Xperience This!

I went to my local Duane Reade recently and noticed “Get your flu shot here” signs everywhere but no date or time listed. When I asked, the pharmacy employee responded with, “oh, any time during pharmacy hours, but we’re a bit backed up right now, so 15 minutes.”  

I learned as part of being acquired by Walgreen’s, Duane Reade introduced a flexible vaccination service, allowing customers to get a flu shot any hours that the pharmacy is open (albeit not well advertised). Some large survey by a market research company probably told them that 87% of customers don’t get flu shots because of inconvenient timing.

But who cares why they are doing it! This is great, or so I thought, until I started this seemingly ideal patient experience process. More »

The concept of addressing people’s emotional needs in experience design has been around for quite a few years in the consumer world.  Companies like Apple, Disney and Starbucks have become well known for driving intense customer loyalty by infusing their customers’ experiences with a personality to which their customers can relate or even aspire. Interact with your customers on an emotional level and they won’t just become loyal customers; they’ll become your advocates.  As A.G. Lafley wrote in The Game Changer (2008), “Good design is a catalyst for creating total experiences that transcend functional benefits alone and delight customers. It is a catalyst for moving a business from being technology-centered to one that is customer experience-centered.”

So why not apply this same principle when designing your employee experience? After all, employees are essentially your organization’s internal customers. Often companies will focus their internal efforts on improving performance on processes and new tools/technologies, but that misses a big part of the picture.  Process improvements and new tools won’t have their desired impact on your bottom line if your employees don’t embrace them. Simply announcing such changes won’t ensure your employees are aligned with your business goals; and it certainly won’t turn them into advocates.

Design your employee experiences to make an emotional connection, and you change everything. When designed to delight your employees, new processes become something they follow because they want to, not because they have to. New tools become those things they’ve been asking and waiting for to help them do a better job. More »

I couldn’t wait to get back to the office today after a morning of very exciting conversations at the Museum.  Below is a quick recap:

1. Do You Need a Moose?  Yes – you all ready that correctly.  During our community intercepts a week ago, one of our participants offered the museum a taxidermied moose to add to their animal exhibit.  Apparently the participant’s father was a taxidermist who had donated a brown bear many years ago and in his recent passing, the kids found a moose that they could “just picture standing strong and proud next to the bear”.  See what you learn when you ask your audience how they would like to contribute? More »

The Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ

MISI Company is very excited to launch this blog series covering our work with the Morris Museum & Bickford Theater located in Morristown, New Jersey.  The project  is focused on delivering an end-to-end Strategic Experience Alignment (SEA) engagement in hopes of helping them resolve some challenges they are facing around brand, marketing, and communications as they seek to engage a new generation of museum and theater supporters.  And we would like to enlist you to join our project team.

Over the course of the next few months you will be privy to a behind the scenes look at what a SEA project looks like – who is part of the project team, what types of activities are involved, and ultimately – the types of deliverables and results that can be expected.

Throughout this series, we will be asking for your input on concepts/ideas we are hatching as well as your objective thoughts on how we are doing.  To kick this part off, please click this link to a 5 minute survey (and I really mean 5 minutes) about why you support cultural destinations near you.  Your input is going to be folded into our first primary research activity focused on identifying the key value propositions for different audiences when it comes to participating in museum and theater events. More »

Let me tell you a story…
You probably have one like it, so I’ll keep it short. It’s about a company’s strategic alignment of its people and systems to assure I have a particular customer experience. And it’s about why I’ll never do business with that company again.

This is about the bank that “serviced” (I use the word loosely) my home equity line of credit (HELOC), and it goes something like this…

Chapter 1) I dutifully make my monthly payments early for three years.

Chapter 2) The bank’s automatic reappraisal of the value of my home leads to a form letter saying I can no longer access my credit line.

Chapter 3) I call and am told my house has been compared to selling prices of others in the area. I inform my Customer Service rep the comparables they used don’t match my house. “That’s what our records show for your address. Sorry, there’s nothing I can do.” Of course not.

Chapter 4) I dutifully continue paying down my outstanding balance waiting for the HELOC to be automatically restored at a new, lower level.

Chapter 5) No restoration notice arrives even as I approach a zero balance, so I go to their web site. I find the option to email them. The error message tells me I have to register before I can send them an email. Register? That provides no value to me, but okay. I enter my loan number and it isn’t recognized. I can’t register!

Chapter 6) I call, again. After deciphering the automated call center menu, I reach a Customer Service representative who can’t help me (irony). I need to talk to someone who deals with reactivating accounts, which apparently doesn’t qualify as a customer service.

Chapter 7) I am transferred. Several static-filled muzak minutes later, I have another human being on the line.

Denouement:  Here’s the deal: If I want the HELOC reactivated I have to pay for an appraisal and reapply.

Post Script:  Really!  I mean, really?!  Are you kidding me?

Systems and desired experience not aligned

What I have just described is a bank’s integrated online and offline “Customer Service” system that is seemingly strategically devoted to making my experience of doing business with them so painful that I will refuse to go through the experience ever again. Do you think that is in their mission statement? More »