Customer Experience Lesson from "Birdman"

From the perspective of a business purist, there is little to intuitively love about Oscar-winning film "Birdman."

It does not hold up as a commercial product. It might have garnered significant acclaim and several key Academy Awards (including Best Picture), but it barely made a dent in the domestic box office. As of press time, it had commanded a mere $37.8 million in domestic box office receipts.

The film’s narrative also fails to lend itself to commercial sensibility. Predicated on the notion that "popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige," the film finds one-time box office superhero Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) risking everything in the name of art. Insofar as that risk involves foregoing commercial slam dunks (such as a reprisal of his famous "Birdman" role – or, alternatively, just saving his money) in favor of a Broadway staging of Raymond Carver’s "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," it renders his journey incompatible with conventional business conception.

Philosophically and existentially opposed to commerciality, "Birdman" seems like a particularly unlikely source from which to draw lessons about managing customers. As a film, "Birdman" did not resonate with audiences nearly as successfully as blockbusters like "American Sniper." As a show-within-a-film, even a perfect adaptation of the Carver short story would doubtfully represent the financial windfall of the "Birdman" sequel Thomson had long rejected.

None of the film’s specific developments change that intuitive disconnect between Thomson’s behavior and conventional business savvy. Enamored with Broadway standout Mike Shiner’s (Edward Norton) test reading, Thomson agrees to personally cover the actor’s exorbitant salary demand. Stubbornly distanced from the cultural zeitgeist, Thomson carries a dismissive opposition to social media. "Omni-channel" he is not.

And, yet, as one watches Thomson (slight spoiler warning) literally and figuratively bleed for his art, he will encounter a very clear and very relevant takeaway for customer experience professionals. He will see value in paying mind to prestige when crafting a customer experience strategy. He will understand the importance of enduring costs—and risks—when working to better connect with customers.

Popularity: A Flawed Barometer

When crafting—and refining—customer experience strategy, many leaders fall into a clear trap.

They mistakenly believe short-term satisfaction, let alone a short-term lack of dissatisfaction, is a sign of loyalty. Businesses associate customer experience failures with complaints and churn. When neither is prominent, they mistakenly believe that everything is rosy.

They treat existing popularity as a barometer for success.

In reality, silence reflects nothing more than a short-term tolerance of the existing experience. It does not mean the customer is loyal or even satisfied – it just means that the customer is not so outraged that he needs to complain or exit the relationship.

By treating a customer’s complacency as anything more, a business risks losing that customer when something truly goes wrong – or when a competitor more notably gets it right.

Birdman or the Unexpected Impact of Prestige on the Customer Experience

The aforementioned trap comes with a clear message for customer experience professionals:

That you are gaining or retaining customers does not mean you are winning over customers

One motivated entirely by the appealing, but potentially fleeting concept of popularity will find happiness in the former outcome. If a business is keeping up with existing marketplace trends, growing its customer base and hitting its desired numbers, it is succeeding.

A keen customer experience mind knows not to relish short-term popularity as anything more than a short-term win. He knows that marketplace "best practices" are only truly best when best for customers. He knows that the best experience is not one that minimizes customer attrition but one that maximizes customer acquisition and retention.

He knows the value of creating a prestigious customer experience.

Committed to achieving prestige, the world’s most notably customer centric businesses work to improve the experience at every possible turn. They do not accept the grade that comes from numbers; they strive for the grade that comes from reverence. They know that a popular business can become unpopular the second it starts to slip – or the second a competitor starts to excel. A business constantly delivering the best experience possible never has to face such a fear.

Just as Riggan was willing to invest the money (and endure the career opportunity cost) needed to create the best, most prestigious show possible, customer experience leaders must be willing to make needed investments into their engagement offerings. They need to recognize that short-term costs translate into long-term rewards. Avoiding those short-term costs might, meanwhile, produce far more significant long-term ones.

A business with minimal dissatisfaction is not notably failing. A business that keeps up with marketplace trends is not notably falling behind. It is not, however, inspiring passion.

Customers do not award their love and loyalty to businesses that are not terrible andnot obviously worse than the rest of the pack. They do so to businesses that are striving to be superb – and striving to distance themselves from the pack. They might give short-term business to popular, trendy organizations, but they give their long-term loyalty to prestigious ones.

Knowing how many customers you have acquired and retained is certainly important. Knowing why you have acquired and retained them, why you have not acquired and retained more and what you can do to make all such customers more passionate about the brand is considerably more important.

You can boast about your existing "scores" and numbers and celebrate the fact that your business is successful. Like the concept of Riggan reprising his "Birdman" role, it plays well in board rooms.

Best performing for customers drives results that play even better in board rooms.

And the best ticket to that performance is striving to create a prestigious customer experience. It involves asking whether satisfaction is tantamount to loyalty. It involves asking whether a system that is not broken can still be fixed.

It involves recognizing that an experience—much like an actor associated with an iconic superhero franchise—can be defined by more than numbers.

Valuably, while numbers do not offer an assurance of customer experience excellence, customer experience excellence is a surefire way to improve numbers.

Seeking prestige is thus far more of a no-brainer for customer experience professionals than it is for entertainers like Riggan Thomson. Not merely an end that one must weigh against the value of success and widespread popularity, prestige serves as a means of securing customer experience success and popularity.