the horse, but rather hobbling it WITH the cart.

It's not just the playing fast and loose with language, although that's a great deal of it, and it's not JUST that shoving my head into a plateful of euphemistic drivel is at best distasteful to me; it's the idea that any person who thinks that cleverly presented attempts at linguistic prestidigiation trump actual, value-laden offers and (dare I say it? Yes!) meaningful Experiences is the very person I DON'T want designing (or architecting, if you prefer), my interactions.

Finally, Tom says "If an INSURANCE company can deliver a memorable behind-the-scenes customer experience, I bet most companies could come up with something," and I'm sure he's right. But he didn't tell us whether or not the experience WAS memorable, so we don't know for sure that the INSURANCE company CAN deliver it. All he told us was how great the brochure looked. And I suppose that the experience of that brochure was memorable. . .certainly it seems to have been worth talking about. Presumably, we'll get a report on the actual experience itself at some point, but until then, I'll take my experiences unscripted, unpolished, unprimped, and unimpeded.

What's needed here is, as the saying goes, "Less Blather, More Lather."

Warm Regards,

James E. Mason
Senior Consultant
CustomerCentric Consulting
Las Vegas, NV

As an architect, I have always disliked seeing my professional designation being co-opted by people who think it makes what they do look more professional. As a reader of what is usually a magazine with language standards, I am appalled by the word "architecting"- there is no such verb.

Wow.

To Mr. Mason: Thanks for your apparent PhD thesis on this matter. Next time maybe you'd like to paraphrase.

To Mr. Alter: I'm sorry you are so harshed out by peeps using "architect" improperly. I mos' def' understand your P.O.V. But don't pop a hernia about language standards and crud. Just chill, yo.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Mr. Mason,

I thought I’d give it a shot to see if we could do something for Arby’s so I just had the following talk with a friend in the other room -

Me: Hey Nance (short for Nancy) – Why do you like Arby’s?
Nance: “I don’t know, cause they’re open late”
Me: “What about the quality”
Nance: “It’s ok.”
Me: “How do you know it’s ok”
Nance: “I don’t know, they have friendly people”
Me: “Tell me more”
Nance: “You know, it’s really because I know the person there”
Me: “You remember the person who works there?”
Nance: Yes
Me: How does seeing the same person relate to quality?
Nance: I don't know but I wish they had a drive thru
Me: Why.
Nance: Cause I am a women and I go there late and I hate getting out of my car late at night

Commentary: Ask indirect questions, dig deeper, ask why questions

Follow-up: If I asked you to draw some storyboards – using the information above as input for the first 5 frames with the last frame being Nancy saying “Wow, those guys are great at Arby’s – I’ve got to tell my friends about this” – would that be possible? Is what you just did designing an experience?

What tune do you want your customers whistling when they leave the theatre? The store, the web site – etc –

To Dane: Sorry, bud, that WAS paraphrased. And it doesn't meet the criteria for ANY kind of thesis, because there's no research question posed. By the way, at least in the U.S., we do Ph.D. Dissertations.

To Vahe: First of all, if you asked me to draw you some storyboards, you'd be shockingly disappointed because I draw like a psychotic spider, but, leaving that aside for a moment in order to answer your question, NO, it would NOT be designing an experience. It would absoLUTEly be storyboarding an experience, and it might even be ILLUSTRATING an event, which BECAME an experience, but Nance, Nancy, Big N, whatever you call her, will never stand as a model for other people's experiences.

She even says so herself. The reason she thinks the quality of Arby's is okay is because she knows the person there. I agree with you that this is a massive non-sequitur, but, apart from that, when you press her for details, she jumps on a "whole 'nother" horse to tell you about her desire for a drive-thru (and I agree with her, although I'm not a women).

Finally, even if I could design the experience, using the above inputs (I'm not sure which five inputs you want me to use, and, sadly, it doesn't even matter), I'm hard-pressed to find an excitatory, stimulatory, fascinating, relevant, or even interesting experience in that entire bucket of goo. First of all, you never ask if she DOES like Arby's, you just ask her why. Why not ask the question FIRST, and then go from there.

Well, I could go on and on and on and ON, but I'm sure that Dane is beSIDE himself by now, and while I love the idea of bearding the lion, it really isn't how I get paid.

Warm Regards,

James.

