Customer Experience Centres - Timeline
Working with the production company a mock tv studio was created where children could read the news for current affairs, sports or the geographic channel, each presentation was recorded, and a VHS of their newscast was presented to each child. Whilst this was long before CEC existed as a concept and you might not recognise this as a traditional corporate ‘CEC’ it had all of the elements of a successful CEC, interactive brand promotion story telling and expanding future customer base with an unforgettable experience.
Another example of a 'CEC' in a pre-CEC concept era. We delivered what would now be considered a CEC. It mixed elements of storytelling and brand promotion through a mixture of museum like interactive exhibits and presentation space in the ground floor reception space, this area was the beginning of every visitors journey at Immarsat.
We created what was described as a business theatre and today would be a Customer Experience Centre. In the early 2000 e-commerce was starting to take off, but for many e anything was a bit of a mystery especially for c-level executives. This business theatre was designed to engage with a educate the top 250 executives at Guinness to the world of possibilities that e-commence offered. Four scenarios were created inside a round theatre, guests would sit in the middle and the performances occurred around the outside. When we say performances, this involved real actors performing real scenario using technology to showcase examples of e-commerce. The whole performance was driven by Marcomedia Director and was fully interactive with the actors being able to drive the performance they could pause, recap, skip forward to suit theirs or the audiences pace, with all of the audio visual elements being sync’ed to the performance so the actors drove the system and not as is often is the case technology leads.
Following the success of the Guinness projects which was eventually extended to reach over 1000 Guinness employees, it was taken over by TransformationX who ran it for another 6 months and invited the likes of Honda, BT and others to visit. The outcome of one of these visits was a weeklong live event presenting BT vision of ‘Work-Life Balance to run in conjunction with an enterprise-wide event promoting a healthier work life balance. Again, this was actor driven to create an employee’s day and show possible journeys to achieve a better work life balance.
Designed and delivered seven CEC throughout the UK and Ireland to showcase BT's products and services via real life scenarios 'in the home' 'on the move' etc. These immersive spaces used a combination of set, graphics, props and AV to create the enviroment and the right atmosphere. The challenge was to create a UI that combined both presentation and AV control, furthermore the UI had to be easily managed by the customers internal team so as not to incur on-going AV programming costs as the demands of the CEC required regular updating including for one off events. The in house team were Powerpoint super users so this become the obvious choice, allowing the team to create linear, nested or menu driven presentations in fact anything they could do with Powerpoint. The solution was Crestron's e-Tools, which allowed for simple commands to be embedded into the notes of the Powerpoint slide to drive all of the AV functionaility, PC apps and video content, allowing the in house team complete control over both the presentation and AV elements that could be changed at a moments notice. The UI ran on a standard 19" touch display at a fraction the cost of a Crestron touch panel. For presenters who didn't want to be tied to the lectern, we provided a wireless mouse with custom software that we created to provide alternative control. Remote was supported for the room was provided by Crestron x-panel.
This was the second of seven CEC for BT. This and all the subsequent CEC's in this roll out at Leavsden, Belfast, Dublin, Edinburgh Cardiff were redesigned to fit different size and shape spaces whilst retaining all of the elements of the Adastral Park CEC. The key factor was to maintain the experience regardless of which CEC you visited.
The e2e Experience Centre was developed for BT to showcase some of the converged technologies that are available for use in the manufacturing and retail sectors These include the use of Haptics - the science of applying touch sensations and controls to the interaction with computer applications as well as RFID based security solutions deployed in the movement of goods from the factory, through a warehouse environment, and onward finally to a retail store The project demanded careful and realistic design integrated with these technologies and includes the installation of a working conveyer belt, a real time video 'window' of BT’s main distribution centre at Magna Park, a van equipped with the vehicle and product tracking systems The final element of the centre is the ‘Fabrica’ shop where the goods are displayed. The store showcases intelligent shelving that identify the products on them and link back to a central management
system controlling pricing and stock levels - as well as >new methods of contact-less payment and voice activated communication systems via wireless networks
Accenture wanted to showcase their technology credentials in one of their office receptions. Using early large scale multi-touch technology for displays, Accenture were able to demonstrate their range of services as a fun and informative way when welcoming customers to their offices.
BT ran a series of events called Joining the Dots, to promote the use of agile throughout the organization. These events used practical approach of embedding learning through the use of videos and activities, user stories, customer collaboration and simulation. We were asked to recreate an immersive call centre providing a panoramic view of a call centre via edge blended projection and immersive sound, having visited the call centre in question we understood scale and noise generated by this environment and we where able to create what could only be described as an overpowering experience the first time you encounter it.The aim of the space was for colleagues who did not work in this environment to understand the challenges of working in such an environment. Whilst not strictly a CEC, it did provide a similar environment whereby internal customers got to learn and understand other elements of the business and how agile working could improve efficiency.
Traditionally demonstrations had be carried out using actual hardware and then discussing how they fit a customer’s requirements. Now thanks to the showcase, real life scenarios can be played out via demonstrations on a video wall and supported by a range of interactive demonstrations via touch screen displays. The whole process is controlled by the demonstrator via a touch screen built into a control desk. The AV elements being integrated into Synectic’s ‘Synergy’ system via http messaging to control the room environment, AV as well as selecting media and demonstrations to play out.
We were engaged to review the market for collaboration tools for a new generation of CEC for BT.
BT wanted to move away from show and tell to a more collaborative approach but one that also allow for both remote participants not just join but also collaborate and for subject area experts to join and present from any CEC to any other CEC, massively reduce travel cost but also increasing reaction and delivery timescales. This roll out start in Paris in 2016 with another 12 rooms being deployed globally by 2019.
Working with an experiential agency to design and deliver a 500SqM customer innovation experience centre for a global financial brand. Highlights included a 5m wide touch curved video wall, 180° edge blending portrait projection, 5m wide edge blended touch projection, ThinkHub collaboration between the three main workspaces with the ability to join other sites in real time as they come online. Follow the link for a customer video presentation of the space.