The Xperience Academy Defined

We’ve all heard the idea of ‘good customer service’ and have no doubt experienced good and bad customer service many times.
 
You may have even heard about the “Customer Experience” and “User Experience”. They sound pretty similar, right?

Well, here at The Xperience Academy, we base our teachings on the Experience Economy and we say:

Every interaction you have your users, your customers, your clients, your guests, your potential customers, clients and guests AND your employees (who like like to call 'team'), is ALL an EXPERIENCE. 

And it ALL counts.

Good CX gives a user/customer the ability to:

Have a pleasant, professional, helpful interaction with organization/company representatives

Feel generally positive about the overall experience with that organization/company and everything associated with it

Good digital UX gives a user/customer the ability to:

Find information on a website quickly and easily

Complete a desired task with ease

Search Web pages with ease

So, if customer experience is about how we interact with a company’s brand; products, systems, processes, and people, does it then follow that the employee experience (EX) is another experience we need to look at?

Employees as customers

A recent research report stateD that…

“Companies with “EX Factor” treat employees like customers, infusing a sense of purpose into the experience. Seventy-six percent of executives agree that organizations need to dramatically re-engineer the experiences that bring people and technology together in a more human-centric manner. Co-creating experiences with employees based on their increasingly liquid expectations completes the EX play and creates a greater sense of brand loyalty within the workforce. Eighty-one percent of HR leaders have already rolled out or are piloting various technologies to improve the employee experience. Those that successfully activate a purpose-led EX create a community of valuable brand stakeholders all working together to shape the next era of engagement and competitiveness.”

Case Study from a tea room.

One way we did this in a tea room environment was to run British themed events and we always asked for a sponsor team member. They would get involved with creating the evening experience, come up with ideas and share their excitement and interest in the creation and delivery process. AND it took so much presure from me as the business owner. They were more engaged and saw the evening as fun and felt appricated as they had been asked to contribute and they really stepped up to the challenge. Turning servers in to actors. Which I think is SO ironic as so many struggling actors become servers to make ends meet. We turned that idea on its head and actually went to the market when we recruited, explaining this opportunity when they joined us. I must say, we ended up with some amazing people on our team, dancers, performers and actors AND very engaged servers rolled into one.

How we attract and engage with a new team member through recruitment, onboarding, how the company treats its team/s, how they feel part of the team and company.

“As companies adapt to massive disruption, they must move quickly to redefine workforce strategies and reimagine the employee experience (EX).

The pandemic flooded the market with talent, but there’s a shortage of desired skills, forcing companies to reassess employee value propositions (and increase wages to ensure they 'win' the best hires).

Organizations that focus on building their “EX Factor” will attract and retain top talent, reduce cost to serve and enhance operational agility.”

You may think this is only applicable to large corporate companies, but it’s a technique which can be used to attract the right people into a small business as well. In fact, I would say it's even more important for small businesses to define their business to attract the right team players as much as the right customers, because it's your team that makes up your company.

As customers and consumers ourselves, we will be looking for the extraordinary experience created by companies, where the company earns our hard earned dollars, and our precious time. When we go out to the high street (rather than shopping for the cheapest commodities online), we will want more than the traditional shopping experience, we want something fun, memorable, engaging, something where we can take part, or experience how an item is made or meet the maker. 

More artisan, unique and hand made or home made products are being sought after, with less packaging and less mass produced. More origin stories are being told, more food and drink items being tasted, in a try before you buy environment. 

Those companies who create extraordinary experiences, will win over their competition, they will be able to demand a higher price as people are willing to pay more for an extraordinary memorable experience - as we dive much deeper into the Experience Economy, especially post COVID.

At The Xperience Academy (www.TheXperienceAcademy.com) , you’ll learn how to put this altogether in your business. You’ll learn how to attract the right clients, build strong communities online and offline, how to attract the right team players into your business who get what your brand story is about and how to create your own ExtraOrdinay Experiences for your business, customers/clients/guests & teams, whilst enjoying ExtraOrdinary Experiences for yourself at one of our teaching retreats, which you can then model for your business.

The Progression of Economic Value

The term "Experience Economy" was first used in a 1998 article by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore describing the experience economy as the next economy following the agrarian economy, the industrial economy, and the most recent service economy.