Don’t Just Deliver the Experience: Bring the Customer Into It

This week, I have the privilege of spending time with students at the University of South Florida’s School of Hospitality Management, teaching and talking about customer centricity. As I prepared for the conversation, I found myself thinking about something the hospitality industry understands particularly well: you cannot create a meaningful experience and leave the customer standing outside of it.

Think about a great hotel, restaurant, resort, or even your favorite neighborhood coffee shop. The experience is rarely just the room, the meal, the coffee, or the transaction. Somehow, you are brought into it. The welcome, environment, language, sounds, smells, people, and even anticipation of what is coming next can guide you into the experience. Before long, you are no longer simply purchasing something; you are participating in something.

Experience Can Begin Before the Customer Arrives

This is one of the ideas that excites me about how hospitality organizations guide the guest experience. The customer experience does not have to begin when the customer walks through the door. A hotel or restaurant can begin shaping anticipation long before arrival through photographs, information, communication, and little glimpses of what is ahead. In fact, anticipation itself can become part of the enjoyment.

Think about the last vacation you really looked forward to. How many times did you look at the hotel photographs, restaurant menus, excursions, or things you planned to do? You had not left home yet, but the experience had already begun.

And yet in many businesses, after a customer makes the purchase, signs the contract, registers for the program, or books the appointment, we go strangely quiet until it is time to deliver. What if we treated that space between “yes” and delivery as part of the customer experience rather than administrative waiting time?

The Customer Is Not an Audience Member

And here is another lesson. Customers are not passive audience members sitting in the front row waiting for organizations to perform. They participate in creating the experience. Hospitality businesses understand this particularly well because they can intentionally draw a guest’s attention to something they might otherwise overlook: a beautiful view, an aroma, a piece of architecture, the story behind a meal, or a small detail in the environment. Helping guests consciously notice these positive aspects can deepen their emotional connection to the experience.

It begs the question: How much value are organizations already creating that customers never fully experience because nobody helped them see it? Sometimes creating more customer value may not require another product, feature, or expensive initiative. Sometimes we need to become better at guiding customers toward the value that is already there: before, during, and after.

Perhaps the biggest lesson I am taking into my USF conversation is that we need to expand how we think about the boundaries of the customer experience. Hospitality teaches us to think about what happens before the guest arrives, while the experience is unfolding, and even after the guest leaves. A photograph, souvenir, or other cue can help someone relive an experience long after it has ended.

This applies far beyond hotels and restaurants. Consultants, healthcare organizations, banks, universities, retailers, professional-service firms: almost every organization can ask, How are we preparing customers for the experience? How are we helping them participate while they are in it? And what are we leaving with them after it is over?

Customer centricity is not simply about designing something wonderful and hoping customers recognize it. It is about intentionally bringing them into the experience, guiding them through it, and helping the value live beyond the transaction.

Your Action Plan

This month, choose one customer journey and ask:

• Before: What happens between the customer’s decision to engage with us and the actual experience? Can we create anticipation, confidence, or connection during that time?
• During: What do we want the customer to notice, feel, understand, or participate in, and are we intentionally helping that to happen?
• After: What do we want them to remember, talk about, or carry with them after the experience ends?
• Guide, don’t manipulate: Are we helping customers recognize genuine value, or merely trying to persuade them that an experience was better than it was?
• Find the invisible value: What are we already doing well that customers may not fully see or appreciate? How do we make that known to the customer?

Don’t just ask, “What experience are we delivering?” Ask, “How are we bringing the customer into that experience, before, during, and after?”

For more information, contact info@almentainternational.net or visit almentainternational.com.