Today we took a field trip to downtown Chicago with a special mission: discovering the secret ingredient that delivers the best possible customer experience. So, we planned an agenda including the new Amazon Go store, Capital One Café and State Farm Next Door.

The main idea was to explore each of these innovative concepts, talking with the staff and the customers to accomplish our special mission. I was not alone in this adventure, I was with Joe Kim our Vice President of Innovation and Mike Jarmus, our new Marketing Research Analyst.

We started at Capital One Café, an inviting place where you can bank, plan your financial journey, engage with your community, and enjoy Peet's Coffee. And the most important point, you don't have to be a customer. Capital One is trying to build relationships with millennials through cafés where they can find free Wi-Fi, local coffee and food as well as complimentary money coaching. In reality, the cafés feel more like a co-working space than a bank or financial center. There are plenty of device charging stations and comfortable seating to encourage an extended stay.

One of the most interesting concepts for us was the idea of “Money Coaching”. The staff offer free, 1-on-1 Money Coaching to everyone. You don't need to be a Capital One customer.

We were talking to the Capital One "ambassadors" who are not financial planners or bankers, but are trained to assist customers with basic banking needs like setting up a Capital One account, paying their bills online, and applying for a credit card. But guess what? They don’t have sales targets! Can you imagine a bank branch where the staff don’t have sales targets? It changes the rules of the game and their mindset so they can focus on one thing: customer experience.

With their cafés, Capital One has one main objective - to recover and build trust with millennials. And they believe the best way to achieve this is in physical world not the digital world. The product portfolio in this branch is exactly the same as that which millennials can access on their smartphones or tablets, the only difference is that at the café they can speak with staff face-to-face and hopefully establish a relationship with the bank.

Our day was off to a great start so next we headed over to State Farm Next Door in Lincoln Park. Located between Trader Joe's and Urban Outfitters, it is a location that seems to have more in common with a community library than a place of commerce. They charge for coffee and tea, but they offer Wi-Fi, whiteboards, conference rooms, financial counseling, wellness workshops and, yes, even yoga classes, all for free. State Farm is a large insurance and financial services group ranked No. 36 on the 2018 Fortune 500 so it’s perhaps a bit surprising to find that in this flexible environment where you can even move the big rolling cubes (Coaching Cubes) in order to accommodate small meetings or big workshops, the most important is “YOU”: the customer. Everywhere you look you see motivating words and inspiring quotes like: “If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think” said by legendary civil rights lawyer Clarence Darrow.

State Farm defines the Next Door concept as “Your neighborhood financial learning space that is one part coaching, one part classes and all parts Community. You learn from us, we learn from you and we are all smarter for it”.

While Capital One Café is a strong marketing tool for the financial institution, Next Door is more about its value proposition. According to Assistant Vice President of Strategic Resources, Amy Bally: “In this space, we're learning about customer needs and developing solutions. We're figuring out how to have the right conversation”. State Farm knows that it is about the community and they want to connect with their customers because they know that emotionally connected customers are more profitable; according to Motista and The Financial Brand Research into “Customer Lifetime Revenue” published in July 2017, emotionally connected customers are 6 times more valuable.

Having enjoyed a coffee, we headed to our final destination: Amazon Go. The supermarket with the world’s most advanced shopping technology. No lines, no checkout – just grab and go! Where customers just pick up items and walk out. It’s a very strange feeling, like being a shoplifter. We tried our best to fool the system with beef jerky and Altoids, mixing them up on the shelves, putting them in our bag, out of our bag. But it worked, and worked well. And certainly well enough for Amazon to announce that they are rolling out 3,000 Amazon Go stores across the US in the next two to three years. Their secret? Frictionless experience.

But there is a more important question: Why is Amazon opening physical stores? Does the digital giant really need them? Yes, because, a bit like Capital One, they know how important it is to be present in the physical world to build stronger customer relationships and loyalty to defend against their competitors.

After a great day of learning and customer experiences, we thought that we have already finished our field trip but Joe had a last surprise for Mike and me. On the way back to the office, Joe stopped his car at 2532 N. California Ave. in Logan Square. I looked through the window and I saw a beautiful logo – Landbirds - a new spot in town where you can get the best chicken wings! This casual Asian wing joint only opened recently courtesy of first-time restaurateur Eddie Lee, who calls Logan Square home. The menu is still in development, but features Lee's signature chicken wings that come topped with a homemade sauce (mild, medium or hot). They’re also served with honey butter chips sourced from Korea. I promise, you’ve never tried anything like this!

And it was here, meeting Eddie Lee where we discovered the secret ingredient of the best Customer Experience... PASSION. Eddie has strong focus on Customer Experience with 2 important pillars: the people in his team and high quality products, or put another way: passion and authenticity.

And this is exactly what Capital One, State Farm and Amazon Go have in common! These companies have found a great new recipe for the customer experience and it is changing the way their industries treat customers. What is the secret ingredient that turns a great recipe into an amazing recipe? The wow factor is: Passion, staff with plenty of energy who talk with so much passion that they are able to create authentic relationships with emotionally connected customers, and as the research from Motista showed, these truly are the most valuable relationships of all.