Storytelling is as old as history – probably older. It’s how we make sense of the world – by assembling separate facts into a cohesive series. Our brains have evolved alongside a long tradition of storytelling, as individuals capable of understanding and remembering the experiences of others from stories gained a survival advantage that ensured story-loving genes were passed down.
If you could peer inside the human brain when we experience a story, it would look very similar to when we experience a real event. Storytelling stimulates the release of several important neurochemicals, and the better the story the stronger the effect. Character-driven plots can create a sense of empathy (oxytocin), by stimulating tension in the story (cortisol), and by achieving a sense of reward or justice at the end (dopamine and serotonin).
The real-world effect of storytelling is that it gives the audience a sense of participation – vicariously – in the events of the story. Full of powerful neurochemicals, they’re emotionally charged and ready to act. It’s an amazing tool for persuasion.
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What is immersive storytelling for a Customer Experience Center?
Immersive storytelling has become a vital way for brands to connect with their customers. It works by creating a physical environment that literally places the audience in the center of the action. No longer just listening or watching, they’re standing in the middle and interacting with the story, driving a deeper and more impactful experience. Many leading brands have created immersive store experiences or customer experiences that use physical objects to form a journey. An example might be a story made from physical objects and digital elements, that traces raw materials on their way to becoming finished products, while highlighting impacts on communities and the environment.
A huge trend is the use of Virtual Reality (VR) immersive storytelling. This has the chief advantage of being unconstrained by physical location. Provided with the right goggles or screen, participants can walk into the immersive storytelling experience from anywhere.
However, the ‘gold standard’ of immersive storytelling is a fully immersive experience room. These are frequently used in state-of-the-art Customer Experience Centers to create compelling and memorable brand experiences. Unlike VR goggles, the immersive experience room is a fully contained space with 360-degree screens that fill the field of vision wherever you look. Unencumbered by the unfamiliar feel of VR goggles, these experiences have a natural feel that can quickly draw people into the immersive storytelling experience and stimulate more ‘natural’ interactions.
Why storytelling still matters: Corporate briefing centers and customer experience centers
After millions of years of evolution, storytelling has only become more integrated in the way our brains operate. As our world becomes more complex and connected, stories will only grow in importance. We need to be able to make sense of it all – and there are too many distractions.
Briefing Centers and Customer Experience Centers can both gain a great deal from using storytelling to help create a positive emotional landscape for all the bare facts to fit into. It would be nice to think that decisions in business are always made based on the most logical framework of facts and priorities – however, the reality is quite different. Our ‘gut feeling’ still has a lot of control over our motivation, and can cause people to act in irrational ways. It can also prevent us from making a decision altogether if that feeling is a ‘bad’ one.
Realizing that it’s hard to shake a feeling once you’ve got it, it’s important for brands to gain some control over the emotional experience from the start. Storytelling is the best tool for this job, and immersive storytelling is the ‘best of breed’ method for forming strong emotional connections and memories.
Emotions are the result of complex experiences, arising from digesting all the facts, reactions, and personal connections, and distilling them into an internal story. It’s a combination of subtle cues like body language, facial expressions, and much more. Think about the emotions you want to foster in your potential customers: Trust, Confidence, and Loyalty – and then consider how you can make it happen.
Focusing on ‘brand loyalty’ in particular – this is almost always the result of a personal story or connection with the brand, resulting in a lifelong attachment that defies cold logic. This alone should demonstrate why storytelling matters more than ever in a competitive market.
How digital storytelling software can help win and keep customers
Having established that stories help us remember things and motivate us to action with emotion, the question is how companies can create and show digital stories that generate trust and understanding. Companies cannot predict how they will use storytelling in the future, so the options must stay open. This means that digital storytelling software needs to be capable and versatile enough for whatever storytelling you want to do.
Immersive storytelling can also take many forms, so the software that deploys digital stories must have this flexibility. Professional digital storytelling software can be the lynchpin of an immersive storytelling strategy. Without good quality digital storytelling software, your briefing center or customer experience center can become stuck with just one story – on a loop.
Business today can involve working with partners and customers who are thousands of miles away, and this distance makes it hard to build trust. With immersive storytelling, businesses can bridge this gap, and bring the customer into a world of their creation. Whether using VR or an immersive experience room in a customer experience center, your stories can have the power to win hearts and minds.
Once you have won the business of a customer, you need to keep it too. Once again, storytelling shines in this capacity by showing in greater depth and context the impact and benefits of what you can offer. By showing how your products or services directly connect to real needs in your customer’s life, you can make sure the value is clear. And immersive storytelling is the best way for doing this.
For more information on this topic you can visit https://www.purplestorytelling.com/!
