foley in film: lessons for customer experience management

SoundWorks Collection: Gary Hecker - Veteran Foley Artist from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

What does the craft of adding sound effects to film teach us about customer experience?

Think of customer experience this way: The narrative can be strong, but the details - often unconsciously perceived - can make or break the impact of the narrative. It takes people with experience and expertise to deliver the unconsciously perceived components of your customers' experiences. 

Some examples: Angela and I are shopping for a new car. After doing the usual things, including taking test drives, and reviewing features, the salesman left his office for fifteen minutes, purportedly to take care of some task.

My own view is that he left us alone to talk about our experiences. This allowed us time to review our priorities, show our passion for the cars we had driven, and imagine our future with one of these cars. 

A key part of the experience, then, might well have been the time we were left alone. 

Another example, often cited, is the role that bathrooms play in how people assess restaurants. If the bathroom is a mess, then it's not an unconscious experience. But if the bathroom is beautiful and well-maintained - and on-brand - it can indeed be an unconscious reinforcement of what you might expect from the restaurant, what you might imagine the kitchen is like, and what you might say about the restaurant the next day. 

Comments

[Angela]

So true about bathrooms! I once covered the opening of a shopping mall in Oregon and instead of writing the expected angle, I wrote the story from the perspective of the bathrooms, which had a great design, were super private, and immaculately clean. Who wouldn't want to go to that mall?