NFIB

Experience Matters
09/ 27/ 2005
by Maura Keller

For Robert Wolfe, founder of Madison Heights, Mich.,-based Moosejaw Mountaineering, creating the ideal customer experience is what retail is all about.

"From the beginning we recognized that we needed to make the shopping experience as memorable as possible--to help us stand out from the crowd and compete with the big players,” Wolfe says. And it has worked.

This outdoor adventure retailer has differentiated itself from competitors by creating a fun, quirky shopping experience. “It’s all about the experience,” Wolfe says.

Doug Fleener, managing partner for Massachusetts-based retail consulting firm Dynamic Experiences Group, couldn’t agree more. “Using the customer’s experience as a marketing tool is becoming more common as retailers differentiate themselves from Wal-Mart and other low-cost providers,” he says.

Fleener believes the future is about either being a price leader or an experience leader.

Even Moosejaw’s Web site exhibits the business’ irreverent sense of humor with daily commentary, hilarious photo captions and unusual e-mails to customers. In the store, customers enjoy Moosejaw’s quirky signage such as “Men’s Parkas, not recommended for use in a sauna.” Moosejaw recently started offering a new service not common for in-store purchases: Instead of taking paper receipts, customers can now have their receipts e-mailed to them.

While customer experiences are most often associated with the retail industry, service enterprises are also jumping on the experience bandwagon. For example, take Simply Screening: Total Endoscopic Health & Prevention in Chesapeake, Va.

In addition to seeing patients on time and returning calls promptly, which is somewhat unusual in health care, Dr. Patricia Raymond, a board-certified physician in gastroenterology and internal medicine, strives to make colonoscopies more patient-friendly.

“In the endoscopy suite, we provide mood lighting, gentle music and aromatherapy to lend a spa-like experience,” she says.

At the end of the procedure, Raymond gives patients a goody bag, complete with a Moon Pie, a colonoscopy lapel pin, a joke book (Colonoscopy: It’ll Crack U Up!), and cards to send to friends to encourage them to get a colon screening.

“While many companies design great experiences, they often lack the discipline to consistently execute them,” says Fleener of Dynamic Experiences Group. “To be successful, a business needs to define the experience, create the appropriate tools, train the staff to execute it and measure its impact on the customer.”

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