On a recent visit to Takashimaya Shopping Centre for Christmas shopping, my family visited their highly popular basement food mall area looking for gift ideas.
Amidst the festive air, I noticed that there were many stalls offering gourmet food items for sale where the delectable pastries and candies were made ‘live’ by chefs.
Tina and Ethan posing next to an animatronic Apatosaurus
“Roar, Growl, Hiss, Grr, Screech and Scream!”
Welcome to the world of the fabulous dinosaurs (also known as the “terrible lizards”) at Dinosaurs-Live!, a recently opened exhibition at the Singapore Science Centre. Happening from now til 26 Feb 2012, the exhibition showcases almost 50 life-sized dinosaurs, reptiles and other prehistoric creatures brought realistically back to life by awesome animatronics.
Ensure that all customer touchpoints are branded (courtesy of Marketing Brainstorm)
You’ve probably heard variations of these conversations in your own organisation:
“Our branding sucks! Let’s change our logo and splash it all over the place.”
In an age which some may term as the “experience economy”, companies and businesses can ill afford to focus solely on quality products or low prices. The entire spectrum of engaging and enrapturing a customer through every single touch point – both online and offline – becomes critical.
It isn’t just the transaction itself that matters. Rather the entire customer experience journey becomes important. This includes reading/hearing about your product online or offline, browsing your stores/ websites, speaking to a retail associate, purchasing the product, experiencing the product, and after sales customer service.
Remove Our Pain and We’ll Reward You For it (source)
It often puzzles me why companies and businesses don’t focus on the obvious pain points of their customers. Why do they not listen to the repeated complaints and criticisms that have emerged both online and offline by their regular customers?
Examples of commonly felt “pain” points include the following:
As the importance of 360 degree immersive marketing grows, companies should consider curating and choreographing experience-rich physical environments in their retail outlets. A good way to do so would be putting up 3D exhibition displays that help to augment and enrich the overall experience of one’s customers.
In this regard, the Singapore Science Centre can be considered one of the leaders of the craft. Attracting more than a million visitors a year, the Science Centre offers education, enrichment and entertainment all under one roof. As part of the PS21 EXCEL Learning Journey, I had the benefit of understanding how the Centre – considered one of the best in the world – goes about creating, developing and implementing an exhibition.
Social technologies and networks have driven demand for meet-ups like Social Media Breakfast
One of the greatest misunderstandings about the rise of social media platforms is that it will replace the need for being physically present at places and events. After all, it is far cheaper contacting somebody via Twitter, Internet Messaging, Facebook or Skype than to meet them in the flesh.
Now that social technologies have gone mobile, your iPad, iPhone, android or symbian smartphone allows you to plug in and participate in conversations 24 by 7. Need richer levels of interaction? Simply get a mobile broadband device or tether your 3.5G phone to your laptop and you can share documents, wikis, blog posts, presentation slides, spreadsheets and more.
Courtesy of sayitcommunity.com
Customer experience management is the new marketing. While the world swoons over the impact of digital technologies on customer experience, it is often basic customer service which determines if a company swims or sinks.
Its the journey and not the destination (courtesy of dadadreams)
What is the best way to capture your customer’s hearts and minds? How do you make them feel a sense of ownership for your brands, products and services?
The secret lies in getting them involved as much as possible.
Image courtesy of Billboard
“Sorry” might have been one of the hottest hits by Justin Beiber ever (with over 3.15 billion YouTube views to date). However, it is still incredibly hard for companies to say.
And that has led to so many countless cases of organisational grief over the years.