What constitutes a customer's total experience? Companies that provide top-quality customer service and receive customer loyalty in return have an advantage in the marketplace. "The quality of the customer's total experience is being increasingly recognized as the new differentiator," writes author Lewis Carbone, consultant and CEO of Experience Engineering.
The author stresses the importance of unconscious sensory and emotional elements that transform the customer's experience. Here, experience is defined as "sensory information that collectively influences the experience value perceptions in the mind of the customer."
Clued In provides the principles, tools, methodologies, and techniques needed to systematically manage the overall customer. For example, Carbone introduces the concept of experience "clues" as the basic building blocks of the experiential world. "Anything that can be perceived or sensed by its presence or absence is an Experience Clue." Indeed, Carbone feels that systematically managing the numerous "clues" that bombard a customer is the true key to a successful experience.
In the end, Lewis Carbone goes beyond theorizing by providing specific examples and lessons learned from clients in various industries. One case in point: the Howard Johnson hotel chain, which became popular in the 1950s as a rich value experience for family travelers, lost its focus once it placed company needs ahead of customer needs, according to Carbone.—Poping Lin