Performing Magic: Creating Wonder for Your Customers
The service economy and the service industry have become so commoditized that interacting with most services is about as exciting as watching paint dry. The mere mention of being a service holds no wonder or intrigue in the mind of customers. To illustrate my point, the most lucrative services are those of the advertising and marketing industry who live to make other products and services sound amazing.
One reason these services are so large is due to the need for other service businesses to creatively communicate how different they are from their competition. The reality, the difference, in most is so minuscule that the advertising must rely on entertainment or distraction rather than communicate the uniqueness of the service to catch the consumer’s attention.
How can this be changed?
Learn to be a magician. More precisely, leverage the 3 phase of performance technique that magicians have used for centuries. Adapt the magician's theatrical technique to entice and wow your customers and be memorable.
The Promise
In the first phase, the magician shows the audience something ordinary. Sometimes he even allows them to inspect the object to assure them that the object is ordinary with no special properties, then show the audience the ordinary object clearly in plain sight.
The Turn
At this point, the magician then takes the ordinary object and makes it do something extraordinary. The object vanishes. A feat of magic, but the audience doesn’t respond with applause yet. Somehow the act is not complete. The audience is left wanting something more even if they don’t know what that something could be. They want closure and something memorable as part of the price of the magician having their attention.
Let me stop here to explain the comparison of magic and service.
In the world of business, the ‘promise’ of a service provider is the service they offer. Usually, it looks just like every other ordinary service offering in the same industry. Laundry services clean clothes just like every other laundry service. The expected outcome is that your clothes get clean. Customers don’t care if you use tap water or filtered water as part of your “special” cleaning process. They only care if you can clean their clothes at a better or cheaper price than the competition.
It has become the role of the advertising and marketing companies to try and create ‘The Turn’ to draw the consumer in to buy your service or products. They are masters at making the process out to be something that transforms an ordinary process or product into something that looks and sounds extraordinary. Just sit and watch 3 hours of broadcast television and you’ll see this play out every seven minutes.
The challenge for the service provider is the consumers are too well educated. The advertising world has programmed us to know and expect that any offer of a service provider is not really what they promote. We know that no cruise ship is going to whisk us away to some enchanted, undiscovered island paradise or that auto repair shop is going to make our car like new again. These are just ways to catch your attention to buy.
Being different or unique seems impossible without the use of advertising and marketing unless a service provider could act as a magician.
The Service Promise
Your current business is, in fact, the Promise. An ordinary service like all the other services like you. Just one more service trying to grab a bit more market share and a little more of the consumer’s pocketbook. This doesn’t change. Knowing and understanding this can be to your advantage. Like the magician performing a magic trick, the object is ordinary. If it's ordinary, then there is the possibility to turn it into something extraordinary.
The Engaging Turn
The Turn is the engagement you stage with the consumer. Unlike the other ordinary services, you transform the action of the service into something extraordinary. You must stage and “perform” your service in such a way that the customer does not expect it even though the service outcome remains the same. The magic is in the performance and engagement with the customer.
Starbucks stages the service with the order window, the customization of the order, and the performance of making your cup of coffee. They turn the ordinary delivery of coffee into something more. It use to be that Starbucks baristas even took it a step further by adding artistry to the topping foam. They transformed the ordinary into the extraordinary.
The ‘Turn’ is what experience stagers call the experience. It is where the customer engages with the service in such a way that sets it apart from other providers. Starbuck is not a coffee service, it becomes a coffee drinker’s experience or a child receives the Birth Certificate for the bear they just created at Build-A-Bear.
But what about the third phase of the magic trick? What’s the final act?
The Prestige
Now comes the point that creates the applause for the magician. This is where the ordinary object that vanished, reappears somewhere else. Somewhere completely unexpected. The magician makes a coin vanish into thin air and then pulls the coin from behind the ear of some child. Tada and here comes the applause.
The Service Prestige
Okay, for your ‘Prestige’ moment I’m not suggesting you bring back the dirty clothes or unrepair a car or revert back whatever you do for your customer. That would not warrant any applause. What I am suggesting is using the ‘Prestige’ as the reveal of the service you performed. Make it special. Make it a signature moment in the engagement with the customer.
Starbucks performs their version of the ‘Prestige’ when they announce your order publically, or when at Build-A-Bear the newly stuffed bear is boxed up in their travel house and the child is issued the birth certificate. Make the reveal a special moment for the customer. It’s moments like these that are the best marketing tools you could have in your arsenal of business.
In order to stand out amongst your competition, you must ‘perform’ your service, not just do the process of the service. And if you or your staff are ‘performing’ your offering, make sure the reveal is special and memorable for the customer. That same customer will become your advertising and marketing media and be better than any marketing ‘Turn’ message. Invest your money in making your service an act of magic, an experience and avoid needing to discount to compete like every other ordinary service in your same industry.
