Branded Customer Service and Themed Customer Service

Pine and Gilmore's book, The Experience Economy, has led the charge on the importance of paying attention to customer experiences. The authors predict that the only sustainable businesses in the future will be those that offer a distinct, themed customer experience. To set the record straight, while branded service experiences are related to the type of themed customer experiences suggested in The Experience Economy, they are not identical.

Certainly all branded service creates experiences in the general sense of experience, meaning anything observed or lived through. But a branded service experience can be delivered in ways other than through themed customer experiences.

Not Everyone Wants a Themed Customer Experience

In Las Vegas you can have your pick of themed customer environments and service offerings. The Disney parks are all themed experiences. However, not all consumers desire a constant array of themed experiences. For example, when you fill your car up with gasoline, do you want a themed experience, or do you just want a tank of gas—offered with solid customer service skills? To entice you back to a particular gasoline brand, it would be good if the service were also on-brand. But it does not necessarily need to be an elaborate, orchestrated experience for which you are willing to take extra time to enjoy and pay higher gasoline prices.

Some products and businesses are successfully based on commodity business models. And many companies offer brand promises without creating themed experiences. Costco is a solid example of a company that reinforces its brand in myriad ways. Its type of customer experience, however, is a far cry from that of Starbucks, which is viewed as one of the major customer retailers of themed experiences.

Branding your customer service does not mean you have to put on a show. You can, for example, answer the telephone in an on-brand manner without delivering a themed experience. Furthermore, if the business community confuses a well-designed on-brand banking experience, for example, with a Walt Disney-type entertainment experience, the result could place unreasonable demands on staff. For example, bank clubs could be easily overwhelmed if they had the responsibility to be precise about counting money and at the same time to entertain customers waiting in line. Nonetheless, both a branded nonthemed bank and a Walt Disney park need to offer consistent on-brand service—or their brands will suffer.

Build-A-Bear: Successful Themed Experience

If you successfully build a themed service experience around the customers' shopping, there is no doubt that you can charge more. For example, people spend hours choosing the ingredients that will become their final one-of-a-kind bear in the popular Build-A-Bear stores (workshops, as they are called). The stores boast an average income of $700 per square foot compared to a retail average of $350. People buy add-ons from all the different stations they go through to enhance their basic $10 bear. It is a memorable experience to share with a child and certainly worth the extra money.

Build-A-Bear's branded service reflects its brand promise. You can read it on every page of the Build-A-Bear Web site and at every one of its stores: personalization (you build your own bear), fun (you watch your bear come to life and then get a birth certificate for it), caring (through a lost bear program), connection (through parties, newsletters), hands-on (you make the choices, touching all the while), and memorable (how could it not be?). These bears are so special they have registered names and seem almost alive. The initial target market of Build-A-Bear was girls up to twelve years old, but the experience has also attracted young boys and adults.

On-brand customer service deepens these emotional experiences through systems (for example, the lost bear program) that create staff-customer interactions supporting the Build-A-Bear brand. One such brand story is that of a young boy who came into a workshop to buy a replacement bear for the one he had lost. The boy chose a name that was very unusual for his new bear, and the clerk thought she had heard it before. She asked the boy if he had ever had another bear with the same name. When he answered yes, she searched for and found his lost bear, which had been returned to the store. Upon seeing the bear, the mother and boy broke into tears, and they went home with two bears. ^[10] The store had attempted to locate the boy earlier, but he had moved. This is "caring," one of the brand values brought to life and delivered with an exclamation point!

Build-A-Bear's themed service experience has to do with all the activities that children and adults can experience while in the store. It involves the stores' layout, their locations, their interactive hands-on process, and the product itself. There is a great deal of expense in making this experience happen. Build-A-Bear's branded service, which amplifies its brand proposition, is built on excellent generic service. Combined, they support the themed experience of building bears, and Build-A-Bear is the success it is today. The average customer returns five times per year—the workshops host memorable birthday parties. Even its Web page (http://www.buildabear.com) is an astonishing online experience. All of this adds up to revenues in excess of $160 million in 2002—in the teddy bear business! ^[11]

When you just want a stuffed teddy bear and you have your lunch hour in which to purchase it, grabbing one off a shelf might be your best bet. Nonetheless, even while grabbing, you would still want a pleasant experience and courteous treatment. It would also be great for the reputation of the store if that service were on-brand.

^[10]Bob Niedt, "Bear Facts," Retail Notebook, Syracuse Post Standard, October 4, 2002.

^[11]Statistics from Elizabeth Goodgold, "Talking Shop," Entrepreneur (September 2003).