Priceless: Turning Ordinary Products into Extraordinary Experiences

While not dense with charts and diagrams, this book provides a lively and practical overview of the subject and how to begin thinking about reassessing your business to create the right customer experience. Through examples such as the Experience Engagement Process and Experience Event Matrix, the author shows how the reader can think strategically about the customer experience. In the second section, each chapter ends with a series of tactical tasks as part of a “priceless roadmap” for the manager to consider.

The second half of the book is a roadmap for how to implement the customer experience, however the authors may have been better served to organize it in more logical terms as opposed to a narrative, adding diagrams or illustrations to make it more understandable and structured. Those who crave for details on how to measure customer experience or detailed examples of how to implement will find the book thin in this respect. For more on this subject see Customer Experience Strategy (Senteo review).

Whether their complaints are about customer-proof packaging, a never-ending voice mail loop, or a purchase that doesn’t live up to its claims, customers are consistently disappointed in their interactions with companies. And while experts say that the creation of “customer experiences” is the new requirement for success, few companies have managed to deliver. Now, veteran experience consultants, Diana LaSalle and Terry A. Britton take businesses from concept to practice, offering a tactical guide to creating value-adding experiences around any product or service – whether the offering is candles or computers, catering services or consulting advice. The authors argue that most managers remain stuck in a “features and benefits” mentality that zeroes in on what a product does. That focus needs to shift, they say, to what a product or service offers and how it affects customers’ lives. LaSalle and Britton provide a hands-on model for understanding the relationship between value and experience, and then show how companies can leverage that knowledge to transform ordinary products and services into experiences that customers consider extraordinary – even priceless.

Readers will find the “Experience Engagement Process” and the “Experience Event Matrix” useful in better understanding their business in the context of customer experience.  The manager will find the “priceless roadmap” structure thought provoking as a framework for considering both the tactical and strategic mission of creating the  value-adding customer experience.