I've become addicted to Slideshare. I like this (the Slideshare, below), though I think the title doesn't do it justice ('Customer Service is the new Marketing').

I particularly like 'The Secrets of The Concierge', which you can find on Slide 21. They are:

1. Put conversations at the centre of your business
2. Reduce your sphere of control to increase sphere of influence
3. Smash the silos

3. is now a cliche (though true). And the Cluetrain Manifesto taught us 1. ten years ago. I find 2. the most potent message at the moment. Anyway, here's the slideshare:

I just heard a psychologist talking about how people perform better when they feel they are being watched or 'on show'. It reminded me of Pine & Gilmore's book The Experience Economy and the notion that all business is now theatre and your people are players.

As European Customer Management World is coming up next month, that, in turn, reminded me of last year's event. My friend Chris Daffy had invited some people to a pre-conference dinner. Each course was introduced by the chef and then the servers swept in, around ten of them I think, like a river from two doors on the side.

I watched them - five on each side of the long table - step back in unison and glance at the head waiter, who gave a small signal with a nod of his head, like a conductor of an orchestra setting the timing.

All ten moved forward at the same time, like dancers, and placed the next dish before the guest in front of them. Then they stepped back, all turned as if in military formation, and strode out the door. Some of them were smiling to themselves in satisfaction. I wanted to give them a round of applause.

This wasn't serving a meal. It was choreographed theatre. It was art. When I was a student I used to be a room service waiter in the summer holidays, at a five star hotel. It was boring work with long hours and a gruelling regime in the kitchens when you ordered and collected the meals as the lowest of the low - the waiter (think lots of Gordon Ramsays shouting at you).

But these people weren't at the bottom of a pecking order. They were artists on show, part of a flawless team. And they knew it. Whatever your sector is, you can do the same. The Geek Squad even does it with IT service and repair.

All work is now theatre. Your customer experience will be all the better for it once you realise that.

Shaun Smith has an interesting post on how The Six Senses resort brand sets out to re-define luxury, over at The Customer Experience Blog. That set me thinking on Evans & Wurster's old (old? crikey. 1999) book Blown To Bits in which they look at how the 'richness versus reach' equation is now, er, blown to bits, as they put it. For example, banking divides its customer experience into a 'mass' offer ('reach', as in mass reach) and an elite, exclusive offer (private banking or the 'riches' part of the segmentation). This divide, increasingly, doesn't work, as the customer dissatisfaction levels with banks shows.

The arrival of mass luxury (through mass affluence) has left the old equation (the assumpton that 'mass' and 'luxury' are distinct) in tatters, argued Evans and Wurster. Quite right. Brilliant Slideshare, below, helps cement our thinking on how luxury ain't what it used to be. If you think fashion, for example, it's now cool to mix designer labels with accessories from Zara, Top Shop, Primark (well, up to a point). In the Slideshare, look out for the parallel example of Louis Vuitton setting up ten street vendors in New York; not to sell knock-offs, of course, but genuine Vuitton stuff.

Apparently 54% of Americans would rather clean the house than call a service line that they have had a bad experience with before.

I like this, spotted on CustomerThink.com