An Experience-as-Scheduled versus an Experience-as-Available?
Alan Nance
Strategic Technology Leader | Pioneer of XLA ITIL & Inducted to ITSM Hall of Fame | Top 25 HDI Thought Leader and Digital Experience Expert
One of the principles of experience management is that a staged experience should meet or exceed the expectations of your audience. But what if people have a different expectation of a similar experience? In other words, two people with the same goal desire different experiences.
This can mean that you might have to choose between staging different personalized experiences within your business or specializing your experience by offering it to a subset of the potential audience.
One way of approaching this challenge is designing an Experience-as-Scheduled versus an Experience-as-Available.
Let’s use an example to illustrate this. One of the most exciting, sometimes worrying, but usually rewarding experiences is getting your hair dressed. But the simple art of wash, cut, and dry comes in various staged experiences.
Think about the difference between a Hair Salon and a Barber Shop. The experience outcomes are the same: feeling better about yourself when looking in the mirror. But the experience strategies are very different.
Full disclosure, we can write this with authenticity because one of the authors?likes their haircuts cheap and cheerful, while the other is a frequent guest at the Man Cave For Men in Florida.
In the Essence of Experience, we learn that Ambition is the expected minimally satisfactory experience for a product or service. In our example, two similar experiences have two different ambitions. Let’s look at those differences.
The Salon as an Experience-as-scheduled.
Salons typically take your booking several weeks or even months in advance. Your booking is recorded in a schedule. It is assigned to your preferred ‘stylist.’ To guarantee the experience, walk-in customers are often discouraged and sometimes even penalized by a higher price. The range of services is often elaborate and broad. At the Mancave, you will be treated to exotic experiences like a Master Hot Shave, a Skin Fade, or a Color Cameo. What is a man to choose? Of course, the experience is full of special effects, beer on tap, ice-cold water, and up-sell (“this bottle of stuff will make your hair even more fabulous”)
Generically Experience-as-Scheduled (ExaS) is the approach of guaranteeing a personalized experience by mapping customer demand to a schedule and ensuring experience delivery matches that schedule. There are, however, risks with this approach. Should the desired stylist unexpectedly fall ill, the rigor of the schedule can mean an excessive effort to renegotiate the experience with affected customers.
The Traditional Barber Shop is usually an Experience-as-Available
Traditional Barber Shops typically don’t take bookings. Instead, they work on a first-come-first-served basis, easily organized using a bench where customers shuffle sideways on their bums. The service tends to be spartan at pace!
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To maintain flow, the offerings are limited. 1. Cut. 2. Wash and cut. 3. Wash, cut, and dry.
Generically Experience-as-Available (ExaA) provides a standardized experience when the customer needs it. While it is a seemingly chaotic approach; it is actually easier to observe Queueing Theory in action. The queue on the bench is a visual indicator of the backlog. Prospective customers can make an informed decision to either take a seat and wait or pop over to the supermarket for some groceries and come back later.
Even though Salons and Barbers trade in the same industry, these differing approaches have emerged to suit their customers' needs and personalized preferences. Both offer successful staged experiences.
So when you are thinking about your design. Consider the following:
1.?????Who is my audience?
2.?????What is their experience ambition?
3.?????What is the experience that I want to stage?
4.?????Is Experience-as-scheduled a promising approach for me?
5.?????Is Experience-as-Available a promising approach for me?
The authors would love to hear from you.
Louis Stanford is a 27-year veteran International Advisor and Consultant at ServiceFlow living in South Africa.
Alan Nance is Co-Founder at @XLACollab, an HDI top 25 thought leader, and a pioneer in Experience Management.
PMP?, PSM?Scrum Master, ITIL?4 Strategic Leader, ITIL?4 Managing Professional, ITIL?V3 Expert, Generative AI for PM, ADapT- Agile Digital Transformation Fundamentals, ITXM?-IT Experience Management
3 年This is a very interesting article and way to classify the experiences .. thanks for sharing it .... maybe over time more claissifications will be added... For example, Experience as Demanded, where customer gets what he wants, when he wants, at the place he wants in a more personalized service/product.
President- Xpurt Consulting LLC. *Strategic Planning * Change Management * Asset Management * Leadership Development * Team-Building * Operations Management
3 年What if the experience is not related to a schedule at all, but the immersion of the experience through the delivery (e.g. barber in this case)? The service is irrelevant if the provider is the only means of attaining the experience. This way waiting and observing the experience as a waitee as well as a customer, could be "worth the wait" per se, whereas scheduled service might detract from the experience. Again, dependent on the expectation.
interesting ... trying to relate this to the challenges MSPs have in delivering their standard? services to their customers ... relating it all to FTEs, costs, and in the end, benefits for who? Thoughts jumping all over the place .. also finding other metaphors where this will apply ... interesting topic for a live discussion
Retired after 53 years in IT. Industry Ambassador for itSMF UK. Paul Rappaport Lifetime Achievement Award 2025. Volunteer for Demelza Children Hospice. (Please read ABOUT b4 asking to link)
3 年I believe that too many frameworks both in technology and in other business realms attempt to push that Experience-As-Available approach. Unfortunately what they really mean is Experience-As-We make it available. Fully missing the point of the importance of experience delivery. Great post guys!
Sr. Director, Global Strategy - Digital Workplace Solutions at Unisys Corporation
3 年It occurrs to me that the cost of the salon experience is dramatically different from the barber shop experience. Patrons pay for the experience they wish to receive. The same is true in business, I believe. Businesses will determine which experience level is right for their employees - and in fact will pay for different experience levels for different roles depending on the impact those roles have on the bottom line of the company.