Mike Wittenstein has been speaking and presenting on the customer experience throughout his professional life. Whether in a tight session with a brand team, one-on-one with Chief Experience Officers and Chief Marketing Officers, or the big meeting with the whole organization, he is always on his feet, leading his audience to understanding and insights that create customer experiences that bring customers — and their friends — back for more.
Mike speaks with the authority born of 20 years of leadership in marketing strategy and technology, and a lifetime devoted to the design and management of customer experiences that bond customers to brands.
YOUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND YOUR STORY
“Experience and story are simply two sides of the same coin. An experience is what happens to you that ‘marks’ your mind or soul. The story is what you tell others about the experience.”
Behind every successful business lies a story; not a business plan or a mission statement — a story. Your story sums up your identity, and captures and communicates it in a compelling way. It’s a simple statement of who you are.
Your story creates a profound emotional connection between your business, your employees and your customers. It defines who you are and who you’re not. It sets forth a purpose for everyone and every activity in the business. People know exactly why they are there and what to do. When your employees know how to create it and work to make it real every day, then your customers experience the value of your brand.
If you know how to tell that story, you can unleash its power. If you can articulate in a few words why your business exists — your reason for being — you’re on your way to telling your story.
“No matter how hard you try, or how much you spend, your brand can never be any better than what your customers experience.”
Consider these figures: 80% of companies believe they are delivering a good customer experience. Only 8% of their customers agree. Those figures alone tell you that what may seem simple — consistently creating a good customer experience — is more complicated than any B-school process can create and more subjective than any metric can measure.
Mike Wittenstein has spent his life learning about experiences, and helping people tell their stories. His job is to learn your brand’s story and deliver customer experiences that are beyond expectations. He does that by seeing things you don’t but your customers do.
“Experience design isn’t that hard. Just take note of what happens to you as a customer every day, on every level, and how it makes you feel about the brand. Then turn your insights on to your own customer experience and do everything you can to make the experience better.”
Starbuck’s doesn’t sell coffee, Chick-fil-A doesn’t sell chicken sandwiches, Nike doesn’t sell shoes. They sell an emotional impact, a sense of participation, a good experience that keeps customers coming back because they can count on a great feeling every time they come in contact with the brand. Their brands create preference.
Experience design breaks the customer experience down to the fundamental emotional touch points that make one brand preferred over another. Those touch points are defined and adjusted to appear every place the customer contacts the brand.
When Mike Wittenstein designs a customer experience, every point of contact with the customer and every dimension of the contact is scrutinized. By looking, listening, paying careful attention to your customers and conducting a thorough on-site analysis Mike and his team learn your customers — and what they are experiencing.
IMPLEMENTING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
“You always need to design two experiences. One for the customers, of course, the other for the employees so that they’ll know for themselves what a good experience looks like—and feels like.”
The definitive phase of the customer experience is implementation. Mike helps clients ensure all the organization’s resources work in unison to consistently produce the emotional outcomes that matter most to customers.
Besides his accumulated knowledge, Mike has a proprietary tool kit and carefully selected specialists on call to lead teams through the implementation process, making the tested experience prototypes real.
Investments require business outcomes. Mike is acutely aware of the need for measurement to pilot the design and management of your customer experience. He guides the specification of built-in, continuous measurement systems that focus attention on those variables that create long-term value for customers.
All of my professional life has been dedicated to bringing the best possible customer experiences to life.
Now, as a speaker, my job is to bring the message about the power and importance of the customer experience to audiences. Anybody who has a product, brand or service has a customer experience. You can shape it to be the kind that brings people, and their friends, back for more.
If I can make one person in every audience suddenly say, I need to do that! I know I will have brought value to that person. Awareness is the beginning, and once you’re aware, you can’t go back.
So that’s my story. It’s still going on. I’d like to share some of my experiences with you.
- Mike Wittenstein
No matter how hard you try or how much you spend, your brand can't be any better than what your customers experience.
www.fastcompany.com/user/64563
CEO, Storyminers
Private, 21-50 employees, Marketing / PR / Advertising industryCEO, Storyminers
Private, 21-50 employees, Consulting industrye-visionary for Global Services, helping align IBM service offerings with Chief Marketing Officers globally. Developed new thought leadership, put it in the market, grew the best ideas ones into practices. Later, rinse, repeat.
Thunderbird, American Graduate School of International Management, Arizona, United States
MBA.
Areas of study: international management
services marketing
University of Florida, Florida, United States
Bachelor’s degree, 1979.
Areas of study: area studies
languages
portuguese, spanish, russian
Awards: Phi Beta Kappa
Phi Kappa Phi
Omicron Delta Kappa
University of Florida, Florida, United States
Bachelor’s degree, 1979.
Areas of study: area studies
languages
portuguese, spanish, russian
Awards: Phi Beta Kappa
Phi Kappa Phi
Omicron Delta Kappa
University of Florida, Florida, United States
Bachelor’s degree, 1979.
Areas of study: area studies
languages
portuguese, spanish, russian
Awards: Phi Beta Kappa
Phi Kappa Phi
Omicron Delta Kappa
Centro Unificado Profissional, Brazil
1979.
Areas of study: portuguese language
brazilian society and culture
Pushkin Institute, Russian Federation
1979.
Areas of study: russian language
See All Mike's Contacts | See Extended Network
Find PeopleInvite ContactsFastCompany.com has always been about the...
(502 Members | 18 Discussions)
It's not just about vision and charisma. It's...
(996 Members | 9 Discussions)
This group is open to all members to discuss...
(342 Members | 38 Discussions)
