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- [00:00]
Mrs. Claus
Guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree.
- [00:03]
T-Mobile Spokesperson
Zoe, this thing weighs a ton.
- [00:04]
Rob
Drew Ski. Live with your legs, man. Santa. Santa, did you get my letter?
- [00:07]
T-Mobile Spokesperson
He's talking to you britches.
- [00:09]
Rob
I'm not.
- [00:10]
Mrs. Claus
Of course he did.
- [00:11]
Rob
Right, Santa, you know my elf Drew Ski here. He handles the nice list.
- [00:15]
T-Mobile Spokesperson
And elf. I'm six' three. What everyone wants is iPhone 17 and at T Mobile, you can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies. Right, Mrs. Claus?
- [00:25]
Mrs. Claus
I'm Mrs. Claus. Claus much younger sister. And AT T Mobile, there's no trade in needed when you switch, so you can keep your old phone or give.
- [00:32]
Rob
It as a gift.
- [00:33]
Mrs. Claus
And the best part, you can make the switch to T Mobile from your phone in just 15 minutes.
- [00:37]
T-Mobile Spokesperson
Nice. My side of the tree is slipping. Kimber, the holidays are better. AT T Mobile, switch in just 15 minutes and get iPhone 17 on us with no trade in needed. And now T Mobile is available in U.S. cellular stores with sweet monthly bill credits for well qualified customers plus tax and $35 vice connection charge Credit sentinel balance due to payout earlier. Cancel Finance agreement. 256 gates, $830. Eligible Ford in a new line, $100 plus a month plan with auto fees required. Check out 15 minutes or less per line. Visit t mobile.com there's nothing like being in the stands cheering on your favorite team. Game time is your hack to unlocking amazing tickets in just a few taps. Plus, their game time guarantee means you can Trust you'll get 100% authentic tickets at the best price. Fees are always included, so what you see is what you pay. Get the best deals on sports Tickets. Download the GameTime app and create an account to start searching for tickets to upcoming games and events. Swipe.
- [01:27]
Rob
Tap, tap.
- [01:28]
T-Mobile Spokesperson
Ticket. Go. Game time.
- [01:30]
Rob
It was one of the most incredible and beautiful Christmas experiences I've seen in many years. Storytelling was thoughtful. Characters were incredible. With kids. Santa nailed it. The experience almost fell completely apart. Let's take a look at the lessons. This was actually me yesterday, the day before recording this episode. Not of it going live, but the day before I actually recorded this. This is not a theory. This is not something I'm bringing you from the Internet. This is actually something I experienced. A December night in Madrid. I actually really wanted to make sure it worked. My daughter was there. She's three years old. You know, you can imagine all the beautiful things that can happen in such an age. So I really wanted to make it work. I'm Rob, the host of the number one podcast in the gamification world. I'm also a consultant at the leading consultancy in the world of gamification and behavioral design, the Optalysis Group, where I'm the head of engagement strategy in Europe. I'm also a professor at top business schools like IE Business School, also the efmd, which is actually behind all of the successful and top business schools and many others around the world. So let's actually look at what the pain here looks like. You're. You're getting there. It's December night. It's in Madrid. I don't know about you, but December usually means cold. This was really cold, at least for me, being from Venezuela, as you know, there was stress, there was cold. Usually when you have kids, some tardiness is involved and there was a lot of confusion. And kids, you know, they're seeing all these things, they're excited. That excitement can be very fragile. The emotional trajectory can easily derail by a single small or big mistake that you made. Because when you're building a magical experience for kids, confusion is definitely not neutral. It can be really, really destructive. And if you build products, services or experiences, this will change the way how you think about them forever. We will talk about this experience also through the lens of the stages of gamification. I'll dive right to that. We'll talk about the pool, the world, and of course, the ugly. I will still not give you exactly what that was, what part of that stage. But these are the points that we'll be talking about today. Oh, and if you want to make sure the ugly doesn't happen to you, let's have a quick chat. You can just go to the link below in the description and let's have a chat and see how this can be avoided in your product, your service, your experience. So let's get started right in with some of the good of the experience. The pool. It was beautiful marketing for this experience called Manantial de Suenos here in Madrid, still on, by the way, if you're interested. It was compelling. We found it online. We realized it was in a botanic part. So surrounded by nature, very nice setting. It was very compelling. It is seasonal, of course, for Christmas. It is related to everything that's going on. All this magic that is surrounds. Christmas was emotional, clearly positioned as something that is and can be very, very special. And you got young kids, you want to have these kinds of experiences. It's the season, it's Christmas. This is the kind of thing you want to do. It sets expectations correctly for the families looking to attend this is what we call, in gamification terms, the discovery phase. You have not entered the experience. You are just finding out that it even exists. It's like, oh, there's this thing. Here it is. Wow. And it ends precise when you fully commit, in this case, purchasing the tickets. Good marketing doesn't just sell the tickets. It creates that emotional readiness. This