The Experience

This spring I took a leap - I left my job, where I had been happily telling people what to do for seven years, to find my passion in life. I wasn't sure at the time what that was, but I knew I couldn't wait to figure it out. So I jumped.

Bob Mankoff/The New Yorker Collection/Conde Nast via nwpr.org

It was exciting, but it was also lonely. I didn't realize how much I valued being around people all day. I'm an introvert (mostly) and because all my social needs were filled at the office, I never thought much about other communities. But now I started to see community all around me, even in things that probably weren't intended to be social environments, like going to CVS. Why yes, I do need some help choosing toothpaste. Want to be friends?

Something really cool jumped out at me. We spend our lives consuming stuff. Food, technology, infrastructure, media... and every time we consume we have an "experience" - the customer experience. Companies strategize on how to best provide great customer experience, through customer service, product quality, etc. Now, with so much information available to consumers which gives us a lot more power to be choosy, customer experience is changing.

Providing a great customer experience still means attentive customer service, knowledgeable employees, innovative products, etc. - but now it's critical to provide a sense of community and identity, to keep customers engaged, to make them feel like they belong to something big.

Companies are definitely starting to get this - UnderArmour has its "I will what I want" campaign (watch this video of ballerina Misty Copeland. Totally inspiring.), Reebok has Spartan Race and CrossFit and "immersive fitness".

But it has to be bigger than events or marketing campaigns - customer experience is about telling a consistent, compelling story in every part of a company's operations. Oiselle, one of my favorite women's athletic apparel brands, sponsors amazing female atheletes who kick ass and blog about it. But they also provide a community for runners (including some cool dudes) called the Flock, with outlets on Twitter, Facebook, and Strava. The brand is much more than clothing - it's a shared bond. Even if you never meet any of your new running buddies in person, it's nice to know that someone out there is rooting for you.

After all that warm fuzziness, are products just icing on the cake? Quality, innovation, and design are still important - but I think the experience is becoming more of a non-negotiable, a requirement to selling great product. Without it, no matter how beautiful or innovative your product is, it's just stuff competing with other stuff for shelf space. Experience is the differentiator.