What is Customer Experience?

Today's economy has shifted from a service economy into an experience economy; products and service sare becoming more commoditized which is creating a need for hotels to differentiate themselves.  The co-production between the hotel and the guest in creating memorable guest experiences is an advantage for the hotels because they are designing and staging consumer experiences to create positive memorable experiences.  Experience is unique to the hospitality industry because it combines product and service through emotional, physical and cognitive connections with consumers. Experience is the total package which consumers purchase and if the hotel and guest are able to create positive memorable experiences then overall hotel integrity and value are improved.   

Today, providing good service to the customer has become the key to success while running a hospitality company.  However, a successful service company also realizes that by only providing good service is not simply enough.  Creating a memorable guest experience is more profitable for running the company in the long run.  According to Beyond Philosophy, a customer experience is created through the communication between the customer and the organization.  In such case, a customer will automatically perceive this interaction through their senses and mental power no matter if it is their conscious or subconscious mind.  A customer will determine and develop a feeling toward the organization by telling whether the service and the environment provided by the organization have met their expectations or not.  Another definition according to the textbook also states that customer experiences are created by the customer’s natural feelings.  The experiences to the customers are supposed to be memorable even after it has passed for long period of time.  It creates “economic value”, which means it helps the organization to create potential profits by bringing the customers back to the business.

As mentioned above, creating memorable experiences for guests can efficiently help the organization to generate profit because this is “what they come away with and remember the most.” (Textbook)  A customer will always come back for the same service after receiving a memorable experience from the company because it met the consumer’s expectations.  This is also what we call “customer loyalty”.  In the Harvard Business Review blog, Colin Shaw states that creating customer’s loyalty by providing them customer experiences will help to increase customer value and reduce costs.  Keeping long term customers does not only help the hotel to generate profits, but it also helps to stabilize the sales revenue because long term customers are less likely to stay in other hotels and they are usually less sensitive to the price changes. (Shaw)

Consumers, however, are not robots.  They have their own feelings and emotions each time they receive service from the company.  Consumers who have bad experiences with the company are less likely to return.  They may even post comments through social media websites about what they experienced, which can potentially dissuade potential customers for the company due to the importance and popularity of social media sites today.  Therefore, companies cannot expect that their customers will always have the same perceptions or experiences.  Customer expectations can change as well. Companies have to stay relevant with the changes and trends and always provide different memorable experiences in order to acquire and keep their customers.  Crafting a great customer experience requires enormous amounts of collaboration across departments in the company.  That is, it involves in many communications, editions, and good organization from management, which may be difficult, yet attainable. 

Memorable experiences can also result when service gaps arise, where service delivery falls to meet guest expectations.  For instance, the W San Francisco failed to limit the service gap between their reservation web page and to their prospective guests.  As reviewed on Tripadvisor, user Mattsaab was disappointed upon check in when “there [was] no lobby and the makeshift check in area [was] truly deplorable. There [were] work lights, tarps, paint and pathetic “oops” signs everywhere – letting you know that acknowledged that problem.”  Even though this was not a positive memorable experience, the guest wanted to inform others of this misfortune.  He even mentioned how the hotel should have informed their guests upon making the reservation.  This example of a memorable experience is not what companies strive to achieve but nonetheless they still leave a long lasting impression that might reflect their willingness to come back to the establishment.  In conclusion to his review, the user stated, “I would never stay here again and I felt truly ripped off.  Something I usually have not felt at any other W hotel before.”  With these examples the memorable consumer experience had by the couple above would probably be repeat and possible loyal customers for the future, while user Mattsaab will most likely never return due to his poor experience.