I went to a wonderful concert on the weekend with Andréa Bocelli and a whole line up of amazing vocalists and dancers who guested with him.
It was outdoors on a magnificent November evening here in Perth. The sky was clear and the temperature just the right level of chill, to make us super comfortable with just light jackets on.
It was at one of our best wineries in a wine region just 45 minutes from the centre of Perth.
They had a full bar and many food trucks on hand to feed the crowd of approximately 10,000 people, who either paid for front row seating or bought blankets and folding chairs to sit on at the back, on the grassed slope.
The show was incredible and the night was amazing – EXCEPT …
The buses that brought some people in, took two and a half hours to get them there on what is normally a 45 minute trip by car.
The bar ran out of wine an hour before the show.
The power cut off to the food trucks for about 30 minutes, creating a huge queue right before the show, and …
At the end, the car park layout (and a medical emergency requiring an ambulance) meant it took two hours for vehicles to even start to move to clear the car park.
I heard a lot of people expressing their dissatisfaction.
I have two observations:
The first one is about how we frame things. We all get to choose the experience we have in any situation. When a world class singer, supported by other world class talent and a full symphony orchestra is performing for me, all the other stuff is incidental … the main show was Bocelli, not the food, wine or parking.
The rest is incidental and I can choose to interpret that as an adventure, just as easily as I can choose to interpret it as an annoyance … I choose adventure!
The second observation is about how people judge your business and how you both sell and serve them. It seems to be a common human trait to drag their experience of others down to the level of the worst aspect of the interaction, rather than elevate it up to the best aspects.
If everyone had elevated upward on Saturday night, everyone would have gone home with smiles so large, lifted by the soaring performances on stage. Unfortunately, some people went home scouring, dragged down by the fact that they couldn’t buy another glass of wine.
It was quite a night … of both entertainment and education!
As a result, I’m wondering what the lowest levels of interaction are that people have with my business and what I can do about them, so the very best aspects of interaction are all they’re left with. How about you?