discovery phase can set you up for the things that are to come. But the question here is, does your marketing, does your delivery actually fulfill the promise that marketing made, or does it actually contradict it? So we just talked about the good. In this case, I'm not going to talk now. Instead of about the bad, I'm going to talk to you about the better. The world inside, it was alive. The storytelling, it was working. You were inside, and the experience per se worked. The characters, you randomly saw some elves running around, dancing with some music. They interacted with the kids. They were consistent. It was thoughtful. We even saw when we found Santa, Santa was asking consent before holding a kid. I mean, imagine about this when we were kids. You know, nowadays this is especially important, the whole consent thing. You know what I mean? If you're a parent, you know that these things are happening. And this is part of how nowadays looks. This is a huge trust signal, at least for me. I saw that. I was like, okay, it feels safe. The kids, they feel seen. It's not just something happening in the background and they're observing. They. They feel seen. They, they. They're not processed one after another, just in a queue, and they process. People like me. Not at all. Not at all. You are there. They interact with you. It's thoughtful, it's meaningful. This is what we could call in gamification, the scaffolding phase. It is done right. Everything in there, all the interaction loops that you get, it reinforces. And you want more of the experience. You get the elves, you get the fairies, you get all sorts of characters interacting, all sorts of internal experiences that are actually working the right way. So the experience in the scaffolding was phenomenal. It was fantastic. You had plenty of chances also to explore. You could find surprise and delight. You can imagine a kid runs into an elf, the elf talks to them, does a high five to them, or lets them hug them or whatever it is that your kid is thinking about. And they were thoughtful, respectful, they were nice. They were in character. Everything in that sense was working. So what could possibly go wrong? When I'm explaining it to you this way, what could possibly go wrong? Well, here it goes. You walk in, literally have your tickets, which you purchase during marketing. And this is before the scaffolding of the experience. You walk in and you immediately start hitting unwanted and unnecessary friction person at the door. I understand there's a queue of people. They don't have time for supporting every person who comes in. But of course, they offer no guidance, like, absolutely none. Literally. We ask them, oh, this is what we're here for. What do we do now? And they say, oh, yeah, it must be somewhere around there. Not even exaggerating this. This gesture if you're watching it in video. They actually did this at the entrance. What now? So we go in and you start looking around like, what now? And don't get me wrong, there were beautiful things happening. But the problem is you purchase a ticket and it has sort of purchased in experiences which already starts. I understand the whole monetization behind it, and it has different things, yada, yada, I can get that. But you purchase tickets and you purchase separate tickets. Like, it's the ticket to get there and there's tickets for separate things. And they also have a schedule. So you have to get there at a certain point. And I don't know about you, how do you manage these kinds of things with your family, if you have one? I can tell you, in my experience, it is occasional almost when things go as you plan. So arriving at the time that you expected almost never happens. You even either arrived like super early or a little bit or very late. Right. So tardiness is almost a part of that experience. So there's no what now? And in this case, we were a little bit late. Like, not terribly late. We're not actually late. We were there on time. Like, if we knew exactly we were where we were going, which we clearly didn't. It doesn't say it anywhere. It's not in the discovery phase. It's not on the ticket. They don't give you a map. Nothing happens. Signage was hard to find already. And since all these tickets were sold separately, you start creating artificially that rush, that anxiety. They could have just let you, like, oh, the schedule for this thing is these times. And then it's like, oh, yeah, they don't want too much queue. Everybody coming at the same time. Yeah. But it was, you know, this happens at. At six. You have to be here 15 minutes before. That literally was part of the word. So they start making you anxious. We arrive there within those 15 minutes. So we. It's like, oh, you know, maybe they'll be flexible with five minutes. But it doesn't even Sound like that. So when you finally find somebody who helps, first off, there is a long queue. My kid was excited about lights looking around, so my wife goes and tries to get some support. After you get through the long queue, this staff here, as I said before, you can pre purchase those tickets, but you can also purchase tickets in there. So this person is more focused, of course, in selling you extra experiences on top of that, more than being the guidance. So this is not really an information post. This is a place where you purchase more tickets. Which, by the way, this is one of the bad things on the inside these experiences, this was literally like a circle where you could go around, right? And the paid experiences were in some different places in theory. And they had the physical infrastructure there. You could purchase the tickets right there, right now, none of them had personnel. So in reality, every single ticket you had to purchase went back to the center stage. But nobody tells you