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White Hutchinson Leisure & Learning Group, Kansas City, MO, USA

Rising expectations

We're living in perhaps the most disruptive and dynamic period of human history. The pace of change is now faster than ever before and accelerating every day. One of the many disruptions, brought about partially by technology and the digital lifestyles we now live, is that the bar for consumer out-of-home experiences is being pushed higher and higher and higher every day. This is happening since overall consumer expectations are rising based for every experience they're having.

Every time you get served well by Amazon, Starbucks, an on-line bank or Uber, your expectations of your next experience with any business increases.

It's no longer good enough to be best in your industry - consumers are comparing every experience to all experiences. Now every digital and real world experience is cultivating consumers' mindsets with respect to all businesses they interact with. It's no longer good enough to be the best community leisure venue (CLV) or FEC - you have to aspire to be great compared to all the experiences consumers have with all other businesses whether they are physical businesses or just digital interactions.

The problem that most CLVs and FEC have is that they don't recognize they're on the downward slope of these rising expectations. They think they're keeping up, when, in fact, most are declining in the customers' eyes. For most CLVs, especially the older model FECs, there is now a major gap between the experiences they offer and what guests expect.

Even if you design your business model around what people expect today, you need to revisit it. Why? People will expect something different in the future as the bar for experience expectations is continually rising. And the future is now arriving faster than ever before.

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