Book summary

Clued InHow To Keep Customers Coming

Back Again and Again

Lewis P. Carbone

Brand Value

Customer Value

How i feel about the company

How i feel in the experience

Figure 3.1 Value relationships

Rejection(negative differentation)

Acceptance (NO Differentation)

Preference (Positive Differentation)

- Commodity Zone +

Figure 4.1 Experience Preference Model (TM).

Figure 4.3 Illustration of experiential breadth and depth.

What i need or desire

What i expect

What i experience and feel

What i recollect

Humanic Clues Mechanic CluesConsciousUnconsciousSensory

ConsciousUnconsciousSensory

Type of Clue Emitted by Interpretation

Functional Product or Service

Rational/Conscious

Mechanic Environment Emotional/Unconscious

Humanic People Emotional/Unconscious

Figure 5.2 Classifying clues.

Figure 7.1 Generating knowledge insight and it is what is below the tip of the iceberg that makes the difference

What we don’t even know we don’t know

What we don’t know

What we know

Figure 8.2 Close the experience gap with Experience Value Management

Customers’Current

Experience

Customers’Desired

Experience

ExperienceDesign

ExperienceMotif

Customer Value

Managed Experience

Figure 9.1 Illustration of sub experience or psychological pathways in the customer’s mind

Anticipate

Browse

Acquire

Consume

Hunt

Access

WantNEED

Recollect

Anticipate Want Access Browse Acquire Recollect

Humanicconscious

unconscioussight

soundtouchtastehear

Mechanicconscious

unconscioussight

soundtouchtastehear

Figure 9.2 Mapping Experience Clues on a grid.

Description Clue type: Humanic, Mechanic, Process

Concepts Detailed steps that make the clue actionable

Implementation Implementation ideas and strategy

Motif WordsWhich areas of the experience motif the clue delivers

Sensory Impact Senses affected by clue: sight, hear, taste, touch, sound

Links to Other Clues Connection and impact to related clues

Ownership of Clue Department or person

Prioritization Criteria

Costs ($) Low/Moderate/High Timing Pilot/Near Term/

Long Term

Figure 10.4 An example of a clue in an Experience Clueprint.

Clue No.Clue Name

The tangible attributes of a product or service have far less influence on consumer preference than the

unconscious sensory and emotional elements derived from the total experience.

It is on the basis of those unconscious feelings that the customer will decide not only who to call the next time but also who to recommend to friends and neighbors if

they face a similar need.

When business accept the idea that the quality of the total experience has powerful effects on long-term

loyalty and advocacy, the plane on which the organization can compete broadens remarkably.

What customers value is the experience. And that’s what they associate with the brand (brand association)

It’s not precisely about having a good time -- it’s about feeling good about the time you’re having.

Satisfaction and even loyalty are not necessarily accurate measurements or correlations to

commitment and advocacy

In the aftermath of a transaction, the way people remember and value an experience emotionally will

have everything to do with their ultimate commitment to an organization or brand -- far more than what

actually did or did not happen in the purely rational sense.

That makes becoming clue-conscious a powerful management mindset. By creating and orchestrating

consistent, compatible clues tied to customer impressions that substantiate value, your business can

engineer the way customers “do the math”

You can’t stop taking care of people as well as the physical element of the business. You can never take

the customer for granted.

It’s the system, not the individual components, that creates the leverage to truly turn customer experience into a manageable value proposition for virtually any

company in any industry

The performance of the system depends more on how its parts interact than on how they act independently

Starbucks is a place that allows the customer experience to happen. Things in the store are just

props to the experience.

No one competence, discipline, or tool will be a universal silver bullet; rather it is the experience

management counterpart to Disney’s coveted “pixie dust”. It’s the innovative blending of numerous

perspectives and competencies that unlocks the full potential of experiential value creation.

The simple act of asking your people about their experience with customers and what it would take to

manage them more optimally creates a bias for action.

When you’re not thinking of the experience from inside the customer’s head, you can easily miss not just minor

nuances but also important pieces of the experience that the customer believes can and should be managed

on his or her behalf.

Developing a hypersensitivity to what customers are seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling in their experiences often is a transformative experience for

employees.

Think about experience management as a total system. Each integrated and aligned part of the system creates

greater value as a whole.

The most effective Experience Design teams include participants representing both mechanic and humanic

perspectives and expertise.

Exposed to customer-centric design activities, even people who traditionally see the business as purely functional and number-driven can become zealous

and increasingly knowledgeable advocates of experiental value.

You can’t literally control what the customer thinks and feels about any give experience. But when you

focus your efforts on creating clues there is a demonstrable ability to move the needle.

The implications of people understanding what they do in the context of their role in a customer-focused

experience are enormous.

Designing experiences begins with the customer and ends with the customer. When clues are aligned

with the customer’s known desires and emotional needs, distinctive experiential value is being

created. When they’re not in harmony, conflicts occur and the value created is eroded.

Good launches, however memorable, need to mature into sustainable systems and practices. There’s no

point ratcheting up expectations and trying to achieve new levels of performance that you can’t sustain.

The discipline of implementing experiences includes not only the clues in the design but also a system of

accountabilities that essentially become a commitment management system.

To keep experience designs and implementation strategies fresh, an important level of communication need to be coming continuously from customers, from

prospects, even from competitor’s customers.

The clues your customers place in the positive zone today may someday be neutralized, becoming basic

expectations that not only no longer provide competitive advantage but eventually become minimum tresholds to be met by anyone with

ambitions of competing for long-term customer loyalty.