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Two opposing views of customer experience
One way makes gobs of money, while the other gives away things for free.
One way manipulates people physically and emotionally, while the other invites people to explore and learn.
One way controls every aspect of the experience - temperature, lighting, sound, interface - while the other sets some basic context and leaves everything else open.
One way depends on the latest, flashiest technology to make the biggest buzz, while the other uses processes that are so old and low-tech they've been largely abandoned.
One way tells customers how great they are, as long as they pay; the other way invites people to change - for free.
If you could choose, which way would you create the experience? Which way would you build a company, a nonprofit, a restaurant, a church, a team?
If you're interested at all in the topic of good experience, I would recommend the two videos below as ESSENTIAL VIEWING. You can watch them in a lunch break and see both opposing ways described in detail.
They come from my Gel (Good Experience Live) conference - one from last year, one from the year before - and show the vast difference between these two approaches.
The first talk is by Natasha Schull, an MIT professor who studies Las Vegas casinos and their latest efforts to "focus on the customer". Like any tool, customer experience methods can be used for good or ill. I'll say it again: this is essential viewing for anyone in this field:
The second talk comes from John Williams, founder of the Frog's Leap winery in Napa Valley, California. For almost 30 years, John Williams has built an organization that creates good outcomes for customers, employees, and the earth. (Frog's Leap was organic from the beginning, long before it became trendy.)
To refer back to the top of this column - visitors to the winery are invited to eat from the community garden for free, and learn about the organic and environmentally friendly practices there. The winery uses dry farming processes, which have been mostly abandoned in Napa, in favor of newer, higher-tech drip-farming practices. And of course, the wine is outstanding.
It's a case study in "creating good" in many ways simultaneously - which is exactly the integrated approach I believe in.
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See also: Frog's Leap featured in NYTimes story, In Napa, Some Wineries Choose the Old Route
