experienceology

No, not according to Google Trends. Google Trends is a cool new feature. You can compare the volume of searches for any two terms since 2004. The red bar represents searches for “customer service.” The flat blue line (appearing only in 2005) represents searches for the term “customer experience.” So, despite the success of The Experience Economy in 1999, and people like Mark Hurst, who have been teaching about customer experience for ten years, it’s still flatlined out there in the Google consciousness.

Why? Well, for one thing, the term customer experience got appropriated by a very specific, narrow set of parameters in business called CEM, for customer experience management, which focuses mainly on improving the performance of call centers. I have a Google news feed set up to fetch articles including the term customer experience; for the last six months it’s netted only press releases from companies or consultants focusing on CEM.

A search on Amazon gave me 41,488 books tagged “customer service” and only 3,147 books on “customer experience.” So, believe it or not, we’re still on the leading edge of this discussion. There’s still a lot of room for fresh ways of looking at the customer experience, from Danny Meyer’s book Setting the Table to Jonathan Tisch and Karl Weber’s new book, Chocolates on the Pillow Aren’t Enough.

Why do you think the concept of customer experience still seems “new?”

Peter Anthony Holder of CJAD Radio in Montreal recently interviewed me on the release of my new book, “Creating Great Visitor Experiences.”

In the interview, I introduce the 8-steps (or points) that make up the flow of an experience in the Experienceology process. I also give examples of how identifying these steps at a museum, or even a small business like a doctor’s office, helps to reduce irritants that interfere with their objectives. For example, a frustrating website interferes when a visitor leaves because she is unable to easily find addresses, purchase items, or even find the appropriate “contact us.”

A unique aspect of this new book is that it is a practical step-by-step guide. Each chapter includes on-site exercises based on the chapter’s topic, plus additional reading resources. The last section of the book is a monthly planner with hands-on instructions for maintaining your experience.

For more information, or to download free chapters of my book, visit the Experienceology website by clicking here.

Interview time: 18 minutes

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