Your people by your design

A quick reminder: Acknowledge the characteristics you want ignore the characteristics you don’t. Acknowledgement is a powerful design tool. People will accept acknowledgement and will resist criticism. The fastest way to change behavior is positive reinforcement. Focus on what you want to see in others. Stop correcting.

What are your client’s experiencing?

Have you thought about this lately?  What do you believe your client’s experience with your company?  Have you defined what you want it to be?  If not, you have some work to do. 

The King of experience is Walt (as in Walt Disney).  He was so committed to his vision of what he wanted visitor’s to his park to experience that he couldn’t fail at his seemingly unreasonable dream (more on unreasonable-ness later in a future blog).  The experience he had created in his mind was so viseral that he knew how the park needed to be designed in order to achieve that experience.  He wanted visitors to be overwhelmed by their experience through all of their senses.  He wanted a visual, tactile, auditory and even olfactory experience.  A client of ours recently described a ride at Disneyland that when you pass a stage of characters at a sushi bar, you can actually smell ginger (for those of you non-sushi eaters, ginger is a staple with sushi and a very potent smell no less).  Disneyland didn’t need to include that smell to make it a good and fun ride, but to be an amazing experience, nothing would be spared. 

As you walk through the park you hear music that is happy, you smell food that makes your mouth water and every employee is trained to make sure that your experience at Disneyland or Disney World is a very happy one and gives you the illusion of a dream. Job well done Walt.

A perfect case in my world is when I go to my car dealership.  As I drive into the ’service bay’ it is pristine – no oil on the floor and no mustly smelling shop.  I am greeted at my car by Ms. Doyle and led into the lounge area where I have my choice of cappacino, espresso, latte or a simple hot chocolate.  They have also provided me with biscotti to really spoil me.  I know I pay extra for an oil change at the dealership than if I were to take my car to Bob’s Oil Slick, but if I have a choice in experience, I will pay $5-10 more for an oil change to have my latte and biscotti and to be treated like royalty even for just 30 minutes.

I go back to my original question… What is your client’s experience with your company?