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Explaining Good Experience and Gel
Feb 15, 2006
A recent Ziggy cartoon shows Ziggy at a diner counter, peering at the menu on the wall. "Today's Specials," it reads. "Chili, $2.50. The Chili Experience, $4.95."
Marketers, take note: if you're not fooling Ziggy any more, you're not fooling the rest of us, either. Calling something an "experience" doesn't make it an experience.
I see it everywhere now. Here in the office a package of turkey jerky boasts that it "isn't just a snack, it's a snacking experience." The copywriter was either joking, really bored, or flat-out delusional.
I'm afraid many marketers fall in that last camp, thinking that slapping the latest buzzword on their product somehow makes it more competitive. A friend of mine was accosted this week at the fragrance counter in Bloomingdale's, asked if he wanted "the Hugo Boss experience." Not surprisingly, he hurried along downstairs to the men's section where, wouldn't you know it, there were no actual sales or service people available to help in his actual customer experience.
Although it's annoying to see the overuse and misuse of the word, it's heartening, too. After all, you know you have something really valuable when it starts getting ripped off. What do the vendors sell on Canal Street? Fake Gucci and Prada; there are no fake discount brands.
And this sets up my answer to the question I get all the time, which I'll also answer tonight (at the Apple Store SoHo in New York at 6:30pm): what are Gel and Good Experience really all about?
I'm trying to teach the genuine understanding of good experience. Contrary to the cheap marketer's trick of adding a buzzword, I'm trying to spotlight the "real deal", the genuine article that so often gets ripped off. What an actual good experience is, how to see it, and most importantly, how to create it.
And this is what you do in your life and work, right?
If you're a regular reader of Good Experience, you may be a "user experience professional" or "usability practitioner" who tries to make software or websites easier to use.
If you're an architect, you might be trying to create a good building, both useful and aesthetically pleasing to the community.
If you're an artist, you might be trying to create an item that evokes a rich message on many different levels.
If you're in health care, or financial services, or the travel business, you might be trying to deliver efficient and effective service, to improve the lives of your customers.
If you're an educator, you're not simply trying to impart some dry knowledge - instead, I'll guess, you're trying to teach patterns on how to learn, and how to live, that will stay with your students far beyond the end of your class.
Or if you're a consultant, or stay-at-home parent, or preacher, or plumber, or president of your own non-profit, you might be trying to help people in a number of different ways, maybe including those above.
In other words, no matter who you are, you're trying to create something good, something bigger that reaches beyond your own involvement and context.
But what's the "something"? What's the thread that joins all of these different people?
I contend that everyone above is trying, in their own way, to create a good experience - in their own context, using their own tools and methods, with their own ways of measuring whether it worked.
Most importantly, everyone - as different as they are - can learn from one another by sharing the patterns they've learned. (What did they draw on for inspiration? What kinds of materials, or primary sources, did they use, and how did they transform them? Who do they admire and learn from? What failed, and how did they bounce back? What are they trying next? And on and on.)
People have trouble understanding this, I think, because the idea of "good experience" doesn't fit into a known category. It's not a "design" idea, because then I'd have to focus on "the design industry" with the associated gurus, buzzwords, methods, and trends in that little community. For the same reason, good experience doesn't fit into "innovation," "usability," "Web 2.0," or whatever other niches or boxes people like to segment things into.
Good experience is a BIG idea, integrating many different disciplines in the service of one thing: teaching and learning how to create good experience. And the best way to learn about good experience is, of course, through experience itself. (Thus my avoidance of pseudo-academic frameworks, buzzword-of-the-month club, and guru worship.)
If all this rings true to you, there's a community you should join: come to my Gel (Good Experience Live) conference in May with over 400 other executives, artists, educators, writers, and others who "speak your language." We're meeting in May in New York for our fourth-annual event, then in Copenhagen in September. All info here: gelconference.com
And if you're in New York, I hope you'll join us tonight (Wednesday Feb. 15) at the Apple Store SoHo at 6:30pm, where I'll give an in-person summary of everything I write about above, including some clips from past Gel conferences.
> If you're an architect... If you're an artist... If you're in healthcare...
And what if you're a marketer?
