Module 3

Designing Service Experiences

OBJECTIVES:

1. To discuss components of guest Experiences;

2. To learn designing guest Experiences; and
3. To discuss the modeling and visualizing guest experiences.

COMPONENTS OF GUEST EXPERIENCES

Many businesses talk about the customer being at the center of their thinking and
behaviors and yet in answer to the simple question; is there a specific leader responsible
for customer experience in your business, the response is often a resounding 'NO'.
Words and actions are often misaligned. ‘We need to look at our business through the
eyes of our customer’ or ‘we need to place our customers at the heart of our business’ are often
two statements that fall off the back of a ‘customer experience’ conversation or focus. But what
do they actually mean, and more importantly, how can you make this a reality so you’re not just
paying lip service.
‘We need to look at our business through the eyes of our customer’ or ‘we need to
place our customers at the heart of our business’ are often two statements that fall off the
back of a ‘customer experience’ conversation or focus. But what do they actually mean, and
more importantly, how can you make them a reality and not just lip service.
There is a massive philosophical shift happening in the way businesses around the
world are having to think about how they acquire, maximize, and retain customers and it’s
affecting your business right now. Where you have previously been able to focus your energies
on building great products and services as a competitive advantage, taking your business to its
full potential is going to require something quite different in the future.
 4 COMPONENTS OF THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

1 CUSTOMER FOCUSED CULTURE – WHO IS IN CUSTOMER SERVICE IN YOUR

BUSINESS?

For your people to deliver a truly exceptional experience for your customers you must
actively build and create a culture and environment where the customer is the epi-centre of how
the entire business thinks, feels and acts. ‘Customer Service’ shouldn’t just be a department, it
should be the whole business. As Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin, puts it “Customers do
not come first, employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of
your customers.” 
There is a direct correlation between the consistency of your external customer
experience and the quality of the interactions and engagement between colleagues, functions
and departments. If you think about your colleagues as ‘internal customers’ and apply the same
customer experience towards them, as you do an external customer, how would this impact not
only what you do but how you do it?
If you want to provide world class external customer service experiences in your
business, the starting point is providing great internal customer service experiences for
your people, who in turn replicate this experience for their colleagues.
Think of this strategy as your customer value chain. You are only as strong as your
weakest link!  An internal culture of not returning calls, or taking ownership or being late or being
sloppy will manifest itself into your external culture, with your customers. FACT.
Does your business regard your internal colleagues as customers, aiming to provide an
internal level of service?
 What percentage of your people would say they are responsible for the customer and
the customer experience?

2 SERVICE EXPERIENCE DESIGN – HOW EASY ARE YOU TO DO BUSINESS WITH?

Service experience design is the mechanism for you and your business to design, build
and focus on creating optimum service experiences. This requires a holistic view of your entire
business and exploring every touch point that customers have with your business ensuring they
are joined up, memorable and create true market leading differentiation.
Great businesses design and build their entire value proposition, systems and processes
around the customer and frequently ask questions like ‘How easy are we to do business with?’.
Unfortunately too many businesses fall into the trap of the polar opposite. They build technical
solutions, products and services inside out without any due thought or consideration, input or
testing with the real customer.
As you scale and grow your business you can very quickly end up with customer service
and customer experience dilution.

Why?
Because when you’re ‘starting off’ with just a few employees and a small customer base,
it’s easy to keep a hold on the needs and expectations of your customers. As the company
grows, the number of employees and customers grow too, with more channels for interaction
but also more room for error leading to a potential drop in your customer service and customer
experience.
The growth of a company is necessary but in order to ensure service remains
consistence, there must be a clearly defined customer experience design.
 Define how you intend to treat your customers. Define your ‘ultimate customer
service experience’ and use this to shape your service experience delivery. Don’t over
complicate it and don’t add things which are not adding value. What do your customers
want, care about and need?

Don’t over engineer your customer journey adding in costly processes and touch points
which actually don’t ultimately add additional value in the minds of your customers. Be mindful
in your service experience design that you do not fall into this trap!
Do you have a documented customer journey maps which create consistency in how
you deliver the customer experience?
Do you factor in your cost to serve when designing your customer service processes and
customer experience?

3 SERVICE EXPERIENCE DELIVERY – ARE YOU CONSISTENTLY DELIVERING ON YOUR

PROMISES?

Service experience design (#2) is only 50% of a double edged sword.  The other 50% is
centered on your healthy obsession and unwavering focus on delivering consistent, flawless
customer experiences through a discipline of ‘disciplined execution’. The Carl W. Buehner
comes to mind here…“They may forget what you said – but they will never forget how you made
them feel”.
If you are truly serious about growing your business and creating differentiation from
your competition, then one of your highest priority focus areas across your entire business
growth strategy should be on creating, and consistently delivering a world class customer
experience.
Pick half a dozen businesses who you really admire and think of as best in class
for customer experience. Study not only what they are doing, but how they are doing it,
then… audit your own business. Create a game changing plan for how quickly you are
going to build a reputation as the best in class in your industry and sector when it comes
to customer experience.

