Order Up!

All this week, my class has been discussing the idea of a customer experience. Products, as most people know, aren’t just about the physical products themselves. Rather, it’s about the experience the product can enable, empower, or enhance for the user. Thus, when it comes to the creation of products and services, having the experience in mind is crucial. To me, it’s such a simple concept, but so difficult to implement. It’s so easy to say, “I understand that my product or service has to serve a bigger purpose than just exist,” but it’s difficult to integrate the product or service into the lives of a consumer. I think that’s why companies who are consistently successful at this concept (companies like Apple) get this brand of innovation. This kind of consumer-placed label or conceptual framework allows the company to get away with a lot. Take, for instance, the iPad. To me, the concept of the iPad is great. It serves a niche market, is certainly useful, is relatable for wide audiences, and is just downright cool. But, in its first edition, I was disappointed (as I am by most first generation Apple products). However, everybody still wants an iPad, and I don’t blame them. The amount of prestige and the message having an iPad sends out in a social environment is great, and Apple takes advantage of the fact that everyone thinks their products are innovative, cool, and a must-have. People think they’re so fantastic that they are willing to look past the flaws (where’s the webcam? where’s the USB port?), and that’s a huge win for Apple.

In this blog post, I was asked to write about and deconstruct an experience that was particularly meaningful for me. While most of the class discussion that has occurred deals with products, my intuition told me that I wanted to talk about one of the best dining experiences I’ve ever had.

I hope that I can convey why this particular dining experience was so memorable. The best place to start is to say that I am talking about a time last year where I had dinner at an Olive Garden. There are elements about this Olive Garden that I remember vividly that certainly helped contribute to my experience. Specifically, I would like to focus on five key tenets of why my dining experience was so great.

Initially, when I went to this Olive Garden, it was at the end of a very long and exhausting speech tournament. We were in a different city (I can’t recall where, exactly) eating dinner after a long weekend. Now, speech tournaments in a nutshell are incredibly exhausting, in a physical, emotional, and mental sense. We are physically drained because of a lack of sleep, while we are emotionally drained from emotional performances and mentally exhausted from having to have intense concentration throughout the weekend. The Olive Garden experience I had consisted of what most would say was just a great dining experience, but I believe it was my specific context and environment that made it truly meaningful.

Second, the restaurant was able to seat our entire team (25-30 or so people) right when we got there, which was a huge breath of fresh air after an exhausting weekend. I sat with three of my teammates at a small booth and they all happened to be seniors. This brings me to second belief that the company I was with enhanced my experience. The conversation was great and I always laugh a lot and am in a good mood when I am with my teammates. I was immediately at ease and in a good mood.

The third tenet is that the server was awesome. He anticipated our needs before we even knew we had them, was always on top of bringing us things quickly, and understood the appropriate times to check on us. Plus, he was just a cool guy. The ability to juggle multiple tables during a busy night is a skill that I have always admired, and he had that ability on lockdown.

In addition to his sheer skill, the server gave off a genuine vibe. What I mean by this is that he seemed to truly be enjoying what he was doing and it made for a very relaxing and enjoyable evening. I think that I specifically chose the word “genuine” because it didn’t seem like he was working so hard for a tip. Instead, it really just felt like he wanted to make sure we got fed delicious food in an appropriate timeframe.

Speaking of delicious food, my fifth and final tenet deals with the fact that the food was fantastic. Now, I don’t normally think very highly of Olive Garden past the soup, salad, and breadsticks (because seriously, the soup, salad, and breadsticks at any Olive Garden is out of this world), but everything I had that night was absolutely delicious. The food was fresh, hot, and flavorful (I’m getting hungry now!). Plus, it just hit the spot.

I think that this combination of elements made for a great experience. I think you can look at this experience in a few ways: first, you can think of the food as an actual product, but the experience itself made it much better. This is certainly not a new concept, as dining in a restaurant usually entails a significant experience. However, you can also look at Olive Garden as a service. Because they take the time to seat guests, cook and provide food, and wait on customers, the restaurant business is really a service. Whatever way you look at it, I had a great time.

This experience really relates back to what we’ve been talking about in my class. I think this is a perfect example of showing that the extra effort you put in when considering a customer’s experience can really pay off. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a tip that big go to anyone from a group of four people. We all tipped well above 25% and even went through the trouble of asking for our server’s manager to tell him that our server was great.

In the end, the experience really does make or break the product or service. So, it is important to consider and take into account the experience in the design phase. Well, with that said, I’m off to Olive Garden! Well, by Olive Garden, I mean I’m off to class. But, I’m still thinking about those breadsticks and I hope you are, too.

Persona!

Preface: Please note that the format/font may look a little funny. It's because I copy/pasted it from Word. :-).

Dictionary.com provides two interesting definitions for the word persona. The first, a more general definition, is that a persona is “a person’s perceived or evident personality, as that of a well-known official, actor, or celebrity; personal image; public role,” while the other delves into the psychological philosophies of Carl Jung and describes it as “the mask or façade presented to satisfy the demands of the situation or the environment and not representing the inner personality of the individual; the public personality.” In this blog post, I find it important to explore both of these definitions.

