Defining On-Stage & Off-Stage

31 May 2004 in Best Practices, Business, Customer Relationship by Garrick

On-stage; where employees are likely to bump into customer.
Off-stage; where they are not.

It’s one of my favorite ideas from The Experience Economy is that of on-stage and off-stage.

Preventing off-stage behavior from occuring on-stage is the key to a good customer experience.

My wife has a recent example of where the two collided for a poor customer experience:

The Starbucks was busy when I got there. As I was standing in line, I overheard the barista on the phone:

“It’s real busy right now, I know I scheduled you for 6pm, can you get here by 4?….Hey, I don’t need that kind of attitude from you - especially over the phone.”

She hangs up, turns to me and smiles, “How may I help you?”

How large is “on-stage”? Big. Pine and Gilmore relay Jury consultant Robert Hirschhorn’s advise that law counselors to drive minivans because, “You never know when a juror is going to see you getting in or out of your car.”

UPDATE: Perception Analyzer has also noticed inconsistencies in the Starbucks experience.


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[...] - believing they could support >120 take-offs / hour. Each Organization Needs a Well-Run Off-Stage & an On-Stage:Documentation, research, and internal pol [...]

Working Pathways, LLC » 5 Organizational Tips from Academia added these pithy words on Apr 28 05 at 10:57 am

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