They Can Generate Sales AND Strengthen Key Customer Relationships
Fans of “The Office” know that the top sales reps at Dunder Mifflin spend their days making phone calls and sending emails to clinch those sales. But top companies know that they are never going to win their best clients that way. Get with the program, Dwight!
Top potential customers want to be wooed by a company. They want experiences that immerse them in the seller’s message and values. Between the competition of online retail and the high expectations of new millennial customers, retailers have to go the extra mile if they want to win that business.
Enter the Customer Experience Center. Customer Experience Centers offer an interactive experience inside a highly designed space that helps the client personally connect with the brand and inspires them to a greater relationship with the company. Customer Experience Centers invite prospects to your home as your guest and you manage the setting and surroundings.
Benefits of Customer Experience Centers
Besides the obvious high-end sales opportunities that Customer Experience Centers afford, there are other key goals that they can help you achieve:
- Close higher-end product sales opportunities faster
- Enhance relationships with key customers and prospects
- Make a memorable impression on visitors
- Strengthen your company brand
- Increase opportunity for repeat sales and expanding upsell
- Gain insights into customer needs
- Effectively demonstrate products, especially technology-driven products
Design Elements of Customer Experience Centers
Customer Experience Centers are meant to encourage a deeper relationship between your company and your prospects. Design is key because it sets the mood and provides the experience for the client. Despite the endless possibilities available for designing a Customer Experience Center, here are some of the most common elements:
- Customer Experience Centers are most often a room housed inside a larger corporate facility, which provides the synergy of an individual experience with the backdrop of the company presence.
- Depending on the size and needs of the company, the Customer Experience Center might have a series of connected rooms that flow organically as part of the immersion process. The greeting area might lead to the presentation room, which leads to a larger conference room, which flows into a catered dining area.
- Large organizations have these Centers dotting the country and even the globe, their footprints varying according to the size of the local market.
- In general, Customer Experience Centers have an open floor plan, which feels welcoming to clients. Sometimes, smaller zones might be utilized for product demonstrations or hands-on solutions.
- 2D and 3D graphics conveying the company brand, story, and products at least partially cover the walls, even glass walls. Telling your story on the walls offers a great big “WELCOME!” as your guests arrive.
- Because of its stability and permanence, these centers include more sophisticated AV and computer technology, often featuring very large touchscreens for presentations and collaborations with visitors.
- Also because of its size and permanence, these spaces often feature modern, high-end furniture, luxury flooring, upscale lighting, and the finest architectural details.
- Customer Experience Centers usually include comfortable, flexible seating adaptable for various audience sizes.
Take a look at a solid case study from Mack Trucks.
Mack Trucks is an example of a company with a huge product, one that doesn’t seem like it would lend itself well to an indoor Customer Experience Center, but one that is designed well to give clients an immersive experience. It combines 4 distinct areas at their Mack Customer Center facility. Their Customer Experience Zone immerses visitors with high-tech interactive experiences to help visitors better grasp Mack’s story and product advantages. It also includes a product showroom, two test drive tracks, and a museum filled with vintage Mack trucks to help visitors connect to Mack’s heritage.
Customer Experience Centers: Examples From The Tech World
High-tech companies wisely build their Experience Centers to highlight their latest, greatest technology. Often these spaces showcase AI, Augmented and Virtual Reality, The Internet of Things, Robotics, and more. Check out these three high-tech companies’ Customer Experience Centers and see how they utilize their strong vision and excellent design. They are doing it right!
Hewlett Packard Enterprise has many Customer Experience Centers around the world, to serve different geographic and vertical markets. HPE has a video to entice potential visitors to connect with them at one of their Customer Experience Centers. Sometimes they are known as Customer Engagement Centers or Customer Innovation Centers or Executive Briefing Centers, but they all promise an experiential visit and the opportunity to:
- Explore the most technologically advanced solutions to their needs through interactive demonstrations.
- Dialogue on a highly personalized level and dive into proven use cases.
- Collaborate to arrive at a deeper understanding of key strategies and emergent technologies that can boost your company’s business.
- Help your business expand its capabilities and drive competitive advantage
- Optimize your tech investments and stay abreast of new technology in a rapidly changing industry.
- Plan your company’s next breakthrough.
Cisco’s tagline – “Our customers are our passion and priority” – emphasizes their dedication to customer service and focus. Their Customer Experience Centers offer a customized experience. The agenda is tailored to teach visitor’s specific needs and concerns, guaranteeing that visitors don’t get a stale, canned presentation.
Cisco lets visitors know they will participate in interactive discussions and hands-on demonstrations, as well as hearing Cisco’s own success story. All visitors leave with a “digital transformation roadmap” to give them a sense of how Cisco can make their dreams come true. As a Fortune 100 company, Cisco has 12 Customer Experience Centers in 8 countries and 4 continents.
With their slogan “Fanatical Support,” Rackspace deeply understands and caters to all the stages their potential visitors go through, and they extend their mantra to their Customer Experience Center. Rackspace anticipates and delivers by offering:
- Eight completely different areas that comprise their Customer Experience Center. Rackspace’s Center boasts a lobby, customer common areas, catering areas, meeting rooms, a selfie-station, and graphic-lined walls.
- Unique interactive pieces such as dining tables that are actually white boards in their dining room.
- A stellar reputation in the field. Their center and their website highlight customer satisfaction testimonials.
- Trip planning help from start to finish, even mentioning local places of interest for out-of-town visitors.
Customer Experience Centers: Examples From The Manufacturing World
Unlike tech companies that tend to create their Centers around the latest breaking technology in the industry, manufacturing companies design their Centers to showcase their most advanced products. Here are 3 top examples of Customer Experience Centers in the manufacturing industry.
GE Additive’s two Customer Experience Centers focus on far more than presentations. They offer hands-on, collaborative sessions for their visitors. Because additive manufacturing (AKA 3D printing) is arguably the most disruptive technology in the manufacturing world, these Centers are full-size manufacturing facilities. Visitors get to take part in all of the parts of the manufacturing process, from initial design to actual production. Consequently, they can easily envision how GE could enhance their company’s vision and goals.
Because of the sleek, savvy marketing of the tech world, manufacturers have to overcome the false assumption that the tech revolution has left them behind. Honeywell does that superbly with their three Customer Experience Centers. Visitors can experience how Honeywell automation and sensors can provide actionable data that boosts productivity and maximizes output, while simultaneously ensuring safety and security.
At Ricoh’s 4,000 square meter European Customer Experience Center, they expand the use of their facility beyond just demonstrating their products to customers. This multiple-objective facility use is similar to how many companies design their Innovation Labs to spread their costs and increase their ROI.
Ricoh can:
- Accommodate a test lab for software and digital front ends.
- House a research lab for specialist inkjet development.
- Test the viability of new output print media on-site.
- Advise clients on lean, green manufacturing.
- Provide a knowledge hub for digital printing technologies.
- Provide custom print samples to clients.
Facility Source prides itself on innovative, sophisticated design and thorough planning and implementation. Allow our expert Account Executives, designers, and craftsmen to deftly create a Customer Experience Center that will provide clients with the hope, vision, and outcome they’ve been seeking.