Any customer knows and

appreciates that they are unlikely to get an immediate answer to a complex question. But they
do expect it in a timely manner. Setting clear response timescales to customer queries,
questions or complaints is just the beginning. From here you can build out into more in-depth
service level agreements or customer charter which sets the standards for how you expect your
customer experience to be delivered.
How good are you at delivering a great customer experience?
How do you know? 

4 CUSTOMER SATISFACTION – ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS SATISFIED OR ‘VERY’

SATISFIED?

Customers tell family, friends and colleagues when they have received a great customer
experience, but they tell 3X more people when they have a bad experience.
Measuring customer satisfaction is an integral part of any successful business. Without
external customers, your business would have no revenue and no reason for being in business.
You design products and services with the goal of pleasing these customers and meeting their
needs. An important part of this is to solicit their opinions.
Review your system for measuring customer satisfaction. A laser beam focus on
continuous improvement will always serve your business well. Being able to assess your
business through an outside in lens will provide a vast array of insight.
 How do you measure customer satisfaction?
What are the results telling you?
Customers are more informed, more educated, and have more choice than ever before.
How are you establishing your business as the true partner of choice for your customers?

DESIGNING GUEST EXPERIENCES

Now that the holistic review of service elements is complete, this topic will now consider
how service and encounter s can be developed in the first place. Various methods exist for
designing customer experiences, but one of the most straightforward comes from Schmitt
(2003). Called CEM Framework, Schmitt outlines five steps for constructing customer
experiences:
1. Analyzing the Experiential World of the Customer
2. Building the Experiential Platform
3. Design the brand experience
4. Structure the customer interface
5. Engage in continuous innovation

ANALYZING THE EXPERIENTIAL WORLD OF THE CUSTOMER. A successful service is one

that meets or exceed guests’ expectations. To accomplish this, it is necessary to have a sense
of what those expectations might be. This stage includes identifying target guests and
segmenting them based on attributes like culture, price sensitivity, and interest. Considerations
should be given to other companies the target guests patron, since experiences with those
companies will certainly inform guests’ expectations. Market research techniques like surveying,
ethnographic studies and observations, panel and focus groups can be used to gauge the wants
and needs of the target market and to test concept before too much capital is invested to realize
an experience.

BUILDING THE EXPERIENTIAL PLATFORM. After understanding the needs and wants of
future guests, an organization need to define its experiential platform: that is, it must express the
core concept of the service in a way that includes its positioning, value promise, and
implementation strategy. This concept service as the foundation upon which the service is
designed, and it can be used as test to determine whether certain offerings or policies align with
the ultimate experience.

DESIGN THE BRAND EXPERIENCE. As discussion in the section on product, branding is the
key component that helps distinguish experience from competitors. A core part of branding is
the branding identity, which consistent logos, consistent front and colors, and tones. Theming,
as also previously described, can add an additional layer that is often necessary in experiential
spaces. In order to resonate with guests, branding should be tested with market research, and
must align with the experiential positioning.

STRUCTURE THE CUSTOMER INTERFACE.In the fourth stage, a business builds upon
experiential platform and brand to development the actual service experience. Each of the 5
components of the marketing mix comes into place, but one is most central to the design
process: process itself. Organizations need to develop quality customer journey that serve their
guest, while bearing mind in the business cost required to operate that experience.

ENGAGE IN CONTINUOUS INNOVATION. To stay relevant, service firms should review the
guest experience to exploit improvement opportunities. This may take the form of reducing pain
points causing friction to guests. It may also involve supplementing the service with different
add-ons or alternative journeys that better accommodate guests.

MODELING AND VISUALIZING GUEST EPERIENCE

When creating and evaluating the effectiveness of service experience, designers often find it
helpful to visualize the experience in different ways. Visuals can help identify process and
touchpointscalled pain points, where guest inconvenience, inconsistency, or other causes of
dissatisfaction. Noting average service and wait times on maps can help to identify efficiencies
or innovations. Visuals may also help to train employees so they understand their roles in the
process. Doing all of this is challenging work, because service are dynamics over time:
especially in environments with heavy coproduction or personalization, there are lots of different
paths that guest can take. Recognizing this, however, it is possible to at least document the
core customer journey.
A fundamental visual aid is the process flow diagram (or flowchart). These diagram
outline the steps in a process using a sequence of shapes, most notably the following:
 Rectangles represents a specific process, where some task is performed;
 Diamonds represent decision point, where a choice determines the path forward from a
set of options;
 Triangles depict queues, where waiting occurs before a subsequent task begins; and
 Arrowed lines shows the connection and direction of each of the elements describe
previously.
The process flow diagrams are commonly used to documents business internal processes,
but they can also be used to show the path taken by guest. These specific types of process flow
diagram are called customer journey maps.