Delight customers with the magic experience: MAGIC stands for Make a Great Impression on Customer. To truly differentiate themselves, companies must focus on staging experiences that produce the moments of magic.

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IT IS becoming increasingly evident that organisations today are staging positive memorable experience as a new competitive edge to attract and retain customers. B Joseph Pine II and James H Gilmore, the authors of the book The Experience Economy reiterate that in the emerging experience economy, companies must realise that they make memories, not goods, and create the stage for generating greater economic value through experience and transformation rather than delivering services.

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Both recognise that when a customer buys an experience, he pays to spend time enjoying a series of memorable events that a company stages to engage him in a personal way. Adapting from their 4-S Model, we can categorise service experience into five levels as illustrated in Figure 1.

The fifth or the lowest level of service experience is "shock". This is the level when a customer receives an experience that is negatively memorable, an experience that is negatively unexpected and far below his expectation.

The fourth level is "sacrifice", when a customer receives an experience that is below his expectation, an experience that he has to accept as a compromise. The third level is "satisfy", when a customer receives an experience that meets or exceeds his expectation. Exceeding customer expectation is no longer a "delighter" if the customer starts to expect the service professional to go the extra mile. These three levels are termed as "dissatisfiers".

The second level is "surprise", when a customer receives an experience that is positively unexpected. The first or the highest level of service experience is "suspense", when a customer receives an experience that he does not yet know and when he starts expecting to be surprised. The first and second levels are termed as "delighters" and they produce the "moments of MAGIC".

The Housing and Development Board (HDB) defines MAGIC as Make a Great Impression on Customer. The fourth and fifth levels produce the "moments of misery" or "moments of CIGAM". CIGAM is the reversed spelling of the word MAGIC, which stands for Customer in Great Agony and Misery. The third level of the service experience produces the "moments of ordinary". To truly differentiate themselves, companies must focus on staging experiences that produce the moments of MAGIC.

FACE and FEEL of Customer's Expectations

To stage the moments of MAGIC, organisations must first engage their customers to find out about their functional and emotional expectations.

The functional expectations of a customer can be defined as FACE, short for Fast, Accurate, Comfortable, and Easy. These are mostly explicitly defined or stated by the customer.

The emotional expectations of a customer can be defined as FEEL, short for Friendliness, Ego, Empathy, and Love. These emotional expectations are normally unexpressed or implicit in nature. Figure 2 gives a brief description of the elements of FACE and FEEL.

Act and Art of Service

To fulfil the FACE and FEEL expectations of the customers, organisations must design their service experience in two aspects. The first is the "act of service", which involves getting the desired tasks or transactions done in a manner that is designed to fulfil the functional expectations of the customers. The things that are put in place by organisations to fulfil the functional expectations are called "firmware". Figure 3 gives a brief description of the elements of firmware.

The second is the "art of service", which involves the interactions with the customers when the service was delivered to them. These emotional connections are termed as "heartware". The heartware includes service professionals who have displayed the eight right service attitudes to connect emotionally with the customers. These eight right service attitudes are:

* Being people-centred

* Being positive

* Being respectful

* Being proactive

* Being professional

* Being dependable

* Being empathic, and

* Being responsible.

To delight customers, organisations need to design the FACE and FEEL of customer's expectations into their service experience in order to stage the "moments of MAGIC". Figure 5 illustrates how this can be done for a banking transaction.

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Johnson Ong Chee Bin is a trainer and consultant with more than 25 years of experience in service excellence and process improvement. Figure 2: Elements of FACE and FEEL Functional Needs F Fast, efficient and responsive A Accurate, error-free and reliable C Comfortable setting, layout and environment E Easy, simple, accessible, available and convenient Emotional Needs F Friendliness: smile, warm greetings, friendly language, and gestures E Ego: making customers feel important, respected, recognised, acknowledged, and appreciated E Empathy: putting customers interests first, thinking from the customer's point of view, listening and expressing to customers empathically L Love: showing love and kindness. It is easier to provide service with a heart than when you are filled with anger, hatred, and dislike for people. Love your customers and your customers will love you in return. Figure 3: Elements of Firmware Firmware Description Product Total offerings where benefits and value are derived from

the purchase of goods or service. Offerings may include

product, service, packaging, brand, warranty, etc. Promotion All forms of communication used to promote the product or

service including advertising, public relations, word of

mouth and point of sale. Place Place is where the product/service is offered or the

setting where transaction takes place. Price Amount a customer pays for the product or service. Policy Written or unwritten statements, regulations, rules,

decisions, instructions, discretions, or contracts that

are put in place to govern the production and delivery of

a product or service. Process Procedures, mechanisms, activities, routines, tasks,

schedules, by which a service or product is created and

delivered to a customer. People People are individuals and teams that contribute directly

or indirectly to the production and delivery of a product

or service. Figure 5: Template for Staging a MAGIC Experience for a Banking Transaction Stage FACE FEEL Entry Easy access Friendly greetings (to bank) and clear

directional

signs Join Queue No queue or Acknowledgement

queue is and feeling

orderly and important

short Wait in Comfortable Acknowledgement Queue and prompt and feeling

service important Exit Queue Clear Acknowledgement

indication of and feeling

queue number important

and counter Transaction Prompt, Acknowledgement

complete and and feeling

accurate important

transaction Exit Fast and easy Friendly farewell (from bank) exit Stage ACT ART Entry All staff are well groomed. Welcome and greet (to bank) Setting is inviting and customer. Ask for the

comfortable. All machines nature of service and

are in good working advise them on the

condition. Open the doors appropriate service

for customers upon channels.

seeing them approaching

the bank. Join Queue Queue rail is set up and Lead customer to

indicated with proper the right queue.

signage. Fair queuing policy

(for example, First-In

First-Out). Ensure

queue is orderly. Wait in Provide entertainment Greet and check Queue and/or reading materials. periodically to ensure

Counter staff are promptly that customers are in

serving customers. No the right queue and

chatting with colleagues offer assistance if

or busy with own work. required. Exit Queue Signal to customer. Acknowledge and greet

customer and ask for

the nature of service. Transaction Staff is knowledgeable; Anticipate customer's

deliver complete, prompt needs and expectations

service and accurate and offer assistance

documentation. or advice. Thank

Check that customer did customer by name.

not leave anything behind. Exit Open the door for Friendly farewell and (from bank) customer. thank the customer.