[MUSIC] There's a rich literature on experience design. And one of the aspects that's the first part, how to really understand the purpose, it's often about creative ways in looking deep inside our customers. And I give you one example, it's from the educational space. It's at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, in the US. They have their central yard. The pathways cut across it in interesting ways. And this was redesigned in 1931. A lot of snow in Dartmouth. And in the winter, they just noticed the students walking in certain ways across this yard. And they could map out the different pathways. And they realized those are the pathways which are the most optimal for the customer journey, if you will. And so, that's how they reconfigured the pathways in this yard. But this is really just about, I guess, convenience, the customer journey and making it as smooth as possible. It's not really thinking about the brand. To think about the brand, we have to go and dig sort of deep into the psyche of the consumer. And it's very much like those Russian dolls. We use this often in engineering for problem solving, we call it the five why's. We want to ask deeper and deeper and understand at a more emotional level the customer experience. So for example, think about going to the gym. Now you might say, well, people go to the gym to exercise, exercising, an ing. But they might be exercising for very, very different reasons. So, somebody might go to the gym because they want to physically look good. It's attractiveness which is their emotional goal and maybe even confidence at the end of the day. Others might be competing for a task. And for them it's all about fitness and their training. That's the ing they're getting to. And it's about achievement, that's the emotional end state they're aiming for. Others are trying to improve their health, maybe to lose weight. And it's not so much attractiveness or achievement, it's about their well-being. That is the end-state. But understanding that, you can either try to serve all three different segments at different parts of your gym or with different aspects, or your gym can be targeted to really deliver on one of those segments. And the better you deliver on one of those segments, the more value you provide to the consumers who're looking for that benefit. Many companies sometimes forget their purpose. One story, and there's a bit of a legend around this, it's Harley-Davidson, the motorcycles. And they were drawn into a battle not around efficiency in terms of price, but really in terms effectiveness against the Japanese bikes, the Hondas, the Yamahas. And it was all around functionality effectiveness. Sport bikes came into the market and what Harley tried to do was to be more sporty. And they really couldn't deliver on that value proposition as an organization. So what they did, the legend has it, they sent two of their marketing agents out to ride with the one customer segment that did not abandon them. And that customer segment were the Hells Angels. And as legend has it, these two marketing managers rode with the Angels for three months. And they came back with three things. One, a set of tattoos. Two, a minor drug habit. And three, an important insight about their customers. And that insight was that the Angels, this was a gang, they never rode alone. Whereas the Japanese sports bike was much more about individualism, Harley was about the sense of community. And by discovering that they actually turned their brand into an experience. They reinvested in the cruiser bikes. They had posse rides, they called them, across the country where people rode together. The dealerships became part of the brand family even though they are independent. And they really focused on events that brought the riders together. Even in the annual reports, they talked about this idea of riding together. You never ride alone was the idea behind it. And even the whole merchandising strategy where they sell you jackets, sun glasses, and other things are around this concept of being a tribe, a community. And these are symbols of memberships. So Harley, by discovering their purpose, was able to turn around the brand and to deliver a holistic experience to their customers where the product really became an enabler for the experience. The shift was from the product to the experience. The second part of designing experience and delivering them is mapping out the customer journey. And this really is, I would argue, one of the most misunderstood parts of marketing or sales. When we talk about the customer journey, what we're really mapping out is the sales funnel. We're saying, well, how does a customer learn about us? How do they choose us, try us, buy us? How can I cross-sell them, upsell them? It's really from our perspective as a company, and what we're really doing is trying to sell people stuff. But that's not the real customer journey. Different customers take different journeys. It's quite a complex and dynamic interaction. And the customer might not even be thinking of buying at a certain time. They're just experiencing your brand over time. And the buying decision might pop up at some other time. Or think about the customer journey through maybe even a supermarket. And think about all the different interactions they have. Think about the emotional contour across that journey. That's what we're really aiming to find. What are the customer pain points along that journey? What are the opportunities for us to deliver value to the customer? And critically, is the brand being brought to life at these different journeys? So think about taking a flight, for example. This is a long journey. You're even thinking about should I travel in the first place? For example, easyJet has ads in the London Underground at very low prices trying to motivate you to get off your sofa and spend the weekend somewhere else in Europe, right? So the journey starts right there. As you're buying the ticket, you might be online buying the ticket. The day of travel, you have to get to the airport. You have to check in your luggage. You have to check into the flight. You might be waiting for your flight, then you might be on the flight. And of course, once you get off, you have to get somewhere. There's lots of emotional aspects to that journey, lots of frustrations, boredom, uncertainty. And as an airline, the question is can you deal with each of those aspects in valuable ways. So Virgin Atlantic, for example, they thought about this customer experience. This is not the sales funnel. This is the customer experience as they consume my product and service where spying might be part of it. And they try to make it easy. So if you're flying their upper class service, for example, you could be picked up with a car at your home. You'd put your luggage in the boot of the car, or trunk for some of you. And the next time you see it hopefully is when you land at your destination. You're basically checking in right then and there. And lot of entertainment functions in the lounge on board. On the flight to New York, there's even a little