Museums studying the customer experience

A big part of business is studying the customer experience. From navigating a website to how a phone prompt sounds, businesses spend countless hours trying to make their shopping experience "wow-ful". By focusing on the experience, many businesses are able to raise their conversion or response rates by several percentage points-the bottom line is by ensuring a great experience, business will be strong and the cash register full.

I visit a blog and receive a newsletter each week from an organization called Good Experience. Their mission is to study the customer experience, user experience, and the human experience.

They have an interesting post this week about the NY Times article on (not Governor Spitzer) Museum.

Some interesting parts of the article were:
"While museum market research has been around for two decades, gathering data about visitors has never been as important, or as sophisticated, as it is now. As museums expand, they need more paying customers to cover ever-increasing costs. And they’re competing for those customers with local shopping malls, movie theaters, even grocery stores."

"Now, besides the reliable techniques — focus groups, exit surveys and mail-in questionnaires — museums are exploring new ways to learn what visitors want. In Detroit, which is spending $158 million on a renovation and gallery reinstallation project to be finished this fall, researchers visited local mothers in their homes to determine how to attract more families to the museum."

Think creatively about how you can research and get feedback on your own customer experience in your business. When you ask for the feedback (i.e. surveys), just make sure you listen.