Not to be the Devil's Advocate here, but isn't Ziggy being sold more than extra garnish?
Any car can get you to work. But a car with "Farfegnugen" (going back a few years there) can make the driver happier -- satisfied to have bought something more than mere transportation.
Now, as long as the product delivers on that expectation, the experience is improved. And the marketer, who sparks a strong emotional anticipation, plays a vital roll in creating that good experience.
> Marketers, take note: if you're not fooling Ziggy any more...
True enough, though any marketer worth their salt is testing that message to see how effective it is.
But more to the point, good marketers aren't fooling anyone: They're hooking up people with appropriate products, and preparing them for a great experience.
Long-time GE fan; first-time correpondent;oft-time linker (and, I trust, conscientious accreditor).
How right you are about "experience"; rather like that ludicrous use of "solution" that seemed to be the craze in '95 when I arrived in the US.
The British satirical magazine Private Eye actually runs readers' submissions of the more pretentious examples of 'solutions'. Cheers - CH
My experience is that most businesses are more interested in getting you to buy what they're selling than in selling what you want to buy. I don't know much about how department stores work, but I would guess that in your cologne example, the cologne maker pays the store for floor time. On the other hand, if there were an employee to help the customer, the store would have to foot the bill. The question is, what would be the ROI on adding more floor staff?
Unfortunately, I think that customers reward businesses that put the bottom line first. For example, most people I know choose to shop at Costco or other discount stores instead of stores with excellent service where prices might be higher. There is a cost for doing something right, and if customers want a good experience we should not expect to recieve it at discount rates. There are some companies that manage to give good customer experience at low prices, such as Jet Blue; but that seems to be the exception, not the rule.
Well first things first, I would love to come to the GEL, but I'm currently working in Singapore and that's a long swim; maybe next year if I get a favorable head wind. Just consider me there in spirit.
As for the customer experience, I say Amen to all of the above. Let me address two of the above comments.
First the marketer, it’s marketing’s job to bring to the potential customer the brand promise or a perspective of the brand promise moving them to complete the sales cycle. There in is the problem. Most marketing people lie a lot in their marketing copy and/or advert campaigns.
First you get your potential customer or current customer all excited, they make the purchase because of the brand promise as you delivered it gave them warm fuzzies, then the disappointment sets in because the promise you made wasn’t fulfilled, and then your customer retention and customer loyalty head south never to return.
You measure your effort on first time conversion, but not the resulting failure. It is better to consider the truth in marketing creating a trust fulfillment in regards to the brand. The trust is the result of customer experience management and the resulting fulfillment of the promise through experience based marketing. This provides a very big plus in the customer experience cycle and the trust bridge needed to generate customer loyalty is built allowing for return engagements and retention.
Second, the bargain basement blues. Yes there are those who under any circumstance would sell their souls to the devil for a bargain. Thank goodness they are a minority.
I also have friends in Singapore and the US who shop at discount stores and they always go to those who offer the best experience. Having someone wait on you isn't the only experience a customer has in a store, nor is the price the strongest motivation. Need has a lot to do with this and if these stores fail to meet the need they close their doors. I know of many, many people who started out in the bargain basement only to move up to where real people care.
If a bargain store really wanted to increase their market share focusing on the customer would be great place to start. Customer experience management is a powerful tool. This isn’t brain science, well for some it may be. This is just good business by creating customer experiences that put them first. A lot of bargain stores go out of business every year because they fail to meet the needs of the customer. The ROI for a good customer experience is much cheaper than loosing your customer to someone else.
Great blog by the way, you might want to check out http://cdccustomerservice.blogspot.com for more info on the customer experience. Hope you don’t mind the advertising. I’ll return the favor.
Re your comment:
"Good experience is a BIG idea, integrating many different
disciplines in the service of one thing: teaching and learning how
to create good experience."
I was on the verge of sending this to someone to explain what "good experience" is when it dawned on me that your explanation is a little self-referential. Do you agree the 2nd reference to "good experience" could better be replaced with this mouthful: "an experience that results in undying loyalty, warm feelings, and often word of mouth. From the moment a customer hears of or comes in contact with your offering to the point when they come back to you again either for good or bad reasons, they keep the same loyal, satisfied feelings about your company."
Susie