By J. N. Halm
Awe. A small word that packs a powerful punch. Awe can be so intense that it even affects individuals physically. In the presence of something wondrous, one easily gets goose pimples on the skin. It is not uncommon to see the jaws of individuals drop, eyes wide open and eyebrows raised when they are in the presence of something awesome.
Awe is such a powerful emotion that many studies have been conducted on its power. It has been described as the emotion we experience in the presence of something so different that it challenges our understanding of the world. Awe has been described more scholastically as the emotions that arise when one encounters something strikingly vast in size, scope, complexity, ability, or number.
Researchers have created a list of ten elements that lead to the creation of awe. These are profoundness, connectedness, fear, vastness, numinous existential awareness, openness and acceptance, ineffable wonder, presence, and heightened perceptions. It has also been found that the commonest and most effective sources of generating awe are natural objects, art, music, and human achievement.
Awe is more than pride. It generates a lot of stronger positive emotions in the individual. Awe generates stronger feelings of love. It is in the presence of awe that individuals see themselves as small or insignificant compared to the greatness of what is before them. When you come before something awe-inspiring, you sense the presence of something greater than the self.
At the moment when one is being awed, the one forgets all day-to-day concerns. Awed people also feel connected to the surrounding world. All these positive feelings lead to the awed individual not wanting the experience to end.
It has been argued that when an individual encounters something so awe-inspiring, it tends to alter the way one looks at life. Something awe-inspiring causes the awed individual to change his or her existing beliefs to make sense of what he or she is witnessing. The emotions generated by something awesome can be quite confusing to handle.
It is a fact that customer service is an exercise in emotions. Customer service is in, actual fact, “emotions management”. It is about the front-line professional managing his or her emotions as well as the emotions of the customer. Service Experience is an emotion-laden enterprise. It is a fact that customers buy emotionally and thereafter justify logically. Contrary to what many of us believe about ourselves, we are more emotional than logical. It has been said that in a race, emotions always take the lead, only for logic to catch up with it later.
The best service experience must therefore capture the emotions of the customers. The customer must necessarily feel good about the experience. This is where the powerful emotion of awe comes in. If you can awe your customers, you have them hooked for life. The more awe a service can inspire in customers, the greater the chances of customer expectations being surpassed.
Tourism is one of the areas where customers can experience awe, and studies have shown that tourists do expect to be awed. Among the many things that can stimulate awe are wonderful natural phenomena, immense historical sites, revered religious deities, and elegant art. Interestingly, all these are stimuli that are associated with tourism. This is also why tourism can be such an addictive activity. Once the tourist is awed by one experience the one can never get enough. The one would want to visit other places.
Among the places that have inspired awe around the world are the 3,212-foot cascades of Angel Falls located in Venezuela. The striped, multi-coloured mountains of the Danxia Landform Geological Park are also said to be most wondrous. The Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, often called one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, is another of those places that can leave one completely awed.
Those who have visited the Sequoia National Park in California, with its gigantic sequoia trees have said that you will be awed. The star attraction of that Park is a 275-foot tall and 25-foot wide tree, making it the largest known single-stem tree on the planet. Other places that inspire similar feelings include the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the Machu Picchu ruins in Peru. I would love to experience the spectacular Northern Lights or the aurora borealis in Norway.
Countries that have been gifted with these natural attractions must learn to harness the awe-inspiring abilities of their tourist attractions. There are however some countries that have not been blessed with such attractions. But that does not mean they cannot use tourism to sell awe to their visitors.
Countries like UAE have succeeded in creating and selling awe for decades. Dubai is a place full of awe-inspiring manmade wonders. For starters, the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, is enough to instil a sense of wonder in anyone looking upon that magnificent piece of architecture. It is not every day that you come across a building that is so tall that the temperatures at the top are usually about 15 degrees cooler than at the bottom. As if that is not enough, Dubai is also the only place on earth where you can find a 7-star hotel, the Burj Al Arab. By the way, the Burj Al Arab comes with an underwater restaurant.
Thankfully, not all countries have the financial resources to pull off what the Emiratis are doing in the desert. Some countries are just gifted with natural wonders. One of such countries is Ghana. The country has natural, historical, cultural and other man-made attractions. Ghana has over thirty forts and castles lining its coast. There is also the Larabanga Mosque which is among the oldest mosques in West Africa. Together with its sandy beaches, national parks and reserves and animal sanctuaries, the country has all it needs to inspire awe for tourists.
One of the interesting aspects of inspiring awe through tourism was laid bare in a 2019 study published in the May 2019 edition of the Annals of Tourism Research journal. According to the study, when tourists experienced awe, it caused them to engage in positive actions which the researchers referred to as “environmentally responsible behaviour (ERB)”. It is generally known that when people experience positive emotions, it leads them to more prosocial behaviours.
For instance, it is known that when people are flooded with positive emotions, they are more likely to be more generous, more ethical in their behaviours and even more helpful. People also tend to volunteer more and are even more prone to do more for their communities when they are in a good mood. The researchers in the aforementioned study found that in the presence of something so awe-inspiring, the positive emotion caused individuals to shift their attention from themselves to the magnificence of what they were witnessing. This is what caused them to do things that were beneficial to the environment.
It has been stated that people in this day and age suffer from a “chronic lack of awe”. That is not too surprising. We are all so caught up in what is happening on our smartphones that we hardly lift our heads to behold all the wonder and beauty that is going on around us. Add this to the stress of our modern lives, with so much to do in so short a time, and it is not too difficult to see why we are suffering from a chronic lack of awe.
This is why it is advised that people occasionally get out of their normal daily rut and travel to places. Many tourist destinations provide visitors with sceneries and experiences that can inspire awe. “Travel and see” we have been told over the years. There is a lot to that statement.
Awe should however not be restricted to just tourism businesses. Every business can create awe-inspiring moments for its customers. But what this means is that businesses must put in a lot of work if they are to inspire and make use of awe in their customers. Because today’s customer has “seen it all”, it will take something special to get the one to be moved. It is still however possible for customers to be awed.
One way in which businesses are creating awe-inspiring experiences for their customers is via the use of modern technology. Under the broad term of Immersive Technology, these advancements in technology are allowing individuals to have experiences in artificial, simulated environments that sound, smell, and feel like real experiences. These include Virtual Reality (VR) experiences. This is where the technology is used to replace a user’s surroundings with a digital environment using a head-mounted display (HMD).
There is also Augmented Reality (AR). This is where technology seamlessly blends the digital and physical worlds by allowing a user to overlay digital objects in a physical space. There are even Haptic Technologies that allow users to “feel” whilst in a virtual environment, increasing the levels of interaction to cover multiple senses.
Sometimes, all it takes to create awe for one’s customers is something small. Just a little imagination is all it may take. Because many businesses will not be able to rise to the occasion of creating awe, it is the business that manages to succeed in creating awe-inspiring moments that will eventually take the lead in the market.
