The customer experience … those words get an awful lot of mileage in our magazine and on our site. There are even some vendors who are trying to make customer experience management (CEM) the new CRM. But what is it, really?

If you ask me — and you didn’t — the customer experience is like porn: I know it when I see it. You can provide all the applications in the world to manage customer experience, but it all comes down to how the customer perceives you and interacts with you, often on an intangible level.

Also like porn, some of the best examples of customer experience come from Sweden. I’m talking about Ikea. (The customer thing, not the porn — that’s one of the few things Ikea doesn’t sell.) I was at their location in Red Hook, NY over the holiday weekend and was reminded of why the home furnishings chain from Sweden will always do well.

Ikea makes everything easy for you, even getting to the store — most of them have a shuttle bus service, and they also tend to be situated on a public transportation line. They provide measuring tapes, pencils, and detailed information for every product. Information terminals abound, as do helpful personnel who don’t actually care if you buy anything. They even have child storage so you can shop without the lil’ munchkins getting underfoot.

More so than any other furnishings shop I’ve seen, Ikea shows you how its products look in relation to the real world. Everything is set up in a mock room — and there are also several mock apartments, if you want to source everything from Ikea. It’s all touchable, and I’ve never seen a floor display that was broken, dirty, or otherwise shabby.

Customer experience isn’t necessarily a completely positive concept either; it has to include the totality of the experience. If there’s one vibe that I always get from an Ikea location, it’s hectic. Stores are invariably crowded. The showroom layout seems designed to get you lost (and they’re big enough that this is a real possibility). Once you get to the checkout area (there’s a step or two before this, which I’ll get to next) you can’t stand still for a minute without an employee trying to help you out. This is both a good and a bad thing — I dealt with 4 different people while trying to arrange a delivery. It was clear they wanted to take care of me, but it led to some confusion.

You’ve got to pick up the merchandise yourself in the warehouse area, whether it’s a vase or an entertainment center — bring strong friends if furniture is on the shopping list — and carting it to the checkout can be an adventure all its own. To some extent, this adds to the do-it-yourself feeling even if you’re buying flat-packed, ready-made items, but it’s still a labor.

Fortunately, there’s always a cafe/bistro area near the checkout. There’s a lot of gourmet stuff available to take home, from sparkling cider to real Swedish meatballs (from Sweden yet), but it’s the on-site edibles that made me happiest. Ikea has a captive audience, and they could easily get away with sticking it to their customers by charging a premium on food. Ikea goes the other way on this — everything is dirt cheap and really good. A hot cinnamon bun or pretzel for $1 goes a long way toward making me leave with a smile on my face. You can get 2 hot dogs, a packet of kettle-cooked potato chips, and a refillable soft drink for $2.50 — about the cost of a single Nathan’s hot dog. If there was an Ikea near my office, I’d probably go there for lunch every day.

I’ve already mentioned the hectic but effective delivery option, so that’s covered. If you drove to the store, there’s an area specifically for loading your vehicle, and you can rent a U-Haul if you lack cargo space of your own. This is another bad bottleneck for the shopping experience, but at least Ikea provides the option — it’s better than wheeling your junk around a regular parking lot waiting for an accident.

So there you have it: How I Spent My Summer Vacation My assessment of a complete customer experiece, the good and the not so good. As long as kitschy, cheap furnishings are in style, Ikea will always be crowded, and I’ll be happy to go there.