The Gifts of the Pandemic | Stronger Through Customer Experience Elevation

“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” Those are the words of civil rights leader Desmond Tutu.

This is the final post in a series titled The Gifts of the Pandemic.

If you’ve followed this series, you know we’ve been exploring gifts or teachable moments from the pandemic, such as:

  • Humility
  • Empathy
  • Adaptivity
  • Purpose
  • Gratitude

For me, one of the most significant benefits of this unwanted crisis has been a recommitment to the human experience. By that, I mean, leaders have demonstrated more compassion and respect for their employees’ needs. Team members have made sacrifices for one another and exceeded customer expectations.

Acknowledging the impact of the pandemic on experience delivery, one of the authors of the groundbreaking book on human experience elevation (The Experience Economy), Joe Pine, shared the following with me:

“Undeniably experience stagers like theaters, shopping malls, events, and types of tourism were hit hard, but digital experience stagers like entertainment, gaming, and video-conference platforms boomed. Experience staging remained and will remain a central driver of perceived value. While health conditions dictate available experience staging platforms, there is no denying that people want to do business with those who stage experiences for them.”

Joe added, “Throughout the pandemic and beyond, value involves refreshing the places where you stage experiences, redesigning offerings, and renewing capabilities. Leaders that effectively staged experiences during the pandemic did so by building value that was robust, cohesive, personal, dramatic, and transformative. Those leaders also renewed their capabilities to succeed in a new environment.”

Inspired by Joe’s insights, here are your weekly challenge questions:

  1. Do you accept the premise that your ability to stage experiences for your people and your customers is the central driver of perceived value?
  2. How have you built value during the pandemic by staging robust, cohesive, personal, dramatic, and transformative experiences?
  3. Focusing on just two of the dimensions highlighted by Joe, how might you increase the cohesiveness and personalization of care that you provide to all you serve?

For more about human experience elevation, please pick-up or gift a copy of my book Stronger Through Adversity, which provides more than 20 pandemic forged lessons from 140 plus leaders like the CEOs and Presidents of Target, Verizon, Kohl’s, Microsoft, and Marriott. To elevate the experience of those fighting COVID-19, I’m donating a portion of the book’s proceeds to the international nonprofit Direct Relief, which provides food and supplies to those on the frontline.

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Joseph A. Michelli, Ph.D. is a professional speaker and chief experience officer at The Michelli Experience. A New York Times #1 bestselling author, Dr. Michelli and his team consult with some of the world’s best customer experience companies.

Follow on Twitter: @josephmichelli

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