New Lessons in Customer Experience Management by Laurence R Bernstein

white paper New Lessons in Customer Experience Management

While we can manage features, attributes and we can anticipate benefits, we cannot really “manage” the way they are experienced

ustomer Experience Management is more than a department; it is an approach to how the hotel or resort is managed. CEM encompasses everything. The way in which customers experience the brand or hotel determines the success of the business. The opportunity is for hotel managers to view CEM strategically by focusing on each of the nine separate opportunities to influence the way future guests, current guests and past guests experience the hotel; and by creatively designing a relevant mix of the six different types of experiences. This strategic approach to CEM results in building emotional bonds between customers and the brand, ensuring guest are delighted, demonstrate loyalty and become advocates.

The Importance of Customer Experience Management

There is wide spread acceptance of the fact that the hospitality business is all about experiences. That is to say, it is not about rooms (which are features), it’s not about “sleeping well” (which is an attribute), it’s not about “waking refreshed to get the most out of the day” (which is a benefit). Rather, the business is about the way the stay (or, the rooms, the sleep, the great day) makes me, the guest, feel. And as such, customer experience management is a critical component of hospitality management. But, managing experiences is not easy – in fact, in some respects it’s

probably not possible. While we can manage the features, the attributes and we can anticipate the benefits, we cannot really “manage” the way you feel about them. Furthermore, the way you feel about anything, or the way anything makes you feel, changes constantly based on what else is going on in your world at that moment, or what went on in your world a few minutes ago, or what you anticipate will go on in your world in the next ten minutes. Yes, it’s hard, but it’s not impossible. In fact, while customer experience management (CEM) has lately developed into a management focus (or, in some cases, management fetish), it is definitely not new. Great hotels

Excerpted from the article by Protean Managing Partner Laurence Bernstein first published in Hotelexecutive.com (http://hotelexecutive.com)

have always understood that the guest experience is everything. This is why they are great hotels. And we can learn a lot from their traditional approach, which has always been based on understanding the people who are your guests, and empathising with them.

Think of Customer Experience Management as the process of ensuring that the ultimate guest experience harmonizes with your

In understanding that the guest experience is everything, these hoteliers looked at the totality of the experiences. They did not, as many brands are doing today, look at experiences in isolation and “manage” each of them independently. In effect, these great hotels knew that they could not separate the components of what they did from the totality of what their guests experienced. They knew, viscerally, that their business could not be divorced from the way the guests experienced it. In modern parlance, they understood that their business is the way they are experienced – in other words, their business is their brand, which is the experience. And importantly, the obvious implication is that individual hotel functions (front desk, housekeeping, F&B) or products (service, amenities, room design, etc.) cannot be viewed independently – they all contribute pretty much equally to the experience…the brand…the business.

brand

This simple diagram highlights the absolute importance of customer experience management. The brand and the business are dependent on

the experience, and a poorly managed experience drags down the brand and, ultimately, the business. CEM is not so much a component of management, or a function of management. Customer Experience Management is a type of management -a management philosophy (similar to those that went before, such as JIT, Business Process Engineering, MBO, etc.). It is, or should be, an approach to the business that encompasses every aspect of the organization from property design, through human resources, marketing and operations.

The Parameters of Customer Experience Management

If pressed, I would say that all management is customer experience management and there is something contradictory about viewing it as a separate entity. This contradiction, however, goes away when you think of CE management as the process of ensuring that the ultimate guest experience harmonizes with the brand. Not unlike the way a conductor ensures that the notes each member of the orchestra plays are the notes the audience believed they would hear, played as beautifully as the composer intended them to be, in a concert hall that reinforces the enjoyment by great acoustic design. Even though the conductor did not design or build the hall, write the music or play the notes, he or she must moderate all these components to ensure that the audience experience is everything they hoped it would be. This would be impossible if the conductor did not have a clear idea of what the audience is hoping the experience will be – in our terms, this would be called the brand experience. A clear, unambiguous definition of the brand (the specific, relevant, differentiated experience that your target guests will seek out and pay more for) is essential. A successful CEM program ensures that every meaningful experience, before, during and after the guest’s stay, supports and reinforces this brand experience. Unless this is defined and part Page 2

of the fabric of the organization’s belief structure, CEM results in a mess of disconnected experiences that, while possibly really fantastic in and of themselves, don’t work together to support the brand…or the business. Just like the unharmonious, unpleasant sound of an orchestra tuning up!

