Customer Journey Analysis of Crystal Maze: Recommendations and Report

This report provides an executive summary of the Crystal Maze customer experience, focusing on a team's journey through the live game show. It details the show's format, selection criteria, and the overall experience. The report conducts a customer journey mapping analysis, examining interactions at various touchpoints, from online registration to the exit. A service blueprint is developed to visualize the processes involved in delivering the service. The analysis highlights areas of customer dissatisfaction, such as the rushed pace, high cost, and insufficient time for challenges, leading to recommendations for improvement. These include enhancing the quality of the experience, providing more time for team discussions, and potentially offering online game participation to align with current entertainment trends. The report aims to offer insights into optimizing the customer experience and increasing customer satisfaction for the Crystal Maze.

Customer service
Management

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Crystal maze is a live experience which people have in groups of eight. The detail
description of the show, criteria for selection and the entire journey is covered. The report
analyses the experience of one such team and prepares customer journey map and provides
recommendations.

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................5
Customer Journey Mapping and The Service Blueprint..............................................................5
Service Blueprint Diagram........................................................................................................10
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION............................................................................10
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Crystal Maze is a game show in which contestants participate in a team of six and plays
mental, physical, mystery and skill based games. The trip advisor review gives the experience of
a team that participated in the show. The review has three key points that describes the
experience of the team members of that team. Team felt like the challenges of the game show are
way too rushed, over -priced and also the time that team players get is not sufficient. The best
number of players in a team preferred by maximum number of participating team is eight. There
are a total of sixteen challenges in the game per show to be played by a single player at a time.
For a team of eight each player gets the chance to face two challenges. The duration for each
challenge is two minutes.
The review case study team also had eight players in their team. Major areas for the
occurrence of dissatisfaction among the players of the team are that the time given in between of
two challenges is not fair enough as the outcomes of previous challenge cannot be discussed
upon to form a winning strategy in that time. Further the team experienced that the amount paid
by it to participate for the show is high.
According to the experiences of the customers the game show is most suitable for
teenagers and above aged people. Game show is participated by member of same family most.
Youngest member of the family is chosen as the captain of the team. The recent customer trends
in entertainment industry show inclining graph of customers preferring online or cloud based
games. Customers expects from the makers of Crystal Maze game show that they provide
platform to its viewers where they can participate and play games of the TV show from their
homes through online mode (Customer Journey Map: What is Customer Journey Mapping &
Why is it Important? 2022). Further there is trend in the industry for online streaming shows.
Company meets this trend by streaming its game show on online websites and apps.
Both the trends are contradictory with each other. For streaming the game show over
online platforms it is necessary for the makers to attract more number of people to participate in
physical gaming activities of the show. Offline participation of the audiences is more beneficial
for the company as it can earn by streaming the show online. To fascinate the viewers in taking
participation in the game there is need to make the physical and skill based theme games more
interesting and challenging.

Crystal Maze for engaging the customers to participate in playing online games focuses
on mystery and mental games. Further the customer base can be increased by introducing games
that can be played by viewers of young age. Increase in customer reach can be reach at
maximum by coming up with games that can be played by kids of eight plus years of age.
MAIN BODY
Customer Journey Mapping and The Service Blueprint
Customer journey mapping is a process followed in order to create a customer journey
map, which describes the interactions of the customer with the brand visually (Lobo and et.al.,
2019). This process is done by the companies in order to know the business from the customers’
point of view. Mapping is done by firstly determining all the possible areas where a customer
interacts with the firm. There are various points at which the customers are engaged or comes in
contact with the organization like company’s online site, social media pages, marketing team,
sales team, support service team.
At every interactive point journey of user is established. A customer journey map consists
of the experience of customer at each point (Liu and Chiang, 2018). Various actions are taken by
customer at every touch point the action of company is required at these in response. It kind of
mapping is done by company to optimise the journey of customer with the brand. Company sets
its benchmarks at the level of value its customers’ desire and constantly work towards making its
current offerings meet that standard. Logical order is created for the customer journey.
The Service Blueprint
The visualisation of the process followed within an organization for establishing links
within the different components of services is defined as service blueprint. A service blueprint
gives the organization in depth understanding of both services that are visible to its customer and
invisible to them (Silva and et.al., 2021). For each service that a company provides to its
customers, certain resources are employed and process are followed to make them available.
Through understanding of business processes helps it outlining the weaknesses attached to these
processes. Rectifying the weaknesses opens up the opportunities for the organization to optimize
the customer experience. Visualization helps in determination of areas for improvement. The
further benefit of service blueprint is to establish the coordination between the departments
involved in providing complex type of service to buyers.
Physical Evidence

