In my several years of working as a Consultant now, I am a little surprised at the lack of understanding and appreciation (conversations) at the leadership level, of the significant shift that is happening in all of us as customers.

I am not sure if Joseph Pine and James Gilmore were crystal gazing back in 1999, when they espoused the idea of “The Experience Economy”. Looked simply it talked about the fact that we are moving to a point where instead of products and services, it is experience’s that matter, and what customers expect! If we were to look at our own behavior, we are much the experience consumer now, rather than being product or services buyers.

Take the simple case of a visit to the movie theater, every element of the spend that we do is linked to the experience in entirety! Theater was clean, seats comfortable, but the temperature setting was either too hot or cold, or maybe the rest rooms were not in the best shape. As is apparent, experiences are a composite whole, where the product may be the core, but the other elements equally important and impactful.

Needless to say, experiences sit at the upper end of the value perception for customers, and therefore provide organizations an opportunity to look at offerings with higher gross margins (we can’t run away from the cold hard numbers, can we?).

One fallacy I have observed is that this is seen as more of a consumer kind of shift, which may not have much relevance in B2B kind of environments. It is the same mindset which believes that as we step into the hallowed portals of our workplace, we don a different mindset. Well that is really not the case, nor is it really possible. For B2B sellers it means more focus on a collaborative mindset across functions rather than silo’ed thinking, since experiences are a composite whole, and not the sum of the parts.

Even viewed from a consumer experience perspective, one needs to appreciate that customer journey mapping is foundational, but what is more important is to have an ab-initio mindset as one looks at this exercise. The world of today, needs us to look at the world with new eyes, and not let legacy, skepticism and the “as is” cloud the creation of the “to be”.

Lest you think that we have time, do consider the fact that we live in times of exponential change !

Please post your comments, and I do intend to write more on this in subsequent posts.