Customer Experience Centers
Customer Experience Centers (CECs)
Introduction
Customer Experience Centers have spread around the world recently. Their main aim is to enrich the relationship between customers and the providers of products and services, and to inject an interactive flavor into that relationship. A recent visit to one of these centers prompted me to write an awareness-raising article on the subject — and I hope I succeed in doing that here.
What Are Customer Experience Centers?
They are a new approach that strengthens customer engagement and interaction with a company’s products and services through physical locations (centers) that achieve several objectives: educating customers about the company’s values, culture, history, and heritage; helping form a distinctive first impression for prospective customers; or changing a negative mental image (correcting misconceptions and false beliefs) about the brand for existing customers. These centers may also showcase manufacturing methods live or in virtual reality through video clips or VR games. They might include product/service training or free community courses designed to attract customers. They give customers a chance to interact with the current product or test prototypes of future ones. They are also a rich source of voice-of-customer data — more precisely, a two-way channel for exchanging information between customer and employee. The environment is fertile ground for building a culture of empathy with the customer and developing relationships, since the company can rotate employees through the center to spend time there and engage directly with customers. All of this can be delivered through these (permanent) centers — unlike temporary expos. They are differentiated from expos by a design whose primary purpose is to delight the customer in every moment they spend there. What makes some centers even more distinctive is that the customer’s journey is tailored specifically to them and their needs, while others offer a unified journey for every visitor. Existing centers offer all or some of the above. I’ll mention examples later for anyone who wants to explore the official sites of some leading companies’ centers.
How Are They Different From Brand Experience Centers?
Brand Experience Center (BEC)
In terms of objectives, they’re similar. Marketers consider them a modern marketing tool, far from the traditional channels that have filled streets and websites and lost their effectiveness and customer trust over time. The main difference I found during my research is that this type of center focuses more on shaping and building the brand identity, or reinforcing certain attributes of the identity to position the brand correctly. But in the end, I’d say Brand Experience Centers are essentially a synonym for Customer Experience Centers and can be used as a keyword for anyone seeking more depth.
The Difference Between Them and Customer Experience Labs
Customer Experience Labs
This is also a new concept of center, but it differs from the above in that its primary purpose is to innovate new products/services in collaboration with customers (co-creation) or to modify existing products based on customer input. The visitor to this kind of center is often invited to take part in workshops, brainstorming sessions, or other service design and innovation techniques. These labs can also be used for user experience research on the company’s website or mobile app, and their work often intersects with what are known as innovation labs.
From The Experience Economy
This book is one of the best in the customer experience field. Its authors address this type of center on page 26, saying (translated with light adaptation): “Any company can re-craft its production into a journey and turn the production and consumption of candy, a toy, a beverage, or any other consumer good into a memorable event. The goal is to immerse the customer in the process of designing, producing, packaging, and delivering the product.”
The authors mention several examples of such centers, including: Hershey’s Chocolate World, LEGOLAND, the Guinness Storehouse, and the Heineken Experience, among others.
Other Examples From Different Industries
(For illustration, not exhaustively)
Aruba, Cisco, GE, Fujitsu, Canon, Lincoln, Land Rover, Porsche, Ford.
A Local Example: My Visit to the Riyadh Public Transport Experience Center
I prefer this name over “Public Transport Visitor Center” — in line with many centers around the world. It is the first of its kind in the Kingdom, as far as I know. Your visit includes a guided tour through the center with a specialized guide, accompanying visitors through stages featuring showcases of public transport project achievements, motion-graphic clips depicting the customer journey once the metro project launches, the trip planning process across multiple metro stations, miniature models of buses and waiting stations, a tunnel boring machine model, a 3D virtual reality platform to explore stations and routes, and a finale with three train mockups so visitors can step in and experience a metro ride before it becomes real.
The center opened its doors to visitors on Wednesday, December 6, 2017.
The duration inside the center is roughly 50 to 60 minutes. To register a visit, see the link.
A Regional Example: The Tea Plantations in the Cameron Highlands, Malaysia
My visit to a tea plantation that transformed the place from a production site into an unforgettable experience center. There, your journey begins by seeing tea plants as far as the eye can see. You walk through a path dedicated to customers inside a real factory to watch real workers and real machines. Your journey is sequenced according to the stages of tea production — picking, washing, drying, packaging — and ends at a beautiful cafe where you can taste several tea products, plus a retail center containing all the factory’s products that you won’t be able to leave without buying several items after this lovely experience.
In Closing
It seems that marketing methods and approaches to increasing customer engagement with the brand are beginning to shift — toward creating greater interaction between customers and the products or services offered by different brands. This may explain one of the secrets behind Apple Stores being the most successful retail outlets in the world by sales per square meter, compared to any retailer in any industry. These could be called experience centers rather than retail outlets. The question I’ll close with: will we witness a shift in how products are displayed and services delivered? Will all retail outlets begin to transform into interactive customer experience centers? Time will tell.
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