this, right? So this is not part of your onboarding. And this is where it starts getting nasty. When you start a game instead of reading a manual nowadays, especially with video games, you dive into the experience and little by little starts guiding you so you understand what to do. Here was the exact opposite. It's like they had a huge manual and they didn't even give it to you. It's somewhere and you have to look for it. And it's not like it's an exciting part of the experience at all. It is, as I said, you're in a rush, you're starting to get anxious, your kid is excited, but that's limited. So this happens and we finally get support. And you know, in the end, we did finally, finally get there. When we're, again, we're stressed, we're rushed, they give you into a queue, okay, I kind of get it. Then you get there. And again, this is the onboarding. This is one of the first things you see. You get into this queue and there's like a separation between the queues and you're like, oh, you know, these people are kind of waiting here for something. So let me just pass. Person was not the most supportive. Oh, you have to go to the back of the line. I was like, oh, yeah, I get it. I understand if you tell me and if it's clear, if there's signage, if I understand what is going on. But nobody was letting you know what was going on. The onboarding was not happening. Was as easy as having, instead of, you know, having, you know, 100 elves, you had 99 elves. And one of those people was at the Entrance guiding people like, oh, welcome. What are you looking for? That way, this way. There you go. That's it. There's a signage, there's the map. If your experience says this, you have to arrive there and you have to go there. You have to do this, you have to do that, as simple as that. In general, what we're talking about is the classic onboarding failure. I'm not saying the core of your experience is the onboarding, but before you get to the core of your experience, you actually experience, whether you design it or not, that onboarding the world, once you're inside, can be magical. Problem is, the entry point can be hostile. Honestly, again, kid is very young. Eventually we just got into it. We kind of, you know, washed our upsetness and anxiety and just went in with it. Because what we were looking for here is not a set of instructions, or maybe it was even small amount of instructions right here. What you're looking for, especially in an experience with kids, is emotional regulation. They talk about this with psychologists, how emotional regulation is so important, so on and so forth. The idea is you go in there and you want to answer, among other things, one very important question. Am I safe? Am I doing this right? Am I in the place where I should be? Think about it. Even if you're not designing for kids, what does the experience you are creating feel like in the first three minutes? Do your users feel confident or do they start panicking? Honestly, what makes this extremely painful is that everything after the onboarding was really, really good. It failed because of the details. When you get started, this is easy to forget because details are where your trust either is gained and strengthened or where you can start losing that trust and regaining it. Honestly, it took a while for me to internalize. It's like, well, you know, onboarding was terrible, but this seems a, you know, a good, a nice, safe, call it as you may experience where I can actually be in and enjoy with my family. Do not put yourself there. If you're building any kind of product service experience this next year, don't just design the world, the onboarding, make sure you make discovery onboarding scaffolding. And I didn't dive into this because this comes way later. And not all experiences let you get there. Not all users, in my case, get to what we call the end game and also design for that. Design the door design, the pull, or the marketing, the discovery. Make an amazing experience, the scaffolding for sure, and make sure the onboarding is also great. Don't forget about one of those four stages because it could end in a dramatic disaster. The magic doesn't start when people are inside. It really starts when you get through the door right when you arrive. Keep all the stages in mind and you can be a lot better. Set up for a very successful experience. And if this is something that you are looking towards building, let's make sure to have a chat to see if there is a way in which we can help you make that better. Just click on the link below in the description and let's have a quick chat.
- [15:10]
T-Mobile Spokesperson
Everyone deserves to be connected. That's why T Mobile and US Cellular are joining forces. So switch to T Mobile and save up to 20% versus Verizon by getting built in benefits they leave out. Check the math@t mobile.com switch and now T mobile is in US cellular stores. Savings versus Comparable Verizon plans plus the cost of optional benefits. Plan features in taxes and fees vary. Savings with three plus lines include third line free via monthly bill credits Credit stop if you cancel any lines. Qualifying credit required.
- [15:40]
Mrs. Claus
Shopify helps you sell at every stage of your business. Like that let's put it online and see what happens.
- [15:45]
Rob
Stage and the site is that we.
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Mrs. Claus
Opened a store and need a fast checkout. Stage thanks, you're all set that count it up and ship it around the.
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Rob
Globe Stage this one's going to Thailand.
- [15:57]
Mrs. Claus
And that Wait, did we just hit a million orders? Stage Whatever your stage Businesses that grow grow with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 a month trial@shopify.com listen.