When the Journey Becomes the Experience

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Craig Pumfrey uses a Walt Disney example to showcase how businesses can unlock the power of technology to boost the customer experience. 

A recent family visit to Walt Disney World in Orlando, and the way Disney underpins your entire visit through its fully integrated mobile app, couldn’t help but impress. I noted how Disney is appearing to successfully turn the traditional customer experience upside down.

At the Disney parks, the journey becomes the experience so, rather than smoothing over potentially frustrating issues such as lengthy attraction wait times, the Walt Disney World app clearly signals how long you’re going to have to wait while also providing visitors with things to do to keep your family entertained.

The result is that what you end up buying is the end-to-end Disney Experience – and it turns out that it’s around 95% made up of what most other organisations try and hide!

Unlocking the Power of Technology

Beyond the official Disney app – which shares attraction wait times, GPS-enabled maps, tickets on the go and access to the Disney store – there’s also a whole range of innovation, including wearable wristband devices and biometric identification, to help personalise the experience.

What’s clear is that Disney has invested massively in shaping and refining the customer journey to create an exceptional experience that succeeds in turning negatives into positives.

Unlike other organisations that work hard to reduce customer effort and make the experience as frictionless as possible, Disney recognises that customers also seem to value the bits in between that allow them to enjoy the rides and attractions even more.

They’re not alone. A recent leader article in The Economist discussed how excessive ease in transactions can generate its own costs – a concept that’s known as ‘facile externality’. IKEA have also recognised this, knowing that when their customers spend time building IKEA furniture they actually place more value on the product.

Disney are getting the Customer Effort/CSAT balance right for their customers, but it’s clearly not an approach that’s going to work for every organisation.

Designing the Optimum Customer Experience

Craig Pumfrey

There are now a number of companies involved with helping organisations to develop and deploy excellent customer experiences.

For example, at UX Scotland next week, Sabio’s Dan Whaley will be discussing how the latest AI-enabled developments can help take personalisation and anticipation to new levels. It’s powerful technology, but how much is too much?

Author: Robyn Coppell

Published On: 16th Jun 2017 - Last modified: 26th Feb 2019
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