James,

I was throwing a ‘long bomb’ with my little example – let me add a little more but I’ll be quick so sorry for the gaps – just suspend doubt,

-let’s say that Arby’s felt they could do more business at night in their “blue state” suburban store’s – and to figure out how they might do that they send some folks to some selected outlets to do Anthropological work (don’t worry, no storyboards yet, we have someone else for that) - Arby’s gives you a budget to offer customers a free meal (average ticket is 7.00) and a donation to a local charity of $10.
-you go to the store and hang out, you watch folks come in at night and begin to see well dressed professionals among the mix of people – they seem to come in between 7-8, they rush in, keep their eyes forward, they don’t look at the menu board, they know what they want.
-you approach them, give them your little pitch and they share the same dialog in my previous post – more people asking for drive thru – because you are bored, sitting there listening to the buzz of the neon light, you begin to think of these people as paranoid, paranoid Nancy’s (cause that was the name of the last person you interviewed) and you add another name like Atkin’s Al or Little League Family, or Homebound from the Junior College) etc – they seem to be clusters of folks that seem to have the same qualities, but you think about Paranoid Nancy the most ‘cause you don’t understand what she is worried about, after all your Jame’s, former lineman for your Highschool Football team (turned anthropologist) – then it hit’s you, in a flash, you realize that the buzzing Neon light reminds you of a Hitchcock film – you realize there is no music – in fact when people walk in, you begin to sense that Arby’s is this sterile place at night, it’s got a terrible atmosphere – you think, coming in here is a terrible experience, you say: these Nancy’s don’t need a drive thru, they need to music

fast forward: you test something quickly, you bring in a wave radio, peoples body language changes, this is not the end, just the beginning of changing the Arby’s experience - there are more things to be found – you conduct more studies but instead of asking direct questions, you begin to look for nuances – you decide to take some classes in design research – you find the Design Management Institutes web site, DMI.ORG, you take an interest in Ethnography, someone suggests the book, Clued In by Lewis Carbone – you purchase IDEO’s method cards, you become this person obsessed by thoughtless acts’s, you make long posts to blog’s, your revenue declines, you realize and suddenly stop typing and think: I wish James well – regards, Vahe

Vahe:

Thank you for the kind thoughts. I first took an interest in Ethnography about 15 years ago when I did my Master's in Organizational Culture, but I'll stick with Geertz and Whyte, and even Levi-Strauss, who, while a structuralist, nevertheless has a lot to say. I also think Pacanowsky, Deetz, Cummings, and other Interpretivists have a lot to teach us, and I think they were doing a long time before Carbone and IDEO (in fact, I know they were).

For the record, in high school, I wasn't preparing to defend my high school's football line, I was preparing to become a national merit scholar, a national debate finalist, and an NIET finalist, and, while I was doing all of that, I was learning about the rule of possessives.

By the way, if I were doing an ethnographic analysis of Arby's, for whatever reason, I wouldn't be sitting there being bored, a fact I can attest to, since I've done it many times before.

I have a few questions for you though. . .I'll admit to being slow on the uptake (after all, I wasn't even smart enough to be a linebacker for my High School's football team): 1. Why would customers coming into an Arby's want to ask for Drive Thru? "-you approach them, give them your little pitch and they share the same dialog in my previous post – more people asking for drive thru – " 2. What made you think Arby's is a terrible place at night, or, in fact, any time? I happen to LOVE Arby's "– in fact when people walk in, you begin to sense that Arby’s is this sterile place at night, it’s got a terrible atmosphere – you think, coming in here is a terrible experience, you say: these Nancy’s don’t need a drive thru, they need to music". 3. How did we determine that the Nancys need music? Why not Art? Why not Poetry? Why not Ultimate Fighting Championships? Again, did anyone ask questions?

It's the same point I tried to make earlier, and maybe I'm tilting at windmills, but, as we've seen, I'm not very bright and a slow learner, so here I go again: It's not enough simply to stalk the Wild Arby's Diner in his/her natural habitat. Particularly since, according to the experimental parameters you set up above, you're already interacting with the cohort in the first place (-you approach them, give them your little pitch and they share the same dialog in my previous post – ) it's never a naturalistic ethnography, so the issue of potentially polluting the event is moot. And why you'd ever offer to give a charitable contribution is beyond me. . .besides more than doubling your budget, it skews the validity of the approval to participate (because now we don't know if it was the free food, the event at Arby's, or the offer to contribute to Charity that got them to yes in the first place). This is NOT ethnography, it's NOT naturalistic research, and it's NOT going to tell us anything we can use.

If this is the approach you're recommending I learn about, I prefer to remain in the dark, a Neanderthal never-to-be-linebacker in the football game of life.

Warm Regards,

James.

P.S. My revenue has never been better, by the way, thanks for the good wishes.

j.