5 businesses that have redefined customer experiences

In this day and age, attracting new customers in an over-crowded consumer market can take some ingenious thinking. By not just being another “me-too”, and creating a unique customer experience, no matter how small the organisation, it is possible to work within the same market but create a compelling distinction from your competitors.

The following five organisations range from small and local to global brands. They have all, no matter how small, challenged the basic assumptions of how organisations in their industry “should” work, and reinvented a fresh approach that gets customers talking – often without huge investment.

1. Greensmiths – Waterloo, London, UK

Greensmiths is a local supermarket with a real difference: a butcher, a baker, a greengrocer, a coffee specialist and a wine merchant have co-located, but work together to create a unique shopping experience. Each business collaborates, using each other’s products where possible, and a common kitchen prepares food from fresh ingredients from each store to eat at the cafe or take away.   The smart innovation was to make the overall experience hassle free, with checkouts shared amongst the companies so there is no need to pay seperately at each store.  However, each brings a unique look and feel which creates a vibrant and engaging retail experience, as well as communicating through the physical environment the quality of their goods.

2.  Copenhagen Icecream – Brisbane, Australia

Despite a huge number of ice cream sellers in the Australian town of Brisbane, Copenhagen Icecream has enticed crowds for many years: not because their ice cream is any better than their competitors, but because their shop is built around an eight waffle press that makes the cones fresh in the window.  A large crowd is always present to watch staff being able to make a cone in around 15 seconds, and the feeling of getting something freshly made, in front of your eyes, creates an experience that makes the ice cream seem even better.

3. Benihana – New York, US (now Global)

The Teppanyaki dining style has to be one of the most exciting dining experience available. Originating in the Japanese restaurant chain of Misono in 1945, but becoming famous throughout the US and Europe through the Benihana chain, it involves a horseshoe dining layout around a chef standing in front of a grill with about eight other diners seated around.  This is about entertainment whilst you eat: the chef cooks the food in front of the guests whilst performing various tricks, and involving the customers in the cooking.   The show is indescribable and often contains an impressive amount of skill and dexterity, juggling ingredients even as they are chopped, prepared and cooked. There is even interaction between the tables, bringing a sense of unity to the entire restaurant.  This is not so much as a eating experience (even though the food is very good) as it is a live show, where the customer is the audience and expected to be involved.

4. New World Dim Sum – Chinatown, London, UK

The Dim Sum dining experience is always a social one, as food is ordered to share as opposed to choosing one meal and eating off your own plate.   New World is one of the few restaurants in London to provide the “trolley experience”, where waitresses walk around with trolleys of different foods allowing you to pick and choose the dim sum that you wish to purchase. This is great for Dim Sum beginners – unsure of the names of products and needing a more visual cue – but also allows for a unique experience with food coming to the table literally every 30 seconds to peruse.  Whilst the restaurant itself is not visually interesting or impressive, the distinction in service from other dim sum restaurants makes it memorable and a talking point with friends, which generates more customers through the door.

5.  Gold Class Cinema –  Australian Theatre, Australia

Gold Class is an intimate cinema setting that seats no more than 30-40 people, where guests can relax in reclining chairs with extremely generous legroom, and enjoy full waiter service with meals pre-ordered and delivered at certain points during the movie. It is a different type of movie experience, and at only a small increase in price, that can make even the dullest movies a worthwhile trip. Gold class is usually booked out, and although it may be difficult to see the business logic behind the enterprise, its experience creates a lot of word of mouth marketing for the entire group, and memorable moments for customers associated with the main brand of the cinema.

Applications

The lessons that can be learned from this apply to any small or large business.  Making a dining or a shopping experience into something beyond the norm reaps benefits in free marketing. Many small businesses fail to attract footfall simply because they have failed to ask the question, what can we do differently?

And so, to the small cook shop where visitors are browsing not buying: bring in a chef on Saturdays to cook in the middle of the shop, using equipment you sell and demonstrating how to use it and why it is good.  You can guarantee an audience.

To the bookshop struggling to compete with the big chains: don’t compete directly, change your business model, install sofas, let people read the books in the store and make your money from coffee.

The point is to reimagine the service.  In doing so, you may need to redefine your own business models, and change the physical environment.  This is at the heart of the way we think about services at Flywheel.