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The Future Of The Customer Experience Is The Experience

This article is more than 8 years old.

Although it's important to streamline the customer experience, to make it “effortless,” as the latest buzzword puts it (because nobody enjoys standing in line or having to repeat their credit card number), what's your business going to be left with, once you’ve done all that streamlining?

Perhaps just a commodity, unless you offer your customers something more than mere convenience.

So what should that “more” be that you offer? Well, one of the ways to distinguish your business with today’s customers is to fulfil their craving for adventure, excitement, discovery, even danger. Millennials in particular (the enormous generation, born 1980-2000, that is quickly becoming dominant in the marketplace) often view commerce and even obligatory business travel as opportunities rather than burdens, due to the adventures that can be had along the way. And more than twice as many millennials as those in other age brackets say they are willing “to encounter danger in pursuit of excitement,” according to data from Barkley.

Now, when I use the word “adventure” or even the word “danger,” I don’t mean the customer who’s looking to indulge in BASE jumping. I’m talking, rather, about the customer who wants to shop, as a lark, at a popup store with no history and nothing but word of mouth to recommend it. Or the customer who's willing to risk half a day to trek to Voodoo Doughnut on a gritty corner in downtown Portland, aware that the line they’ll face when they get there may wrap around the block and that the most popular varieties of donut may be all sold out. (These, by and large, are the ones with names so outrageously inappropriate and/or shapes so anatomically accurate that I can’t even come close to naming or describing them here.)

In a hospitality context, it can also mean the customers who are seduced by the setup at The Ranch at Emerald Valley, in Colorado Springs.

The Cloud Camp Lodge, 9200 Feet Up © Micah Solomon micah@micahsolomon.com

The Ranch at Emerald Valley, a group of cabins arranged around a campfire pit and main lodge 8,200 feet above sea level and only accessible by an ear-poppingly steep dirt road, and its sister property, Cloud Camp, yet another thousand feet up, are probably not what come to mind when you think of a Five Star, Five Diamond hotel, let alone the triple-Five Star Broadmoor hotel (that’s five stars for dining, five for accommodations, five for the spa). Yet these rustic cabins–which, it must be said, are airy, architect-designed, and impeccably maintained–are among the latest expansions of the Broadmoor property and marque, and fit closely with the theme of adding adventure to the customer experience.

Heading off from the “mothership” (the nearly 800-room Broadmoor Hotel, 2,200 feet of elevation below) the rough and blind-cornered dirt road carries you up the hill via SUV (Cadillac SUV, natch), or, if you're heading to Cloud Camp, the final part of your journey can be made on a mule or in an open-aired jeep via Broadmoor partner Adventures Out West. (This latter will be driven, if you’re lucky, by Dusty the Cowboy, who not only looks like he’s from Central Casting but, in fact, is: “I keep getting chosen to act in Westerns. It's pretty steady work; one time they paid me to get killed six separate times in nine episodes of Young Riders [a cowboy miniseries]; they just dress me up in different outfits and makeup, and I fall to the ground a different way every time.” Is it hard on the psyche to die repeatedly, I want to know. Cowboy Dusty reassures me that it’s not: "I figure if I can still drive to the bank to cash the checks, it means I'm plenty alive.”)

Once you arrive high up the mountain at the Ranch, there’s not a motor vehicle in sight, nor many other signs of what century you’re in. After some bona fide cowboy coffee (boiled coffee in an enamel mug atop the firepit) in the morning–accompanied, it must be said, world-class pastries and a chef-cooked breakfast that are far removed from what I imagine chuckwagon cooking to be), the order of the day is low-tech, timeless pursuits like archery, fly fishing, hiking, or low-key bouldering.

Steve Bartolin, chairman of The Broadmoor, spoke with me about the philosophy behind the new Wilderness Experience additions, which include not only Emerald Valley Ranch and Cloud Camp but two additional, recently-purchased and developed properties as well: Broadmoor Fishing Camp on the Tarryall River (a restoration of seven miners' cabins and a lodge that all date back to the late 1800's, on a location that boasts five miles of private waters) and the natural landmark Seven Falls, a canyon with a seven-tiered waterfall and a new Broadmoor restaurant, “1858,” whose theme is tied to the Colorado Gold Rush. (The Broadmoor is literally in the backyard, or perhaps the front yard, of Pike’s Peak and Cripple Creek, whose gold discoveries went a long way toward putting Colorado on the map.)  Although, again, I suspect the bison in 1858’s burgers is more tender, and the vegetables–from the Broadmoor’s own consortium of organic farms–are fresher and more flavorful, than what the prospectors of the 19th Century enjoyed.

All these developments are out of the box as far as luxury hospitality has traditionally been configured. But when I look at them in total context and I see how our guests are responding to them, they’re appealing to a more adventurous guest, bringing in younger guests in as well as older guests. We're crossing generations with these offerings.

The goal of this is experiential. We’ve expanded the boundaries of the typical resort experience: we’re creating these experiences that are uniquely Colorado, that have this adventure element, yet all tie into this mother ship of The Broadmoor and our quality standards and service commitment level.  It brings in a whole new element and attracts a whole new market of people who are interested in The Broadmoor but who are active, adventure-seeking, new-experience seeking.

Indeed. The future of the customer experience is the experience. It's the way to go if your goal is to capture the imagination–and the business–of today’s, and tomorrow's, customers.

Micah Solomon is a customer experience consultant, customer service speaker and bestselling business author, most recently of High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service