buena vista

Quick trip: Nokia flagship and Apple store experiences

Just got back from a quick field trip to London's new Nokia Flagship store and the Apple store.

Set myself a research-y task for each store, to help ascertain just how good the customer experience was.

Nokia Flagship

First impressions at Nokia were interesting - I was actually 'greeted' by a burly security guy. Well that felt weird. The store was pretty empty (about 19.00hrs) and it all felt a bit 'obvious' - no delightful surprises. Many of the physical details mimicked the Apple store, except in the overall dimensions - deep and thin compared to Apple's deep and wide. Plus of course the product is so much smaller and Nokia had transposed mostly stills photography at Apple for moving images on plasmas. And I was never going to buy a phone from the Nokia Flagship even if I could, this was primarily about product research.

Staff were pretty friendly (but hey the store's only a few weeks 'old') but it seemed to follow the Apple formula; knowledgeable 'fans' as staff, a few key functional areas and generally 'trying to be groovy' interiors which in so many respects aped Apple's interior strategy and fit-out. It must be said that overall there had been little attempt to break away from this established Apple archetype - shame.

My task to seek a logical upgrade to my SE K800i failed to yield an obvious successor. Sales assistants were moderately knowledgeable / helpful but I did at times feel as though I was being forced down a scripted tunnel.

Apple store

A short dash (they're pretty much opposite each other on Regent Street), and straight into the hustle bustle of the Apple store. In contrast to the (very  new) Nokia Flagship, Apple was still rammed with customers. I must have spent 20 minutes wandering around as staffers were too busy to greet me or ask if I needed help - in fact you need to just as lucky to grab one as find a machine that's not being played with. But that's all OK.

The whole Apple store feels 'just right' - someone carefully selected this space for it's proportions and ability to cater for sheer numbers.

My trip was intentional - a purchase pre-planned but needed confirmation - and at the till what struck me was how readily the staffer dropped what he was doing to talk me through the product over on display.

He had a script - or more accurately a guide but would happily detour from it depending on my responses - and that made me feel in control.

The interaction felt like one between friends or colleagues - not one between a customer and retailer.

Forming a relationship - we traded personal experiences, I found out he studies at the college I attended. (interesting that - fan and user first, retailer second)

I bought an accessory - actually something I needed, nicely explained for a change. One happy, valued customer.

Conclusions?

Apple still wins convincingly. Why? The experience was far more pleasant, engaging and rewarding - the service very customer-centric, the space perfect. You feel as if you're at once front and back stage.

And in addition, (and this is just as important) the products too were probably easier to sell in Apple compared to Nokia. Apple has a (perceptively) tighter product range, easier to differentiate and each with real tangible benefits. Nokia's product range is far broader; differences and benefits harder to discern, which made it confusing.

Apple wins.

Product and service, people and environment all in harmony.

Punching out.

I've finally put down Alex Frankel’s ‘Punching in…’

(that's not Alex in the picture)

For front and back of house tales from UPS, Enterprise, Gap, Starbucks, Apple – it makes for an interesting, enjoyable and worthwhile read.

I’m not going to attempt a robust review of the book, but a couple of things popped out. In all of Alex’s roles, he was providing a service, he was (occasionally) creating a product but it was at UPS that he felt most at home.

“UPS was the only workplace where I felt as if I was actually learning a craft and helping shape the final product, instead of acting the part of a craftsman. UPS was the company that had best married back end technology with what I came to think of as the company’s human front end.”

Clearly this speaks to Alex’s personal aptitude, as I’m sure there are as many hard working coworkers who feel as engaged in their roles as there are disenfranchised. So Human Resourcing, recruitment - is of utmost importance and so are the strategic people frameworks we create.

I’m also intrigued by the potentially phoney ‘act’ that we require of many providing service on the font line. Can we really, really expect authenticity when we implicitly understand that for many (most?) employees, it’s all just an act?

What do you design, Daddy?

We've been thinking a lot recently about how to describe what we do as Service Designers. For such a relatively new discipline, it's important we do ourselves justice; as individuals, as part of a commercial organisation and of a greater industry.

I've always used the ability to describe what I do at work to my mother - as my benchmark. So when I graduated as a graphic designer, I found it easy to describe what I did; designing posters, logos, exhibitions, brochures and the like - chiefly because she had a very good understanding and experience of such things.

When some time later I embraced multimedia, I was still able to describe what I did to her - only not quite as well; because for her, it was more abstract. So I used metaphors. I talked about multimedia, CD ROMs and early websites being like a mixture of magazines, Television, animation and radio - that you could control using a computer (she'd seen my first Mac SE so she even had a handle on that). She had a very reasonable level of understanding

Now, having moved into service design and innovation, it gets a bit trickier. It's even more abstract - but at least my mom knows what a service is - she's spent a good few years experiencing them and delivering them (she worked in a department store for 20 years).

So imagine what happens when my seven year old son asks me what I design.

At least he understands I'm a designer, and at least he's inquisitive (young kids ask the coolest questions - last year he asked me what 'infinity' was).

But my son has almost no experience of services that he can articulate, but in the spirit of fatherhood and inclusivity I attempt to answer the question and the technique I use is my fall-back. To put myself in his shoes (yup, I got 'user-centred'). I use an example.

I talked about the man that delivers food in lots of different coloured plastic bags. I talked about the website where we choose what we want. I talked about the computer that turns that into a list for someone in a warehouse or maybe a store to go pick for us... etc... etc. And I talk about how we pay for it, how happy we are and how we do it a again and again... (Ocado).

Often that's what I do for folks who ask me what I do if the 'I design services...' answer draws a blank. Even for fellow designers, describing the strategic generation of joint value creation by customer and service provider through something we don't own but is really useful and experience over time across multiple touchpoints... doesn't always work. But the example usually does, because there many, many examples - so it's simply the case of selecting the best one. On second thoughts, maybe for my son, Lego factory might have been a better example.

Anyway, what stories and examples do you have up your sleeve when faced with similar questions? Think about it. What's the elevator pitch of what you do. How do you describe service design (or whatever) to a potential beneficiary of that skill, to someone who you just know will open their wallet once they understand the value of what you can deliver?

It's a big incentive. But for those potential clients to buy-in, we need to be able to tell stories, to bring to abstract stuff to life, to be honest and believable.

In fact all the things you do for a seven year old kid or your mom.