Nine Nodes on the Experience Odyssey

From a practical point of view, it is not possible to focus on every experience at every touchpoint – nor is it necessary

From the guest point of view there are nine “nodes” along the experience odyssey – the path that takes them from not thinking about travel to where they are ready to visit you again. At each node there are any number of touch-points. This is a powerful model on which to base a CEM program – ensuring that experiences at every node are managed effectively to ensure the guest is moved along the continuum to the next node, and that the experience at each node supports and reinforces the ultimate brand experience. From a practical point of view, it is not possible to focus on every experience at every touch-point – nor is it necessary. Most people don’t notice most things most of the time – this is a neurological fact, and understanding this can save you from wasting time and resources on the things people don’t and won’t notice; and enable you to focus on, and invest in, touch-point interactions that guests do care about and that impact their conscious and unconscious decision to choose your property rather than somewhere else.. That said, it’s essential that you pay attention to the first rule: “do no harm!” Roughly described, this means you need to make absolutely sure that nothing the customer experiences at any touch-point in any node, works against the brand. But that’s table-stakes -- if there are bad or glaringly wrong experiences at any point on the Odyssey, the customer will run into the waiting arms of the competition. Rather than focusing on every experience, effective CEM demands that

you identify what we call “spike experiences” at each node – these are experiences that are hyper-relevant: that people will notice and feel compelled to think about, comment on and remember. Most importantly, these spike experiences must be proprietary to your brand and must reflect and reinforce the overall brand experience.

Six Types of Experiences

There are six types of experiences (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, vicarious and virtual) and CEM must make sure that the overall experience is composed of a healthy mixture of all six. Many, probably most, hotel experiences don’t make an indelible impression on guests precisely because the focus of the customer experience management program is restricted to physical and, in a misrepresented sense, virtual experiences. The result of this is the “amenities on steroids” situation that is common in the industry today – hotels spend vast amounts of money and time to give their guests more stuff than the competition: more and more expensive bathroom stuff for them to use or take home; more and more advanced technology for guests to play with; more and more irrelevant services for guests to “experience.” In every case these can be duplicated and in most cases they are provided without any deeper consideration for how they relate to the overall brand experience (other than “we are the hotel that provides more stuff than the others”, which is not a sustainable brand position). Compare this approach to the focused but holistic experience designed by Kimpton Hotels, where a limited number of well planned and executed experiences (and not prohibitively expensive) ensure the guests never feel alone or lost in the strange city. Or Yotel, where they pride themselves on not giving anything, but manage the experiences (and non-experiences) in such a way that their target guests rave about Page 3

CEM means paying attention to all six types of experiences and creatively identifying those that best fit into the brand promise, and are relevant to every person experiencing them

the overall brand – for them, the absence of experience is the experience and the consistent and clever way in which this is packaged and presented has pre-emptively established Yotel as the pre-eminent brand in the nofrills category.

in this case the brand idea, the fundamental experiential positioning transcends the cuteness of the amenity. But no matter how upscale, expensive, unique, clever or cute, the amenity will never transcend the absence of a relevant brand positioning.

How do these companies and others like them, do this? By understanding that CEM means paying attention to all six types of experiences and creatively identifying those that best fit into the brand promise, and are relevant to every person experiencing them.

