Delight customers with the magic experience: MAGIC stands for Make a Great Impression on Customer. To truly differentiate themselves, companies must focus on staging experiences that produce the moments of magic

Today's Manager, Dec-Jan, 2008 by Johnson Ong Chee Bin

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IT IS becoming increasingly evident that organisations today are staging positive memorable experience as a new competitive edge to attract and retain customers. B Joseph Pine II and James H Gilmore, the authors of the book The Experience Economy reiterate that in the emerging experience economy, companies must realise that they make memories, not goods, and create the stage for generating greater economic value through experience and transformation rather than delivering services.

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Both recognise that when a customer buys an experience, he pays to spend time enjoying a series of memorable events that a company stages to engage him in a personal way. Adapting from their 4-S Model, we can categorise service experience into five levels as illustrated in Figure 1.

The fifth or the lowest level of service experience is "shock". This is the level when a customer receives an experience that is negatively memorable, an experience that is negatively unexpected and far below his expectation.

The fourth level is "sacrifice", when a customer receives an experience that is below his expectation, an experience that he has to accept as a compromise. The third level is "satisfy", when a customer receives an experience that meets or exceeds his expectation. Exceeding customer expectation is no longer a "delighter" if the customer starts to expect the service professional to go the extra mile. These three levels are termed as "dissatisfiers".

The second level is "surprise", when a customer receives an experience that is positively unexpected. The first or the highest level of service experience is "suspense", when a customer receives an experience that he does not yet know and when he starts expecting to be surprised. The first and second levels are termed as "delighters" and they produce the "moments of MAGIC".

The Housing and Development Board (HDB) defines MAGIC as Make a Great Impression on Customer. The fourth and fifth levels produce the "moments of misery" or "moments of CIGAM". CIGAM is the reversed spelling of the word MAGIC, which stands for Customer in Great Agony and Misery. The third level of the service experience produces the "moments of ordinary". To truly differentiate themselves, companies must focus on staging experiences that produce the moments of MAGIC.

FACE and FEEL of Customer's Expectations

To stage the moments of MAGIC, organisations must first engage their customers to find out about their functional and emotional expectations.

The functional expectations of a customer can be defined as FACE, short for Fast, Accurate, Comfortable, and Easy. These are mostly explicitly defined or stated by the customer.

The emotional expectations of a customer can be defined as FEEL, short for Friendliness, Ego, Empathy, and Love. These emotional expectations are normally unexpressed or implicit in nature. Figure 2 gives a brief description of the elements of FACE and FEEL.

Act and Art of Service

To fulfil the FACE and FEEL expectations of the customers, organisations must design their service experience in two aspects. The first is the "act of service", which involves getting the desired tasks or transactions done in a manner that is designed to fulfil the functional expectations of the customers. The things that are put in place by organisations to fulfil the functional expectations are called "firmware". Figure 3 gives a brief description of the elements of firmware.

The second is the "art of service", which involves the interactions with the customers when the service was delivered to them. These emotional connections are termed as "heartware". The heartware includes service professionals who have displayed the eight right service attitudes to connect emotionally with the customers. These eight right service attitudes are:

* Being people-centred

* Being positive

* Being respectful

* Being proactive

* Being professional

* Being dependable

* Being empathic, and

* Being responsible.

To delight customers, organisations need to design the FACE and FEEL of customer's expectations into their service experience in order to stage the "moments of MAGIC". Figure 5 illustrates how this can be done for a banking transaction.

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Johnson Ong Chee Bin is a trainer and consultant with more than 25 years of experience in service excellence and process improvement.

Figure 2: Elements of FACE and FEEL

Functional Needs

F Fast, efficient and responsive

A Accurate, error-free and reliable

C Comfortable setting, layout
and environment

E Easy, simple, accessible, available
and convenient

Emotional Needs

F Friendliness: smile, warm greetings,
friendly language, and gestures

E Ego: making customers feel important,
respected, recognised, acknowledged,
and appreciated

E Empathy: putting customers interests
first, thinking from the customer's
point of view, listening and expressing
to customers empathically

L Love: showing love and kindness. It is
easier to provide service with a heart
than when you are filled with anger,
hatred, and dislike for people. Love
your customers and your customers
will love you in return.

Figure 3: Elements of Firmware

Firmware    Description

Product     Total offerings where benefits and value are derived from
            the purchase of goods or service. Offerings may include
            product, service, packaging, brand, warranty, etc.

Promotion   All forms of communication used to promote the product or
            service including advertising, public relations, word of
            mouth and point of sale.

Place       Place is where the product/service is offered or the
            setting where transaction takes place.

Price       Amount a customer pays for the product or service.

Policy      Written or unwritten statements, regulations, rules,
            decisions, instructions, discretions, or contracts that
            are put in place to govern the production and delivery of
            a product or service.

Process     Procedures, mechanisms, activities, routines, tasks,
            schedules, by which a service or product is created and
            delivered to a customer.

People      People are individuals and teams that contribute directly
            or indirectly to the production and delivery of a product
            or service.

Figure 5: Template for Staging a MAGIC Experience for a Banking
Transaction

Stage          FACE                            FEEL

Entry          Easy access                     Friendly greetings
(to bank)      and clear
               directional
               signs

Join Queue     No queue or                     Acknowledgement
               queue is                        and feeling
               orderly and                     important
               short

Wait in        Comfortable                     Acknowledgement
Queue          and prompt                      and feeling
               service                         important

Exit Queue     Clear                           Acknowledgement
               indication of                   and feeling
               queue number                    important
               and counter

Transaction    Prompt,                         Acknowledgement
               complete and                    and feeling
               accurate                        important
               transaction

Exit           Fast and easy                   Friendly farewell
(from bank)    exit

Stage          ACT                             ART

Entry          All staff are well groomed.     Welcome and greet
(to bank)      Setting is inviting and         customer. Ask for the
               comfortable. All machines       nature of service and
               are in good working             advise them on the
               condition. Open the doors       appropriate service
               for customers upon              channels.
               seeing them approaching
               the bank.

Join Queue     Queue rail is set up and        Lead customer to
               indicated with proper           the right queue.
               signage. Fair queuing policy
               (for example, First-In
               First-Out). Ensure
               queue is orderly.

Wait in        Provide entertainment           Greet and check
Queue          and/or reading materials.       periodically to ensure
               Counter staff are promptly      that customers are in
               serving customers. No           the right queue and
               chatting with colleagues        offer assistance if
               or busy with own work.          required.

Exit Queue     Signal to customer.             Acknowledge and greet
                                               customer and ask for
                                               the nature of service.

Transaction    Staff is knowledgeable;         Anticipate customer's
               deliver complete, prompt        needs and expectations
               service and accurate            and offer assistance
               documentation.                  or advice. Thank
               Check that customer did         customer by name.
               not leave anything behind.

Exit           Open the door for               Friendly farewell and
(from bank)    customer.                       thank the customer.
                                               Ask for feedback.

Stage          MAGIC

Entry          Assist the elderly, mother
(to bank)      with young children and
               the physically challenged
               into the bank.

Join Queue     Offer priority service
               or assistance for those
               in need.

Wait in        Offer mints.
Queue

Exit Queue     Initiate follow-up action
               with customer.

Transaction

Exit           Offer umbrella, if it
(from bank)    is raining.