The viewers of the game show watch it on Channel 4. The series is also available on
Prime Video and Vudu movie and Tv store. For participating in the show customers visit the
channels official website. In the show name tab at the website page all the details and
participation criteria is available for the interested people. Here the buyers interact with the
pricing by the show makers for participation and the other required details. Also the audience of
the show can purchase the applications membership for experiencing the interruption free
streaming experience (Lai and Tsai, 2018). The crystal maze staff is the next physical evident of
the customer journey. The participating teams interact with team in opposition and host and
judges of the game show. Backstage interaction includes interaction with support team,
backstage crew members, stage technicians. The backstage staff takes care of the participating
team members. The stage management teams see that everything goes smoothly at the backstage
(Boediman, 2020). Game show host greets the teams and introduce it to the audience and each
other. Further the members are made clear with the instructions of the game.
The staff of the game introduce the team member with the terms and conditions of the
game, this is a very crucial part and needs of be clear with the participants of the game. Further
the policies that are followed are also discussed
(D'Arco and et.al., 2019). Customer witnesses the crystal maze beautiful, breath- taking and
spectacular dome ambient. Then the next physical evidence to which the team interacts is the
desk of the institute. Further they receive the business and while exiting experience the exteriors
of the field.
Customer journey starts with the point they get themselves registered to the game. After
the registration the next step is where the customer that are the participants of the show arrives at
the location where the game is played. After the arrival the customer interacts with the front desk
staff who are the ones that explains the terms and conditions and the policies of crystal maze.
After this the member of the team are guided by the front desk staff to the play area. The crystal
dome is the stage structure where the participants are supposed to play the games. There are a
total of 16 challenges that each team is expected to play with utmost dedication and will in order
to be the winning team. In crystal maze the 16 challenges are of two minutes each. Each
challenge is to be played by two players. For playing these challenges participants enter the
dome (West and et.al., 2020). The journey of customer’s till they meet to the front desk staff was
good but when the learn about the game rules somewhat the reactions of the team members

effected they felt like the whole management is in a hurry to make the game for the team to
finish fast so that they could cover as many participating teams as they could. There was a
feeling that they had to pay huge sum of money just for few minutes. After the game begun the
experience of the players started detreating so on. The game seemed to be over rushed which is
the main reason for the dissatisfaction among the members. Also the challenges were
continuously one after the other in addition to being completed in a short duration. Participants
of the experiencing team did not get any time to discussed about the pervious challenge
officially. Continuity of the tasks resulted into getting up of no time in between of consecutive
challenges. For discussion of the task the team took about 40 seconds making the situation where
only around 1 minute and 20 seconds were left for the next task that is less than 2 minutes of
standard time allotted for doing of each such task. The discussion of player who will be playing
next challenge leads to reduction of time left for playing of the overall task further leading to
losing the game. Teams’ members are provided with jackets that are for the purposes of the
enhancing the crystal maze experience (Clinehens, 2019). The team members were not provided
with the jackets on which they decided to exit the dome and started to discuss the strategy they
would implement in order to play their best but again as they were called for capturing of picture
they could not do such discussion. All the other team members were wearing the jackets that are
believed to enhance the experience but the case study team members had no such jacket which
further added to making them to have a bad experience. The whole of the game amount was
already paid to the organizing during the reservation by the team in case study. All the
participants of the particular team felt that they have been overpriced for an experience of 4
minutes only and that to a rushed one. The amount paid by them seemed to be very high for just
a quick experience. To sum up it was a quantity experience instead of a quality one. They
expected to knowledge something that is good in quality and have satisfaction from it. with all
the experience they had the main motive of crystal maze that gets highlighted is to attract and
have as many participants as possible that finish the experience as soon as they could in order to
manage large quantity of players (Laverie, Humphrey and Bolton, 2018). The team then walked
out and reached at the reception counter for complaining regarding the discontentment it had.
The receptionist at the desk got to know about the frustration team had on if in a kind manner she
asked them to contact the manager of the crystal maze. Who listened calmly the whole of it. in a
reply to which it was suggested to write an email on the email address written on the provided

