What is this age of as­ton­ish­ment? It is the dis­man­tling of ser­vice de­liv­ery as we know it and its re­place­ment with what can be called the ex­pe­ri­ence part­ner­ship era. Wher­ev­er you go, cus­tomers are look­ing for­ward to hav­ing “an ex­pe­ri­ence.” They ex­pect that the busi­ness will be a keen part­ner in the pur­suit of ser­vice ex­cel­lence and cus­tomer hap­pi­ness.

This age of as­ton­ish­ment is a move away from sim­ply meet­ing the cus­tomer’s ex­pec­ta­tions, to ush­er­ing in the age of ex­ceed­ing ex­pec­ta­tions. It is a move away from think­ing cus­tomer ser­vice is on­ly about smil­ing faces at the front­line, “How may I as­sist you?” en­quiries and call­ing back cus­tomers. The age is now about how a busi­ness can cu­rate the most im­mer­sive and per­son­alised cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence for its cus­tomers.

Here in T&T, cus­tomers are show­ing their will­ing­ness to em­brace ex­pe­ri­ences that are in­ter­ac­tive, in­no­v­a­tive and imag­i­na­tive. It’s easy to spot the ear­ly-adopter shifts. Just take a look at how those busi­ness­es that are of­fer­ing reimag­ined cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ences are nav­i­gat­ing the new era. We’re see­ing sip and paint events, cook­ing events where the guests be­come the chefs and the im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ences dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son that run the gamut of on-site mani-pedis at fetes, to float­ing ho­tels, to glass-walled, air-con­di­tioned par­ty trucks on the road.

The busi­ness­es hes­i­tant to par­tic­i­pate in this move­ment and don’t chal­lenge them­selves to re­spond to the cus­tomer’s ex­pand­ing ap­petite for epic ex­pe­ri­ences, will find them­selves in a state of false cer­tain­ty. The way out of this co­nun­drum is for a busi­ness to have a mo­ment of clar­i­ty on the shift in cus­tomer ex­pec­ta­tions, fol­lowed by an ex­is­ten­tial en­quiry in­to how the busi­ness can find its unique place in the new ex­pe­ri­ence space.

An­oth­er con­sid­er­a­tion for ex­it­ing the false cer­tain­ty co­nun­drum, is for busi­ness­es to stop be­ing fix­at­ed on serv­ing on­ly “to­day’s cus­tomers” and start fo­cus­ing on “to­mor­row’s cus­tomers.” Some busi­ness­es are dan­ger­ous­ly un­aware of the sub­tle shifts in gen­er­a­tional cus­tomer de­mo­graph­ics and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing needs shifts that have been gain­ing mo­men­tum over the past decade. The busi­ness­es that have not been pay­ing enough at­ten­tion, run the risk of be­com­ing af­flict­ed with self-in­duced ob­so­les­cence.

The age of as­ton­ish­ment is about mov­ing away from the or­di­nary, to cre­at­ing ex­tra­or­di­nary mo­ments that make the cus­tomer gasp in as­ton­ish­ment and be­come ex­cit­ed about their next in­ter­ac­tion with the busi­ness. Of course, hav­ing raised the cus­tomer’s ex­pec­ta­tions, the stakes for ex­ceed­ing these ex­pec­ta­tions al­so take an equiv­a­lent up­surge.

The busi­ness­es that are build­ing in­tel­li­gence around the new­ly emerg­ing ar­eas that move the nee­dle on cus­tomer sen­ti­ment, are the ones that will get the li­on’s share of cus­tomer at­ten­tion and re­ten­tion over the next decade.

There are some emerg­ing trends that busi­ness­es in ex­pe­ri­ence economies, no­tably the hos­pi­tal­i­ty, fi­nance, tourism, health­care, re­tail and me­dia sec­tors, should not ig­nore. Two such trends in­clude the adop­tion of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence tools and the gen­er­a­tion of ex­pe­ri­ence-rich cus­tomer en­gage­ment. These game-chang­ing trends are po­si­tioned to dri­ve in­ter­ac­tions with cus­tomers be­yond the lin­ear buy-sell pat­tern, to a “feel good-buy-sell” con­fig­u­ra­tion. This new con­fig­u­ra­tion al­lows the cus­tomer to be im­mersed in an emo­tive ex­pe­ri­ence that re­mains root­ed in their minds long af­ter the sale has been com­plet­ed.

The adop­tion of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence tools sup­ports the “feel good-buy-sell” con­fig­u­ra­tion. Busi­ness­es are us­ing an ar­ray of tools to cu­rate high­ly per­son­alised re­al­i­ties that evoke a pos­i­tive emo­tion­al re­sponse from the cus­tomer. What this means, is the heavy in­vest­ment in back-end tech­nolo­gies that en­able the dig­i­tal archiv­ing of cus­tomers’ likes, habits and pref­er­ences, so that these pro­files can be pushed, on-de­mand, to the point along any om­ni-chan­nel, for fast, rel­e­vant and dili­gent de­ci­sion-mak­ing. This in­vest­ment is in­vis­i­ble to the naked eye but in­valu­able to the val­ue-adding process that dri­ves the cus­tomer’s as­ton­ish­ment at the ease of cus­tomis­ing the need­ed so­lu­tion. The use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence tools in­te­grat­ed in­to day-to-day ac­tiv­i­ties is no longer an elec­tive de­ci­sion.

Cre­at­ing an ex­pe­ri­ence-rich cus­tomer en­gage­ment is not rock­et sci­ence. It does de­mand re-en­gi­neer­ing every crit­i­cal junc­ture where make or break de­ci­sions are tak­en by the cus­tomer. It means de­con­struct­ing ex­ist­ing de­liv­ery pat­terns and re­design­ing the new en­gage­ment to deep­en the cus­tomer’s emo­tion­al in­vest­ment. One of the best ex­am­ples of this re­con­fig­u­ra­tion re­lates to a guest check­ing in to a ho­tel and hav­ing a per­son­al concierge as­signed to them. These concierges at­tend to the needs of the guests in an in­ti­mate way and cre­ate a high­ly per­son­alised ex­pe­ri­ence. The guests feel heard, seen and pam­pered. The out­come? A strong emo­tion­al bond that is based on an ex­pe­ri­ence-rich en­gage­ment, cre­at­ing last­ing and mem­o­rable mo­ments for each guest and prompt­ing guest com­mit­ment to re­peat pur­chase.

In this age of as­ton­ish­ment, the big ques­tion is, “What is your strat­e­gy for cre­at­ing those ex­pe­ri­ences that are con­gru­ent with ex­ceed­ing your cus­tomers’ ex­pec­ta­tions con­sis­tent­ly?”

Stay­ing in the game de­pends on the right an­swer to this ques­tion.