THE HEART OF MOST ORGANIZATIONS

Customer experience is at the heart of most organizations, and for quite a few years the focus has been on net promoter score, trying to eradicate drivers of bad experiences and set up key initiatives for making customers happy with your product, service or the organization.

In live entertainment, most initiatives have aimed at improving customer information, ticketing operations and train staff to better handle customers. All good and broad initiatives, but I’d like to make a case for the unique, marvelous moment, created for a single customer.

I was recently reading an article by TRG Arts on how a theatre had set up a very simple process for rewarding customers who came to see a production more than once. In short, they placed a short note from the director at the seat, with the graphical novel on which the production was based, a campaign with virtually no cost. And what happened was amazing: They received handwritten letters from recipients, telling them how amazing the experience had been.

I’d like to break down the value of this (simple) campaign, to illustrate how incredibly powerful this can be:

  • The people who experienced this will probably move straight to being promoters (which is no easy task)

  • They will probably share the story with friends and family, maybe even on social media

  • They will probably start looking for another chance to visit the theatre

  • The person who opens and reads the letters will get a huge boost of energy

  • Management will get to tell about the customer experience to the staff, creating goosebump-moments and boosting morale and pride in the company

  • The success of this will make staff eager to set up similar campaigns, and they will start looking for these opportunities

  • Customer moments make great content. Staff meetings, board meetings, website, conferences, you name it

So…creating these special moments can have tremendous implications for sales, company morale and culture, and customer experience. I was so happy to read this story as we (at Activity Stream) invest a lot of resources in highlighting possible customer moments from data observations.

Martin Gammeltoft, our own VP of Commercial Operations recommends you consider how you start creating unique moments for certain customers, in line with your company DNA, and see what happens. His guess is that you’ll see great effects and your organization will be looking for more.