Let’s take a look at each of the six types of experience.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not saying that hotels should ONLY deliver against a well-orchestrated set of experiences that support and reinforce the brand. On the contrary, great hotels provide surprising and memorable amenities and services that support the brand only in the sense that they are surprising and memorable. But, absent a strategically designed customer experience, they are unlikely to “carry” the brand. An example: the surprisingly fun bathrobes at Kimpton hotels (zebra stripes, tiger spots, etc.) support the idea of a fun and irreverent hotel, but absent a set of experiences that make fun and irreverent really relevant (wine in the lobby, local knowledge, etc.), the bathrobes would have little impact –

Physical Experiences

These are easy enough to imagine and are therefore the experiences most hotels focus on most of the time. What is interesting in the hotel business is that experiences can be of several types at once – the service of the hotel is, in its element, a physical experience as the result is experienced as a thing (in most cases). However, service can also be an emotional experience: when, for instance, the server injects his or her personality into the interaction, and introduces a personal relationship into the process.

Mental Experiences

Mostly the mental experiences hotels provide are related to working out how much things cost or how long things will take. But consider that most people are looking for mental stimulation most of the time – TV provides distraction and can be thought of as a mental experience, Page 4

but is it differentiating and does it support your brand premise? The question becomes: how are you using this type of experience to support your brand – art magazines in the room? Books to read? Video Games?

Emotional Experiences

Every successful hotel and just about every unsuccessful hotel has been in the business of Customer Experience Management, whether they know it or not

We touched on the importance of the people in the property engaging at a personal level with guests, which generates an emotional experience. But are there others? Art, for some, is experienced emotionally; as is design. Music is one of the most commonly used mechanisms to generate emotional experiences. Whatever your approach to engaging the emotions of your customers, remember that the strength of an emotional bond is more powerful than any other (such as point programs, discount coupons, etc.) The nature of emotional experiences is probably the most powerful determinant of whether guests will become loyal guests and the degree to which they will advocate for your property.

Spiritual Experiences

It’s an easy cop-out to say that the brand should not be involved in religion, but that’s not what we mean by spiritual experiences (although it could be). Many spas promise levels of spiritual experiences, and some properties have found ways of helping guests enjoy these moments in their rooms. Because of the definitively ethereal nature of spiritual experiences, many hotels shy away from this type. But there are numerous very brave and innovative brands that successfully and overtly include spiritual experiences as part of their brand experience (Westin, for instance).

Vicarious Experiences

This is a delicate area in which to play, but it is one that many hotels are playing in, albeit unknowingly. When a property is positioned as

“aspirational” the implication (or even the promise) is that you will vicariously enjoy the experiences of the super-rich or movie stars. The promised experience is not that you will become a move star, but that you will get that experience vicariously. Only some hotels can successfully play in this arena, and for the rest I humbly suggest you eradicate the word “aspirational” from your marketing lexicon!

Virtual Experiences

Finally, there are virtual experiences, which should not be confused with experiences in the virtual world – for instance, the experience of the hotel while making a booking on the website is not a virtual experience. It is a physical experience and should be managed as such. Virtual experiences are the emotions or even physical responses experienced as a result of some well-designed brand trigger – seductive photographs and videos of the property experienced in the revelation or inspiration nodes of the customer experience odyssey, are examples. Carefully managing these virtual experiences as part of the CEM will result in capturing new customers and reinforcing the loyalty of returning guests.

Final Word

Every successful hotel and just about every unsuccessful hotel has been in the business of Customer Experience Management, whether they know it or not. However, as the marketplace becomes more competitive and travelers become more attuned to the competitive landscape, the need for an active, focused approach to managing the experience is essential. People are subjected to an almost infinite number of experiences every day of their lives, most of which are out of mind as soon as they are out of site. CEM can help you make sure the experience of your hotel or brand does not suffer the same fate.

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Protean Hospitality is a boutique brand strategy advisory firm focused on helping our hospitality clients drive growth. We combine our business/category expertise with tenacity, balancing rigor and creativity, to uncover new opportunities for hotels, resorts and hospitality brands. For further information on this and other Protean Hospitality studies contact: Laurence Bernstein, Managing Partner, 416 967-3337 x 101; Bernstein@proteanstrategies.com Www.proteanhospitality.com Page 6