Let’s talk about sex
I knew I’d get in trouble for talking about sex.
My long time friend, Barrie Giles, challenged my premise that a great business needed to have passion, to demonstrate continuous innovation …and to be sexy. It was obvious that certain products were sexy (like the iPad), but how could a service business have the same appeal?
For me, a service business is all about the customer experience, so to answer Barrie’s point I looked to the best …and sexiest .. customer experience that I could remember – Disneyworld.
When I was first dragged to Disneyworld in 1993, I knew I would hate it. But after two weeks of being immersed in ‘the magic’ I realised that I was learning at the feet of masters and I’ve been back to study every year.
So what makes it such a sexy customer experience? That’s too much for one blog post, so let me focus on one simple ride: Star Tours II.
Last year Disney revamped the much-loved homage to the Star Wars films and upped the experience value by 100 percent. Here’s what makes that experience sexy:
- It tells a great story as ‘context’ – The rebels, the evil empire, the princess…what’s not to love?
- It has compelling characters that create a relationship with the audience
- It delivers value (In Disneyworld, ‘value’ = fun, and Star Tours is great fun)
- It engages the audience – In a simulator ride, just bouncing about is engaging, but Disney goes one step further by identifying one member of the audience and, with clever video trickery, puts him or her into the story
- It changes and surprises – As a result of some great video editing, you can ride Star Tours 10 times and get 10 different experiences
So, mathematically, context + relationship + value + engagement + surprise = the Disney ‘magic’ or what I’ve called a ‘sexy’ service offering.
Could you use that formula to innovate in your service business? What do you think?
Posted by Frank Nigriello on April 2, 2012 | Comments Off