bar area where you can get up and chat to fellow passengers. When you land, business passengers might be going straight to work. You're given the chance to take a shower and to have your suit pressed, and they will take you to your destination. Now of course, the ticket price is more expensive. But they can probably get car services at the front and back end at a better rate than you can. So even efficiency plays into them providing that whole experience. So the trick here is to really map out the customer journey, to think about where you can provide value, and can you do the on-brand. And for Virgin there's very much this entertainment aspect, doing things differently. And they deliver that at each of those different stages. Do you really want to engage these different touch points in terms of getting them to understand the brand so they can then deliver an experience that is on-brand and that's meaningful to the customer. So this is really thinking about what are the moments that matter and can I create an on-brand experience? So instead of this coat hanger, what could I do in order to deliver the brand? So for example, at London Business School, we're very much about being global. Maybe instead of a coat hanger, I can have artwork from around the world in the rooms the executives are staying in to remind them of this global experience. When we have the name cards from our participants in the classroom, they might have the flag of where they came from to remind them of this. As professors, we might have to think about, well, first of all, we have to hire professors from around the world and admit students from around the world. And 94% of our students are from around the world and not British. I have to use materials and examples from different parts of the world, okay. So these are all meaningful moments in which we express our brand and to deliver on it rather than kind of destroying the brand by not paying attention then delivering on something else. So this is a process which I call digging deeper in some sense. What you want to go is from the abstract concept of the brand. And you want to think about, well, what are the different touch points I have available? And as I dig deeper, well, what are the components of those touch points? And how can I then better deliver on the brand? So if you think about at Tesco, the supermarket, their brand promise is every little helps. There are many, many touch points. One of them is, well, a customer is looking for something, they look confused. So at Tesco, you're trained, anybody in the store, if the customer looks you in the eye, you need to approach them, stop what you're doing, maybe you're putting things on the shelf or cleaning the floor, ask them, may I help you? And then if they ask you about something, you don't point them to where they're going. You have to take them to that point. The next step in this journey is to look at that customer journey and to see all the different touch points across these different functional silos that you may have where the customer cuts across. Now they often have very different metrics that drive their behavior. What you need to do is overlay the brand and the customer experience onto that journey. And you need to align the behavior of those different silos, if you will, in order to deliver a consistent and smooth experience. That's the focus of module three. Just to highlight, when I talked about these already, right, some of these touch points might be delivering this coat hanger because their KPI is cost reduction. You want to avoid this. And the alignment, if you go back to one of the opening videos, you might remember in Newton's cradle here, is really thinking about the business brand and behavior, are these different aspects aligned in the organization? As said, we'll come back to this in module three. Now, that really reemphasizes every little helps. It really emphasizes the brand promise and it delivers it through many, many small gestures over time. And that's really what brands are about, many meaningful small gestures. And nothing is neutral, it's what is the way I write an email to my customers. I have a separate video where I look at one of those signature behaviors and when we think about our pricing as being on-brand or off-brand, okay? So think about the abstract brand promise, brand purpose that you're trying to deliver on, and then living it in all those different small gestures and as they add up over time. Because all of those small impressions you leave with your consumers, they add up to the brand promise at the end of the day. The final two steps, one is how do I create the employee journey in two different ways? One is as they learn about the company, as they join, how do I evaluate them, develop them, reward them, that whole HR cycle if you will, the employee cycle. How do I made that on-brand so that our people actually know what the brand is, that they become convinced by the brand promise, they become motivated by it, and they know how to deliver it? And I then reward them based on that. So how do I create kind of brand practices in the organization and how do I engage my employees, how do I change their habits? That will be the focus of module four. And the final step is it goes to the rewarding, the measuring, how do I know I'm actually delivering an experience that is valued? I need to change the way I measure it. I've given a couple of those examples already, but we'll come back to that in module five. So there's really two aspects to the customer experience. One is holistically what is the contour of that experience? What are these events, if you will, occurrences, how do they hang together? Does it have the right structure? And the second one is, how do I at each of those touch points not just create a good experience in a generic sense, but how do I bring the brand to life at those different elements? And as I'm going through that transformation, if you will, as an organization, what you really are doing is going from a generic commodity-like offering to differentiated products and services. And ultimately to valued experiences that are on-brand and at the very sort of maximum stage where you're really transforming your customers. And the shift has gone fully from products and services to the customer. Some of the examples I gave to you were the Nike FuelBand, for example, where it's all about helping them achieve what they want to achieve. And when you're offering just enables them to do that. And the way you think about, you then become part of, really, a different business. At the commodity end of the scale, you're charging for your own costs plus a margin. If you're thinking about products, you're trying to price those points of differences. You're really trying to price out a quality premium in some sense. A service, you're charging for activities. But an experience is really about charging for time or even for impact that you have on your customers. So, this focus for experience really shifts the nature of your business module as well. And that becomes the focus of the next module. [MUSIC]
