Experience Marketing Example - Customizing the Experience

Annie DiMatteo - 12.12.2011 3:30 PM

Experience marketing involves taking your product or service, and turning it into a unique experience for your customers.  In order to be successful, it is important to allow customers to truly “experience” your brand.  Taking this a step further, rather than creating a set experience, why not customize the experience to meet the wants and needs of every customer?

Defining and standardizing your communications with customers through professional and respectful interactions has long been used as a tool for creating good customer experiences.  Companies typically train employees on how to answer the phone, how to greet a customer, etc.  Until now, it has always been a pretty scripted communication.  Rather than scripting your customer communications, why not intuit what they want or need from you, and personalize your communications toward them accordingly?

This is exactly what Affinia hotels is attempting to do.  They are rolling out a new training program in an attempt to increase their level of personalized guest service.  This training is done by a body language expert, and is focusing the training on specific body language cues to look for.  The idea is to read these cues, and then personalize the experience for each and every customer.

Affinia Hotel is rolling out this personalized service in five hotels in New York and one each in Chicago and Washington.  All staff will be trained in providing personalized guest experiences, from housekeeping to management.  Eye contact and hand gestures are two key areas they focus on in their training.  For instance, a guest who makes immediate eye contact may be open for conversation, whereas a guest looking off into the distance or away from you, is probably not in the mood for idle chit chat.  This would be a cue to lead them to their room as quick as possible, and not delve too deep into conversation beyond the basic friendly greeting.  A corporate guest that is touching their face a lot, whether tugging on their ear or grabbing their chin, most likely had a long day and may be stressed.  In this instance, hotel staff might recommend a therapeutic pillow from the hotel’s pillow menu, or suggest a yoga kit.

In addition to hand and eye movements, Affinia employees are also taught to pay attention to a guest’s speech.  Mirroring your rhythm of speech and your volume to that of your guest will tend to put them at ease.  They are taught to specifically pay attention to the very sentence out of a guest’s mouth, and are able to determine whether the guest is in a good or bad mood.

At the end of the day, all this training is meant to provide guests with a great experience, completely customized and personalized to them.
 
How to Use This Information
What types of things do you do to provide your customers with personalized experiences?  How has this impacted your business?

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