Initially, to set up a framework for why I’m writing about personas, I feel that I should say that the goal of my blog post is to create a persona for me or someone like me with key nuances, opportunities, and insights for marketers to capitalize on. However, in order for me to do this successfully, I first want to quickly discuss the ideas of personas.

In the first definition, I was struck by the idea that personas are all built upon perceptions. It brings up the concept that how we are perceived is as important, if not more, than who we truly are. From a marketing perspective, I would certainly think that a person’s personal image and public role were important in the development of insights. A person’s personal image allows a marketer to get into the insecurities, vulnerabilities, and ultimately, needs of that person in order to develop a solution for problems the user may or may not know exist. On the flipside, the public role a person plays allows for a marketer to study the environment a person is in, observe how someone interacts with others around them, and develop key social implications for the way they conduct their daily activities.

In the second definition, Carl Jung and Dictionary.com describe a persona as something that does not represent the inner personality of the individual, but rather, the public personality. This concept is fascinating to me. Marketing challenges people to not only be specific down to an individual’s needs, but to also scale a concept across an entire persona to reach large amounts of people. Yet, while marketing clearly deals with a lot of psychology, the Jung definition states that a persona does not truly represent the individual. The first question that pops into my mind in response to that statement is “Does that matter?” and in the end, I don’t think it does. If a marketer is able to correctly identify the public personality of an individual and scale it across large groups of people, despite the inability for the marketer to capture the true representation of the individual, I think the marketer could still succeed.

Now that I’ve successfully ranted about my thoughts on the definition of persona, I want to begin to describe a persona that I believe represents me or people like me. One of the readings for class was a chart of Cohort Segments. Two segments jumped out as relatively representative of me when I first read them: Jason, a male student and grad who represents “Physically active, technologically inclined young men finishing school or embarking on their first job,” and Jonathan, an elite single man who represents “High-powered career-driven men with sophisticated tastes, extensive investments, and the means to travel the world.” The interesting thing is that while I currently identify best with Jason, I connected with the cohort of Jonathan because he represents something I aspire to be.

That being said, I present to you an attempt at the representation of a persona for Brendan, a 21-year-old college senior looking to enter the “real world” to find his first job.

• · Brendan has just started his final year in undergrad, a year unlike any other. His focus has continued to expand outside the classroom on securing a job.

  · He is the first to admit that sometimes, he takes too much on his plate. He participates in a lot of activities and lives by his Google Calendar.

  · He prides himself on time management, organization, and communication skills, but understands that he doesn’t have all the answers.

  · His parents got divorced when he was nine but both parents eventually got remarried. He lived with his dad and step-mother while his mom and step-father remained close-by. His freshman year of college, his dad moved to Hong Kong for a job.

  · His family dynamic has also introduced two additional step-siblings into his life. He remains closest to his brother, rather than his step-brother or step-sister.

  · His freshman year of college, his step-mother developed (and eventually defeated) breast cancer.

  · He competes heavily in collegiate competitive speech (the speech side of Speech and Debate). Thus, he spends his weekends traveling across the country instead of doing more traditional “college student activities.”

  · He tries to stay up-to-date with current events. He reads The Economist on and off and has gained exposure to contemporary issues in culture through collegiate speech. He engages in active dialogue about social issues.

  · He loves college football (namely Longhorn Football). That’s all there is to that bulletpoint.

  · He follows his instincts in terms of leadership and guidance. He cares a lot about the well-being of his friends.

  · He doesn’t wait for things to come to him; he seeks out answers and opportunities. He tries to be proactive.

  · He is quick to understand how to navigate websites in order to search/research any topic he needs the answer to. He lends these skills to help people around him.

  · He defines himself as a blend between a person with a Type A personality and a couch potato. This dichotomy is embodied in the idea that he can simultaneously watch CNN and High School Musical (1, 2, and 3).

  · He is a social person who can respect his alone time, but prefers to be around people.

  · He’s a gamer that leans towards Nintendo products. He grew up with Nintendo and loves the games of his childhood.

  · He loves to eat anything and everything. He abuses his metabolism by over-eating and has failed at every attempt to do any exercise beyond walking to class.

  · He doesn’t spend his money on much, but what he does spend his money on matters (food, gas, trips to see people, fun activities).

  I must admit that when I was typing up these bulletpoints, I had a distinct audience in mind: marketers who were studying Brendan in order to develop a strategic solution (either through a product or service) that would help make Brendan’s life easier.

  In the end, I hope you enjoyed my discussion on personas. I found myself simply rattling off universal concepts that I felt people could identify with or relate to. As I continue my journey in school, I hope to learn the nuances of translating insights (or bulletpoints) like these into tangible goods and services to improve the lives of consumers everywhere.

New Blog Title!

:),

Brendan