Your customers continue to demand experiences.

At Niagara Falls you can go and watch falling water, or board a sixty foot boat that is powered by three 500 horsepower engines and then drive through the class 5 rapids below the falls.  Now THAT is an experience.

Instead of looking through catalogs of caskets, at the Zabor Funeral Home in Cleveland, you are shown into a private display room where the represented ends of each casket are displayed on the walls.   Because they want to extend the experience, they have converted a next door building into a food service facility to serve the grieving.

At the Chill and Grill hamburger establishment in Palmyra, New York, the customer is often heard saying, “That is a SMALL?” when they receive their oversized soft ice cream cone.  The result is a line of people across the parking lot as not only the locals but people from surrounding towns drive for a dinner and ice cream.

Hospitals are focused on the Patient Experience (at least those who realize that Patient Satisfaction is the measurement, but that experiences are the step above).

Banks are teaching their internal departments to become consultants, versus “selling” and “hawking” the banks services.

If your business can create the experiences, the statistics show that you can get a 36% premium over the price of your competitor (Gallup 2011).

You have a choice . . . create the experience. . . or compete with everyone else.   Note, that competition comes with a 36% penalty to your profitability.

So do you really have a choice?