I was having a deja vu moment yesterday. I’m on the road this week helping a client out with a customer experience transformation and we were chatting about two new powerful tools in the transformation arsenal – customer experience mapping (aka experience flows) and service blueprinting. Both of these have their roots in classic business process design with a little user centered experience and market insights thrown in, but there is a danger…
The dark side of these tools is that folks forget that experience = emotion. Have you ever tried to map emotion?
Back about 10 years ago the folks at DuPont asked me to develop an six sigma framework for improving product innovation, sales, and marketing by integrating systems thinking and creativity tools. Why? To get back the art and soul of the work.
So, as you apply new tools to designing a great customer experience transformation, consider asking the empathetic, “how does it feel”. Bring the art along with the science.
I was reminded of the great article by Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi, called “The Law of Love”.
Brands have become victims of the ‘Attention Economy’, where everything competes for attention and nothing gets it: too much information, repeated too often and broadcast too loud.
The relentless process of commodification is turning what we truly value about products and services into the commonplace. It is a process that
erodes distinctions, rapidly cycles through innovations and pushes for higher standards of performance and quality because that is what everybody else is doing.When Starbucks sold more than 25 percent of the US$1.3 million total sales of ‘Genius Loves Company’ with Ray Charles, it started a landslide
of copycats. Vive la difference for Starbucks as a non-traditional music retailer? Only for as long as it took Kmart to push its own runaway hit, the R&B gem ‘Usher Rarities’. And others are in hot pursuit.The inevitable result? Pressure on margins and on price at the very time consumers are proving more demanding, less loyal, profoundly cynical and tough to convince of anything. Young moviegoers text thumbs-down before the final credits roll. The result – empty seats.
Most people know there’s a problem, but not what to do about it. My advice is to get your nose out of reports and statistics and start creating emotional connections. And the four letter word for emotional connections? L-O-V-E.
Here are seven insights that show the role Love was born to play…
Read the rest of the article and learn more at the online self-development course. If you only have a few minutes, look at the “Lovemarker” framework on page 4 of the article and think about how well your brand, customer experience, and sales and service delivery match the language of intimacy, the senses, and mystery as well as the “classic” language of performance, trust, and reputation.
Forget “like” on Facebook… go for the LOVE!
