One company that is frequently mentioned as a best practice example for great customer experiences is the Hard Rock Hotels and Cafes Chain. In order to design remarkable customer experiences the metaphor of staging service experiences is commonly used. The story about John Resnick, the vibe manager at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego, is a perfect example of a company that focuses on staging remarkable experiences.

Q: Let’s start at the beginning: What, exactly, is a vibe manager?

A: The hardest part about my job is describing what I do — and I get asked about it all the time. My job is to create experiences for our guests both musical and cultural that really keep them begging for more, so they know they’re at a Hard Rock [and] not a Holiday Inn. I’m in charge of all the music at the hotel. Literally all the playlists that we make, the thousands of songs in our music library, the energy level in the hotel, and a whole sense of music, from the lobby to the spa to Mary Jane’s [café] to the gym. I can also offer DJ lessons. If a group comes in for their annual meeting, it can be a popular thing [to see] the CEO spinning tables. That’s a meeting that you never forget. [My job] all comes down to the experience.

Read the full article in the Wall Street Journal.

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Bruce Nussbaum, who is responsible for coverage of design and innovation at BusinessWeek, recommended in May 2007 that Cerberus, the company that acquired Chrysler, should not just focus on cutting costs but use its long tradition of design to reshape the company.

I have some advice for the private equity firm Cerberus that appears likely to buy Chrysler from DaimlerChrysler—don’t just cut costs, the way you always do and then flip the company back out to the public. Instead, use Chrysler’s deep tradition of design and innovation to reshape the company into a 21st century consumer-driven, adaptable and cool auto giant.

It seems that Cerberus and Chrysler are not just focusing on cost-cutting but are indeed focusing on design and customer experience. AdvertisingAge reports that Chrysler hired Peter Arnell as its chief innovation officer. At least he has some history with Chrysler, even though he is probably not proud of that.

That the man who’s won raves for reworking Pepsi cans and bottles and conjuring a fashionable fire extinguisher for Home Depot is taking on a C-level design role at Chrysler opens a new chapter in Mr. Arnell’s rags-to-riches, fat-to-slim, celebrity-drenched biography. But rather than look at it as a chance to make good at the automaker that let his agency go in the aftermath of a 2003 ad campaign starring Celine Dion, he insists the post is about solidifying his reputation in a community that maybe hasn’t taken him as seriously as he’d like.

David Kiley of BusinessWeek’s BrandBlog sees the whole story from a different perspective.

The presence of Arnell in such key areas as product planning and design tells me that CEO Nardelli doesn’t yet have his arms around the auto business. If he has issues with his chief of design and chief of product planning, then he should replace them, as has been widely rumored for months anyway. Adding an ad-man who has Celine Dion on his speed dial is not going to make these guys get smart.

One of the areas Arnell is said to be consulting on is interior design. For more than a year, it has been clear that Chrysler lost the plot on interior design, opting for cheap looking materials on all of its new vehicles. Memo to Mr. Nardelli. The designers didn’t procure interior materials that look like they were from a 1994 Hyundai parts bin because they thought it looked hip. They did it because former COO Wolfgang Bernhard and CEO Dieter Zetsche told executives they had to take 40% of the cost out of the interiors regardless of the outcome. The result is a flock of products that have been panned by consumers in J.D. Power APEAL ratings, which judge such aspects of the vehicles.

Even though Chrysler has realized that they need to focus on design, everything depends on the people who design cars that you want to buy. Only time will tell wether Chrysler is already on the right track.

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As a teaser for their upcoming CRM Summit, Gartner published a short article on seven initiatives to improve the customer experience.

Targeting, attracting, and retaining new customers will remain a top priority for chief information officers (CIOs) in 2008, according to a worldwide survey of 1500 CIOs by Gartner Executive Programmes (EXP). CIOs will need to help sales, marketing and customer service to enhance the customer experience to meet this goal.

The seven initiatives that they introduce in the article are:

1. Act on feedback, deploy changes and communicate actions to employees and customers
2. Design processes from the outside in
3. Act as one organisation to ensure consistency
4. Be open
5. Personalise products and experiences
6. Alter attitudes and employee behaviour
7. Design the complete customer experience

Nothing spectactular here but from my perspective it is always interesting to see what the big players are doing in the field of customer experience management. In order to get more in-depth information have a look at their publications in the field of customer relationship management

Read the full article

via [The Perfect Customer Experience]

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Adam Greenfield, author of “Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing”, talks about the increasing trend to see products and services being combined in a way that focuses on the customer’s experience when using the product/service bundle. In his article titled “On the ground running: Lessons from experience design” he explains some of the underlying design principles of some well-known products.

Starting with the positive example of the iPod/iTunes bundle he dives into the challenges of designing end-to-end experiences when one company is not in control of the whole experience. IDEO’s approach to redesigning Amtrak’s Acela Express not just by looking at the train interior but by designing the overall travel experience is mentioned but also the challenges of keeping the experience “alive” are portrayed.

He concludes with:

If absolutely top-shelf design organizations like IDEO and Apple are unable to fully encompass the challenges of everyday life in the real world, how will the rest of us fair? Isn’t it better, then, to open these systems up—to provide the APIs and other hooks that would allow people to configure them to their own liking?

This goes beyond William Gibson’s oft-quoted and unimpeachably correct observation that “the street finds its own uses for things,” toward the recognition that designers cannot, even in principle, encompass at design time the full range of uses to which their work will be put. In some respects, too, this is what human-computer interaction guru Don Norman is alluding to, when he argues that the person formerly known to experience design as the “user,” “customer,” or “consumer”; needs to be understood as a human being before designers can do their work properly. Any other approach, he reasons, risks treating this person as an instrumental component, not as someone capable of fully participatory co-creation.

You can read the full article here.

Why do I blog this? Reading articles like this shows me that I am right on track with my research activities to develop a method to understand and model consumers and to use this information for the development of new services.

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“Design Serving People“, an article written Elizabeth Sanders and published in the working paper series “Cumulus” by the University of Art and Design Helsinki, describes a major shift in the mindset of designers when designing new products or services. Consumers become creators when the designer’s mindset shifts from a perspective where people consume a service to a perspective when organizations support people in reaching their goals and creating value. The products and services offered by a company are merely resources that help the customer fulfil its needs and dreams.

Design is not serving the needs and dreams of people today. In comfortable American home, schools and workplaces, people are beginning to feel uneasy. It has become increasingly evident that they are no longer satisfied with simply being “consumers”. Everyday people want to be “creators” as well.

Stimulating peoples creativity and giving them tools will lead to a shift from consumption towards creation. This might sound vague but by observing the changing role of everyday people in design processes one realizes that many successful companies are already designing products and services that make their customers co-creator - YouTube is the most prominent example for user-generated content.

It is time to move away from the traditional design disciplines that are founded on the materiality of the artifact (graphic, product, space, software, architecture, etc.) and instead organize around human experience domains such as learning, creating, healing, living, working, playing, shopping, etc. People are people whether they are finding their way around a building, using a product, reading a package or using a software application. Design should be about making sure that our results advance people’s personal growth and support a harmonious relationship between people and their environments.

Nike is not “just” selling running shoes anymore. Nike is selling an experience that supports people in advancing their personal growth. The winners are companies that are able to identify the underlying desires of their customers and incorporate them into the design of their products and services.

Read the full article here.

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