Particularly for B2B brands, having a permanent location for your company’s story is like having an ongoing brand activation that can be updated and reworked as your business evolves. The dynamic examples below illustrate how three companies created memorable and impactful experiences to strengthen their customer relationships.
T-Mobile’s 5G&Me Experience Center
T-Mobile’s 5G&me Experience Center is a 4,000 sq. ft. immersive, high-tech showcase of 5G’s impressive capabilities located within the company’s Bellevue, WA headquarters. Featuring a 360° dome and multiple interactive zones, the center provides personalized journeys for invited guests to experience firsthand how 5G can transform the ways we live, work and play.
As visitors enter the center, they’re greeted personally, and by a custom digital memory wall that displays their name and company logo. From there, they’re ushered into a 360° dome for an immersive audio experience coupled with 360° video. Then, depending on their interests, visitors are guided to interactive zones that demonstrate how 5G can revolutionize industries such as transportation, manufacturing, healthcare and agriculture.
Featuring advanced building design and experiential storytelling, each zone allows visitors to fully comprehend the possibilities of wireless technology and a future 5G world. Magic mirrors and glass are embedded with screens that display digital content throughout the space. In a nod to smart efficiencies, the transportation exhibit serves not only as part of the customer journey and 5G story, but also as a standalone meeting space with web conferencing capabilities.
Toyota North American Experience Center
The 44,000 sq. ft. Toyota North American Experience Center celebrates the company’s rich history and communicates its progressive vision for the future of mobility. An auto enthusiast’s haven, the center is a comprehensive platform for Toyota’s brand story that showcases the company’s commitment to excellence in all aspects of its business.
Toyota’s brand narrative unfolds progressively across multiple galleries filled with interactive kiosks, a variety of vehicles and custom videos that highlight the key people and developments that have helped shape its legacy. For example, the “History and Heritage Gallery” showcases iconic cars and advertisements from Toyota’s early years, while the “Here and Now” gallery features current Toyota models and the brand’s latest technological advancements.
The Racing Gallery envelops attendees in a dramatic visual history of race cars, which are displayed across the space’s floor, walls and ceiling, while an accompanying soundtrack audibly transports them to the tarmac. Other galleries feature customer service, sustainability, manufacturing, innovation, sales and Lexus—it’s sole luxury brand. The entire experience is both a salute to Toyota’s illustrious history and a celebration of its current innovations and future vision.
Microsoft Customer Experience Center
Housed within Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Campus is its latest Customer Experience Center, which fuses two key venues in one place: a Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) and an Executive Briefing Center (EBC). Two separate resources combined in one location allows customers to not only learn about the company’s dynamic offerings but also gain perspectives from company thought leaders and more.
The MTC aims to facilitate digital growth and steer business strategies in a multitude of interactive ways, including workshops and labs. “Technical architects” and “envisioning specialists” are on-hand to provide more information about the company’s latest advancements as well as solutions for a diverse array of businesses.
In addition to its executive briefing rooms, the “Experience Zone” offers an array of interactive features, an “Innovation Factory” provides space for technical exploration, and an “Envisioning Theatre” encourages customers and partners to envision technology-based solutions to real-world challenges.
“These centers will allow customers to run the gamut of our offerings in one location—from an executive briefing to an envisioning workshop, to an architecture design session—we can curate a dialogue across IT and business to help empower our customers to achieve their business outcomes,” says Alex Payne, general manager of Microsoft’s Customer Engagement Team.
When executed well, experience centers inspire loyalty by offering customers a distraction-free environment to truly understand your brand and company values. A carefully planned customer-centric journey can also effectively convey how a partnership could help them achieve their business goals and drive sales.
