Feeling brand from the customer's seat
Each participant recalls a recent moment as a customer when an interaction or experience delighted or failed them. They can choose any brand or product they like to generate a useful and insightful discussion.
This is a great exercise to use at the start of a workshop or even as pre-work, so that it gets people talking and able to connect with the topic of brand and the wide range of factors that affect it.
Each person recalls one recent moment as a customer when an interaction delighted them and one when it failed them. A confusing returns process, a warm unexpected follow-up, a handover that dropped them. They name what they actually felt at that moment rather than what the company said about itself. A few are shared aloud.
We can also discuss the book "Unreasonable Hospitality" and some of the case studies within it. The book tells the story of a high-end restaurant that creates outstanding experiences for its customers and empowers staff to use their initiative. The end result is that these touches and interactions generate a high level of loyalty and delight in customers.
Participants appreciate the concept of brand in the way a customer experiences it, concrete and personal. Participants are therefore primed to recognise themselves as producers of the same experience for someone else.
Keep the room focused on how the moments felt, and use a few quick shares to surface the range of experiences.
Each person remembers one recent moment as a customer when an interaction delighted them, and one when it failed them, noting down what they actually felt in plain words. This can also be set as pre-work so people arrive with more considered examples.
A handful of moments are shared with the room. Keep the share on how it felt, and steer away from analysing why the company got it right or wrong. The aim is to get the lived experience of brand into the room.
Reach for On the Receiving End when you want a room to feel brand as a lived experience before defining it. It opens a session by putting people back in the seat they sit in most often, the customer's.
Using this tool with a skilled facilitator means that discussions are focused, time is used efficiently, and the group moves toward consensus, making the session productive and impactful.
