Understanding Customer Experience

Due to a recent personal loss, last week I visited a funeral agency. Since this visit for obvious reasons is very much on top of my mind, I will take this opportunity to reflect upon the physical space and servicescape of the funeral office. This being my first visit to a funeral office, I did not know what to expect, more than what I had seen on tv, or a different kind of agency (general script). Physical space: The office entrance was discrete with a small waiting room. The office space had a clean scandinavian design. There were two private offices. An agent geeted us by the door, and was kind to squeeze us in on a short notice. The office room was small and overfurnished, filld with piles of paper. But there was a shelf of miniatures of coffins, which made it easier for us to pick the right model, according to our budget.   Digital space: The agent used their web page as a reference, a lot of information and their enlisted products and services where easily accessed. For

Resource integration gives a new perspective to how the customer's are affected and co-create value to the product or service. In her tutorial video, assistant professor Maria Åkesson decribes resource integration as how the customers interact with each other in the servicescape. Very little of this process can be influenced by the firm (open part), most of the resource integration happens without the firm's inclunece, only on the customer's terms (closed part). Customer for instance uses resources before and after a direct contact with the firm, such as finding information online, or asking friends for advice. Here the firm's assignment is to make the resources as user-friendly as possible. In a restaurant this could be easy-to-find-menus and other information on web-sites and the social media. The word of mouth becomes a useful tool, when the restuarants reputation is on the top. Other customers recommend the place to their friends, and talk about in positive terms

The surroundings in which the customer experiences the purchase of the product or a service is important for all the good reasons: it reflects to the products quality, price, user-friendliness and style. In this on-going module of the course Understanding Customer Experience, I'm looking forward to learning theories about the experience rooms, such as servicescape. In this course I've used the family restaurant as my study case to analyze and learn about the different theories on understanding customer experience. I hope to get some useful ideas and tools on how we can use the exterior, interior, decorations, graphic design and perhaps even our website or facebook-site to gain a competitive advantage