Your experience is either wasting everyone's time or providing memorable interaction? Which is it?

Does your employee, supplier, or customer characterize an interaction with you as time well spent or time wasted?

Is your money value of time proposition comparable to a day at Disney or an hour looking for lost luggage at the airport?

How much is time worth?

In the experience economy, the money value of time is the key metric that drives the design and management of a memorable experience. It is one of the significant distinctions between the experience economy and the service economy, where the focus is on process metrics.

There is so much competition for our time that the decisions and trade-offs come down to the value we assign to the time we (are asked to) spend. This concept, The Money Value of Time (MVT), was developed by the neoterics of the experience economy Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore, in their iconic book, The Experience Economy.

Time is the only finite resource. Time, whether well spent or wasted, contributes massively to our sentiment about events we experience. Sometimes people make conscious choices; sometimes, they are implicit. Employee, supplier, and customer experience is based on this core metric.

In a free market, we can assess the “money value of time” by dividing the amount of money someone is prepared to pay by the duration of the experience. Katapult, a UK company that designs themed attractions and?experiences, has applied this to various attractions. Their research indicates that the Money Value of Time varies greatly. It also provides us with surprising results. For instance, a round of golf on a public course is twice as valuable an experience as a visit to a movie theatre.

In the XLA Foundation course, we teach and discuss the application of MVT in the services space.

Find ways to test your services against the market if you have a captive situation.

Many service situations in an enterprise are private captive markets. Employees often cannot choose between recruitment, onboarding, service desks, or genius bars.

52% of employees will not call the service desk when they have a service issue

In these situations, it is even more critical to understand the MVT associated with these experiences. That someone cannot choose does not mean they do not want to. They can vote with their feet: “attrition, abandonment, and shunning” are all common behaviors regarding captive services. The business has a reason for shadowing IT. There is a reason that, on average, 52% of employees will not call the service desk when they have a service issue*.

Whether you are talking to consumers or colleagues, every interaction with you is a chance for them to vote with their wallet or their feet. That vote is primarily emotional. They can choose to invest in you, tolerate you, or walk away.

To move on from service management, you must embrace MVT in your design and management. As you do, you will discover that many of the metrics you depend on today are flawed or even irrelevant.

So tell me, is your money value of time comparable to a day at Disney or an hour looking for lost luggage at the airport? Does your employee, supplier, or customer characterize an interaction with you as time well spent or wasted?

Let me know your thoughts. If you want to learn more, sign up for the APMG accredited XLA Foundation class.

* Vanson Bourne The Experience 2020 Report (Nexthink)