Second hand experiences don’t cut it

Assuming that nobody reading this is well over 400 years old, you won’t remember the year 1599.

This means, that if you want to know about the year which saw the first performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, then you’ll have to read about it. Maybe in James Shapiro’s book of the same name, maybe on Wikipedia. You can know a certain amount about what happened, who it happened to and what the effects were, but you can’t really experience it.

Assuming that plenty of people reading this are older than 25 you may well remember watching South Africa lift the 1995 Rugby World Cup. It was a poignant moment. If you don’t remember it, you could watch Invictus. But it isn’t a patch on being caught up in the moment.

And there’s something in that.

How often are you sold something ‘like’ the experience you want to receive? Maybe you’re told about how many customer complaints are resolved within 5 minutes. So what? I want my complaint to be resolved in 5 minutes.

Maybe you read those testimonials from satisfied customers proclaiming some service as ‘literally the greatest thing EVER’. So what? They lost my case/overcharged me/were a bit spiky when I was there. It’s those moments you feel like you’re not getting the real experience. And that’s disappointing.

Every time you interact, whether it’s with people or brands, you have an experience. If you want to share great experiences (and people to share theirs), offer them up first hand – don’t just tell people about experiences they could have had, or should have had.

Second hand experiences, they just don’t cut it.

Brought into the world on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 and filed under 1000thoughts.