Priceless

Introduction

A tactical guide to enhancing any product or service with value-adding experiences

Selling Points

Shows the value of creating extraordinary customer experiences and offers ways to implement experience-based marketing strategies.

Valuable addition to the literature: Picks up where The Experience Economy leaves off by taking 'experience' out of the classroom and into the trenches.

Tactical approach: Offers valuable frameworks to help readers understand how they can create a better experience for their customers and add value to their products. For example, the 'Experience Engagement Process' provides companies with a system to evaluate how well their offering aligns with customer expectations, and the 'Four Components of Experience" presents building blocks for creating an experience-focused marketing strategy.

About the book

Whether their complaints are about customer-proof packaging, a never-ending voice mail loop, or a purchase that doesn't live up to its claims, customers are consistently disappointed in their interactions with companies. And while experts say that the creation of "customer experiences" is the new requirement for success, few companies have managed to deliver.

Now, veteran experience consultants Diana LaSalle and Terry A. Britton take businesses from concept to practice, offering a tactical guide to creating value-adding experiences around any product or service-whether the offering is candles or computers, catering services or consulting advice.

The authors argue that most managers remain stuck in a "features and benefits" mentality that zeroes in on what a product does. That focus needs to shift, they say, to what a product or service offers and how it affects customers' lives. LaSalle and Britton provide a hands-on model for understanding the relationship between value and experience, and then show how companies can leverage that knowledge to transform ordinary products and services into experiences that customers consider extraordinary-even priceless.

Drawing from extensive research and the stories of experience pioneers, the authors introduce new systems-the "Experience Engagement Process" and the "Experience Event Matrix"-businesses can use to:

- Evaluate the entire consumption experience through the customers' eyes
- Better understand what various customer groups value and why
- Identify areas where new dimensions of value can be added to an offering
- Eliminate customer sacrifice and increase rewards at every stage of the process
- Align products, service, and environment to deliver a complete value experience
- Translate experience creation into bottom-line profits

Lively, practical, and entertaining, Priceless helps managers, marketers, and strategists recognize exactly what customers want and how to deliver it. We'll never look at what we sell-or buy-the same way again.

Diana LaSalle and Terry A. Britton are founding partners of True North Strategies, a Savannah-based experience consulting firm.