Have a favourite restaurant where you like to dine frequently? Had a favourite theme park that you visited as a child and now take your children to feel the same joy and thrill? Then you will understand the importance of customer experience (CX) in creating memorable experiences.
Being in the business of creating unforgettable experiences, we know that it requires a deep understanding of guest preferences to be able to bring them back to our facilities time and again. Importantly, to become their favourite fun destination.
When we speak about unforgettable experiences, it goes beyond offering competitive pricing and new products and services. Of course, these play a key role in attracting guests but what makes them stick is the nature of engagement and how they feel when they visit our venues. Importantly, how we engage with them even when they are not at our venues through our digital channels. That’s the kind of CX we are keen to offer – hybrid and high engagement, therein deepening the brand recall. And curating delightful CX requires a fusion of human touch and data-driven analysis.
So, how do we do that? Here’s a step-by-step process.
Start with target audience analysis
Being part of a leisure and entertainment group that caters for children from different age groups, I find the process of curating impactful CX quite fascinating wherein we have to engage with children and their parents. As much as the needs of children belonging to a specific age group are different, their parents also look for different things. A mom to a toddler will look for something different compared to one with children aged eighty-nine, and these are completely different from what a new mother seeks.
Now let’s break it down.
A new mom who struggles to get enough sleep doesn’t browse social media for long, so her search is pointed towards exactly what her newborn needs. This is different from a mother of a toddler who has slightly more time to browse through social media to find the most engaging activities and products for her children. This section constitutes almost 80% of our target audience. While mothers with children aged eight-nine tend to spend more time on social media – as well as in shopping malls – browsing entertaining activities for their children, and they account for the remaining 20% of our audience.
So, that’s how we should first define our target audience. Only then we can curate the desired content and experiences for them. We have to emotionally connect with them through tailored experiences and personalised services.
Build real connections
The edutainment space is quite competitive with new players vying to take a slice of the existing pie. Yet we have managed to record some eye-popping numbers:
| Repeat customers (Orange Wheels) | Over-60% |
| Organic Instagram followers (Orange Wheels) | Up from 1,700 to over-12,500 |
| The customer interaction rate on Instagram (Orange Wheels) | Up from 0.5% to 80% after Orange Wheels opened at Town Centre in Dubai |
So, how did we get here?
By building real connections with our guests. And it’s our people – who we like to call ‘magicians’ – got us here. Beyond safety, hygiene and exciting product offerings what makes guests stick with us is the level of engagement and customer service. At the venues, our staff are fun, energetic and ever keen to help, while online too we make the engagement as authentic as possible.
Resultantly, our organic reach increased due to positive word of mouth publicity by our existing customers, which eventually also brings in new customers. By building and nurturing real connections with our guests, we are able to arouse emotions that create a ripple effect online and offline.
Measure impact and adapt
Interestingly, there is never a one size fits all approach to measuring the impact of CX, especially digitally.
For example, local Arabs constitute a large portion of our repeat audience who like to consume our social media content but are less likely to engage with the posts. But whenever we announce an activity/promotion/workshop/opening, they make it a point to visit us. Even at our venues, they are more private in their interactions. So, while they are our valued repeat customers who like personalised attention, their engagement tends to be limited. Interestingly, this audience too can’t be generalised because local Arabs from Dubai are keener to engage on social media – they are also more vocal and demanding – compared to those from Abu Dhabi.
Having said that, tracking digital CX through social media performance is complex. While the number of likes and shares is a good indicator, even more, crucial is getting the user to engage by commenting, indicating optimum CX.
So, to be intuitive we have to first understand the section of our target audience that engages with our content when they are most active on social media and what content resonates with them the most.
Second, we have to be flexible in our approach to adapt and leverage new features to enhance engagement. For instance, now Reels and Stories tend to work better than static posts on Instagram. So, we must leverage these features.
Finally, it is crucial to building a sense of trust among our audience on social media and at our venues. Guests will return only if they trust us to create memorable experiences every time they visit us.
By Nidhin Raj,
Marketing Executive, IdeaCrate Edutainment Company