Experience has Economic Value. Bubble Gum.

You will likely have come across the term “Experience Economy” by now, as well. We (at Swisscom) – and I am one of the particularily fond ones – have been on that journey for a couple of years. What an experience it’s been so far!

I like Joe Pine’s work on economic eras to get started.

In brief, he is looking back decades and centuries, and finds that mankind has had different primary occupations. Way back the majority of us were busy extracting “commodities” out of the soil, just to survive (wood, wheat, etc.), later we made “products” out of them to sell them, start trading.

Enter the “service” era, where you could have products provided to you including shipment, guarantees, etc. Pine shows in his research that today more and more of our jobs start moving into activities that stage “experiences” for whom customers are willing to pay (think Disneyland, attending a wedding, going to a concert, a first class flight, going to Ikea or the Nespresso website, etc.). His outlook goes towards a “transformation” era.

The driving force to move from one era to the next is commoditization of goods, of products, of services, of experiences.

Here’s an illustration with Bubble Gum.

What would you do with 25 cents?

(c) Lars Diener-Kimmich, based on Joe Pine

Now what is the economic value of the that gum spiraling down? Cool, isn’t!

Where do you already do that in your business? Where are you not doing that, yet – and shouldn’t you?

At Swisscom we try to take that potential quite serious – but challenging it is. First, we need to start understanding that economic value – to create the necessary sense of urgency. Then, understand what experiences our customers have with us. Then, think about who we want to be (for our customers) and what experiences they should have with us. What stories will they tell our friends?

Then we’d want to start plotting over a “script” to write “stories” to be staged at our “touchpoints”. Huh?!

Swisscom took that topic to heart, started a company-wide initiative called “Customer Experience Design”, later re-named to “Human Centered Design”. We invested in space, created collaboration and workshop rooms – we just recently refitted a whole floor at our main location, to have project teams work side-by-side. We’ve co-created the “CX forum“.

We were so serious about it and reorganized all the former Product Marketing units into Customer Experience Design teams, later we aligned them according to stories to be staged for our customers.

Among the earliest projects – around 2007 -, I was leading the “Billing Experience” project for our B2B-segment. We’ve run projects small and large. Another impressive project was the re-design of our Consumer shops – now in a steady ongoing development. I think they turned out beautifully! Or our “Infinity” price plans than re-shaped the Swiss mobile communications market. More and more it is becoming a way of working. Nice!

We’ve done a lot, invested blood and guts – and still have a great way to go.

With our background of being very technology-focussed, we believe to have grown very service-oriented and are investing in being a profound “experience stager”.

In 2012 I headed the group-wide project “Meaningful Experiences” to consolidate the learnings per business units at Swisscom so far. Here’s the management summary of our learnings on which we then based the future actions.

(c) Swisscom

This is where we took it from. More on some of these topics in later posts.

Before I go… A key success factor is – surprise, surprise! – to win the hearts of management.

Here’s one way to get started:

Your a fish dealer. Competition is stiff.

What you can do (or probably: what you are trained to do) is: 1) optimize your offering and services, 2) manage your costs.

I found this picture on http://www.olokuti.com

At the Pike Fish Market in Seattle they’ve made it a spectacle to throw around the fish, kiss it, resuscitate it if it falls … before it is sold and packed up. Hundreds of (primarily) tourists gather to watch the fish passion – and eventually buy a rather expensive fish. They even ship it home for you.

I found this picture on juxtaposephotography.typepad.com

At the Pike Fish Market they’ve create a price premium, won a new customer segment (why would you buy a fresh fish, thousands of miles away from home?) and they’re customer loyalty or at least their net promoter score (NPS) must be rocket high.

Now the question we ask ourselves is: “How to get ready for this kind of life?”

Let me get into aspects of the answer to above question in future blog posts.

PS: I have never been to Seattle. Here’s a clip from the Pike Fish Market. And, I believe, there are management books out there, as well, that use the example. It’s beautiful!