business card. The team said that they are sure it will not be replied on which the manager
replied to them by saying ok, which was further dissatisfactory. Journey of the team with crystal
maze live experience ends with the departure of team. Customer journey mapping also represents
the feelings or reactions of the customers in form of emojis, that are pictorial representation of
human emotions. It is also represented in the attested customer journey map that the team was
happy when it got itself registered to the game through website of the show. The whole setup and
structure of the maze was liked by the members and experience with the front desk staff was also
good. With the description of the rules and related instructions and mainly the in mind
calculation of getting to only 4 minutes per player in entire live experience, in the minds of team
starting the feeling to reversing the good experience into a bad one. Hence with the team’s
description of the challenge instructions the bad customer journey begins which continues to the
entry into the dome were the challenges were played in a rush and also they did not have jackets
for clicking picture (Fehér and Varga, 2019). After the team left the dome the reaction again
started turning into a positive one as the receptionist handled them with politeness. The raising of
complain to the manager on which the hope of getting the issue resolved vanished along with the
positive attitude of the team. The team left crystal maze with anger, frustration, feeling of being
robbed and high level of dissatisfaction originated from the bad experience it had.
On Stage Interaction
Both the terms onstage and backstage are used to refer to the areas that outlines in a
customer experience the line of interaction. The areas like counter staff are the ones to which a
customer interacts directly. Front -stage comprise of everything a customer can see. In the on
stage interaction the first thing to which direct interaction of customer takes place is confirmation
of the email and the e- tickets approval to the reservation by the customer. Next on stage
interaction takes place when the customer reach to the crystal maze and the front desk staff
greets them on the behalf of whole organizing team by presenting them (Sury and et.al., 2018).
Then the team interacted which the challenges’ instructions and tips relating to it. after which at
the entry to the crystal dome it encounters the maze master, who conducts all the challenges.
After the completion of live experience team interacted with the lady at the reception counter
who guided them to interact with manager for representing the complaint they have.
Backstage Interaction

Back –stage areas include backend staff, partners and system to which a customer
interacts indirectly. In a good working of an event both on and back stage interaction areas work
in coordination. Backstage is inclusive of all those things that past the things to which customer
interacts directly. The backstage interaction of the team is with resetting of the challenge and
game.
Support Process
All the activities that assist in successful event happening are referred as support process.
There are in all three systems identified that support the crystal maze onstage and backstage
activities. The activity of taking reservations is supported by the system namely booking system.
The system that is involved during the team arrives at the crystal maze front desk staff is the
registration system with which the team that reaches the location get registered (Berman, 2020).
The resetting of challenge and game is supported by the game system.
There are certain regulations that are followed in the entire process. Customers are to
reach on time starting from 1st December as the ticket times change to arrival times. Further the
maximum number of players allowed in a team are 8. In case the customer purchase tickets less
than 8 then rest of the participants are added into the team (Patti van Dessel and Hartley, 2020).
Regulations are must to be followed by every customer for the participation in live experience.
These are essential to maintain the required discipline during entire event.

Service Blueprint Diagram
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
To sum up it can be said that crystal maze is a game in which people participate to have
live experience. This is clear that the show is quite popular on the basis of customers that reserve
themselves to experience such live challenges. There are various disadvantages that the show
could experience with increasing number of customer resentment in future. This can be seen in
dropping the number of people opting to reserve the tickets for live experience. The reputation
and popularity of the show is at stake with this kind of events. The customer utility levels are
very low, in accordance to the case study scenario it can be said that there is feeling of being
robbed and being rushed to quick experience (customer journey map, 2022). There are certain
recommendations on implementation of which the situation of customer bad experiences can be
effectively avoided. To begin with it is recommended to fix the number of tickets that are to be
brought by the group. As for playing challenges in the groups with coordination it is necessary
that the participants of the team are well known to each other. Next it is recommended to provide
a duration of 45 seconds in between of two consecutive task. The criteria should not be a 2
minutes’ challenge after a 2- minute challenge. Instead it can be first a 2- min challenge then a

45 –sec rest time before another such challenge. This will provide group with some time to
decide their strategy to the next task and also to think upon the player that will be doing it. It
should be made sure that each team gets the extra things provided aimed at enhancing the
experience levels like jackets. Giving such things to some of the teams only while some teams
are left creates dissatisfaction in the members of teams to a great extent. So it is advisory to
avoid such instances. Further there should be a good feedback and relevance system to assist the
customers after the game. The feedback or complaints should not be only taken through e- mails.
The ones that are received over e –mails must be surely responded to effectively as soon as
possible and response time should exceed to 3 working days. Also the complaints that can be
addressed at the manager’s level must be resolved on the spot only. Further the staff should
apologise to the customer in cases of actual cause of inconvenience to the them. Lastly it is
recommended that the challenges must be some that are more than 2 minutes a minimum of each
challenge of 5 -minutes is recommended so that the participants can experience it in a better way,
this will further help in removal of thoughts from the minds of customers that the tickets are
highly priced. The main issue that must to be addressed at the priority basis is of value of ticket
that a customer purchase. Either the price should be lowered or the team should work
progressively to create value to the amount that customer pays so that the feeling to being robbed
in the customer gets eliminated.

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Online
customer journey map. 2022. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.techtarget.com/searchcustomerexperience/definition/customer-journey-
map >
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Customer Journey Map: What is Customer Journey Mapping & Why is it Important? 2022.
[Online]. Available through: <https://www.salesforce.com/uk/blog/2016/03/customer-
journey-mapping-explained.html#:~:text=Customer%20journey%20mapping%20(also
%20called,business%20from%20the%20customer's%20perspective. >
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