Every theme park, attraction, or corporate space has its own footprint and is unique in its own special way, with different offerings and potential.
With the right mix of design and technology, space can be transformed and commoditised to help build brands, create experiences to help you engage with your audience, and promote your products and services to support and drive your business’ growth.
Executive briefing centres are not the only spaces within a corporate environment where you can engage with your customers. Any part of your office building that has an area which is accessible by your customer can be transformed into an experience and can help you convey your message – space really is your canvas.
Reception areas where visitors wait prior to meetings, walkways or lifts when making their way to meeting rooms, collaboration and huddle spaces for joint ventures or projects, executive boardrooms and presentation suites for those all-important meetings…it all has potential!
We believe a memorable experience is made up of four key elements: Storytelling, Immersiveness, Interactivity, and First Impressions.
Storytelling
Storytelling is key to shaping and designing Customer Experience. Map out your customer’s journey and relevant touchpoints to help you identify where you should be placing your messages. What needs to be said at each point? Are you dealing with a single or multiple demographics? Do you need multiple paths/storylines?
Plan your story and content: technology is an integral part of the experience – from the lighting through to the images on screens. But remember, it is only there to support meaningful content.
Dynamic content is a great way to engage your visitors. This is content that changes depending on information you know about them; content that is tailored creates a unique and personalised. There are other types of dynamic content such as motion-sensor which can change display messaging as a result of physical movement.
Content Management Systems should always be in place to ensure content is fresh, relevant, and easily stored, shared, and updated. The key question to remember here is: what are the key takeaways or messages you want your customer to walk away with?
Immersiveness
Immersive technology transports us to another dimension. It engages our neurological senses and stirs up feelings and emotions. So, what is the psychology behind immersive technologies? It makes the individual or group feel they are inside another world, removed from the environment that they arrived through.
This disengages them from the day-to-day and emerges the user in a different setting. The brain is still the most powerful computer ever and with the correct stimulus we trick it into making connections. This feeling of what is termed ‘presence’ uses virtual stimuli such a light, sound, heat, smell, and touch – making the virtual feel physically real. Immersive experiences awaken the inner/creative self and allows for a level of suspension of belief.
Interactivity
Immersives and interactives also go hand in hand. Los Angeles International Airport is essentially a large scale interactive. Interactives help build the experience, connecting the sensory/thinking with the physical ‘touch’. As we know from the travel experiences, technologies further enhance our experience, such as wayfinding solutions, touch screen check-in, and passport scanning recognition tech.
Business decisions are made based on a combination of data, business intelligence, and trust – and the more a customer or audience knows you and likes you, the more they will trust you. The art of information, persuasion, and conversation is ever more important – particularly in the services industry where products are intangible, the buying cycle is longer, and the decision-making process can be complex.
First Impressions
First impressions count, and with only three seconds (the time it takes for the subconscious to make an evaluation) there is the need to create a great first impression. A queue line in a theme park is no different to your corporate lobby area. Your lobby creates the first perception of you and sets the tone for the rest of the visit. For example, the Harry Potter Tour at the Warner Bros Studio Tour London immerses you in the world of Hogwarts while waiting in the queue by using immersive audio.
In the theme park/entertainment market it’s about suspending disbelief, and we can draw a direct parallel to corporate enterprise. It’s about making the technology seamless; it’s not good enough to hang a screen on a wall if it can be integrated within the building fabric or design.