||| March 17, 2010 by Philippe Ravanas

Design Your Own Customer Experience

In my recent AEE Learning Circle, “Casting Customer Service: The Theater of Audience Experience,”  I had the privilege of joining 15 Chicago arts organizations to explore ideas ignited by Denis Weil’s Open Forum about designing a strategic customer experience.

Weil shared with us McDonald’s methodical approach to crafting every moment of a customer’s interaction, from the decision to go to his restaurant, to well after digestion.  This idea of total immersion is key to the company’s success.  By shifting things small and large, they are able to drastically effect the customer journey without ever altering the quality of product.   Weil recalls that a redesigned McDonald’s could elicit a satisfaction rate for their food 25% higher than others stores.  The burgers were the same, but somehow they tasted better.

Weil recalls that a redesigned McDonald’s could elicit a satisfaction rate for their food 25% higher than others stores.

While our products don’t come on buns, I think we can learn much about how to craft better customer experiences from the work Weil does at McDonald’s.  In our Learning Circle we took some of the same tools and applied them to the arts.  Through a series of worksheets designed to help us break every moment down based on where it falls on the customer journey and what the patron is experiencing during each of those moments.  

I would like to share these worksheets with you and hope that they inspires your organization to take a closer, harder look at the way you handle your audiences. 

1. The Customer Journey:  This details what influences every moment of interaction from decision making, to attending, to well after.
2. The Service Blueprint:  This graph maps out the patrons experience at every level of the event and what internal processes are happening to support that experience, both seen and unseen.
3. Measuring Progress:  You knew you were going to have to track didn’t you?  Everyone’s survey will be different, but this is just a quick blank survey to get the juices flowing.

Download the documents by clicking here.

Please note that the connecting lines on the Service Blueprint are from Weil’s presentation and they may not reflect the flow of your chart.  You can see examples of how McDonalds uses these charts and graphs by visiting the Open Forum slideshow here.
 

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