Taking an experience design approach forces businesses to see the world through the experiences of their customers and deliver new insights into how their brand and services are perceived. This greater understanding should enable businesses to create more relevant and compelling propositions for their customers.
By effecting a fundamental shift in the focus of our thinking, from products to people, brand experience has the power to drive a greater degree of empathy, trust and loyalty towards a brand among both customers and employees.
An experiential approach can therefore help businesses to 'value engineer' their offer - to better understand the aspects of their business that convey the greatest value to their customers, and eliminate the elements that don't work or aren't valued.
The total experiential agenda for a brand can span an enormous spectrum, from enhancement of existing communication channels, products and services to the development of permanent brand places and new business ventures - such as the LEGOLAND theme parks, Guinness Storehouse, and NikeTown stores.
It can provide a 'wow' factor that attracts the attention of both consumers and the media - such as the launch of London's Tate Modern gallery, or Selfridges' annual themed festivals.
Experience design can further enhance the service element of a product to create a stronger - and often more premium-priced - economic offering. For instance department stores are increasingly offering personal shopping and lifestyle consultants.
But as companies tap into the emerging experiential economy, our expectation of branded experiences will become more sophisticated and demanding. A central implication for services is therefore the need for long-term strategic planning (this is particularly the case within the public sector where there are no longer any guaranteed monopolies within the market). This will help to keep in touch with increasing consumer expectations of what constitutes valued and acceptable customer experiences in terms of design, communication, operations, staffing, behaviour and delivery.
In order to credibly deliver on the total consumer brand promise, it is also becoming increasingly important that the internal employee brand experience must be coherent, compelling and aligned with that made to consumers.
In doing so companies are recognising the need for all of their people to 'live the brand' by developing internal programmes and culture change initiatives designed to turn strategic brand values into front line behaviours.
The design of such internal experience programmes and initiatives is also likely to become a major growth area for experiential design.