The Experience Ends. What Happens Next Is Also Design.
Most brands put a great deal of effort into creating a good experience and then abandon the customer to their own devices, leaving them to encode it in their memory. New research indicates that the strategies that customers reach for most instinctively might not be the ones that make the experience stick.
In a study of people's experiences after traveling, researchers asked 347 university students to describe a positive international trip that had been meaningful to them and then to give a detailed account of what they did with that experience afterward, rather than while it was happening. The study concerned a particular psychological phenomenon: savoring, the deliberate effort to increase or prolong a positive experience beyond the moment it occurs.
The participants had ten different savoring strategies to report on, after which the researchers applied structural equation modeling to determine which of these strategies was actually linked to greater well-being. The results were not something that most experience designers would have anticipated.
The two strategies most commonly used—building one's memory (that is, deliberately forming mental records of the experience) and discussing it with others—were also the most natural reactions when someone had enjoyed themselves. Yet these two approaches did not tend to predict well-being very well. The one strategy that most consistently predicted greater well-being was counting blessings, which involved pausing to feel fortunate, seeing the experience as something that not everybody has, and taking a moment to express gratitude explicitly. The strategy that most consistently predicted ill-being was killjoy thinking, which consisted of a tendency to evaluate, find fault, and anticipate how the experience would end or what would come next.
It isn't a study on tourism; it is one into the effect that the period following a positive experience has on the value that that experience has created, and into the factors that determine whether that value builds up or fades away.
The Gap Between Common and Effective
The most strategically valuable finding of the study is the difference between people's actions and those that are effective. Sharing and building memories are the main activities people engage in after an experience since they seem the right thing to do; they are social, involve action, and provide instant rewards. Whether it's posting a photo, texting a friend, buying a souvenir or making a journal entry, these actions seem to involve preservation and to honor the experience.
However, the study showed that they did not affect people's well-being. This doesn't indicate that they are harmful or pointless; they might in fact have a role to play, such as facilitating social bonding. It only means that they are not the primary way a positive experience becomes a lasting source of remembered value.
It is the subtler, less automatic approach that has an impact. The only strategy found to predict greater well-being was counting blessings significantly—that is, practicing gratitude, maintaining a positive perspective, and acknowledging what had been received. On the other hand, killjoy thinking—entailing evaluation, comparison, anticipation of loss, and the habit of looking for faults or what might be lost—was the strongest predictor of poor well-being, with an effect size almost twice that of gratitude on the positive side.
What this means for brand strategy is that companies should not attempt to engineer gratitude in their customers; rather, the post-experience window, the phase that brands at present leave entirely unattended—has a particular emotional makeup, and part of what occurs during that period is beneficial. At the same time, another part of it undermines the value the brand has just created.
Brands invest money in creating the experience, but rarely in what happens afterward. Research indicates that the window is more is more important than its appearance.
What Killjoy Thinking Actually Is
The word is one the researchers have used themselves and refers to something anyone who has closely observed a good experience go wrong will recognize. Dissatisfaction is not the same as killjoy thinking; it is the internal assessment which starts either while the experience is still taking place or right after it has finished, involving the mental evaluation of what was flawed, what had been missed, what could have been improved, and how returning to ordinary life will feel.
Certain industries tend to adopt a pessimistic approach in their structure. For example, a restaurant that shows the bill as soon as the food has been eaten brings the experience to a close on a transactional note before the customer has had a chance to enjoy it. Similarly, a conference that ends with a full schedule of departures pushes logistical considerations into the space where reflection could have occurred. A high-end purchase that begins with a difficult delivery or confusing onboarding creates pressure to evaluate at the very moment the customer should be getting used to what they have just chosen.
Healthcare is especially susceptible to this kind of situation. A patient who has had a truly good clinical experience, one in which they have been listened to, seen, and treated competently, may leave the building only to come across an insurance billing notice, a confusing set of follow-up instructions, or an incorrect parking charge. Although none of these incidents reduces the standard of care provided, each can disrupt the encoding of the positive experience by substituting it with a sense of evaluation. The experience itself was good, but the ending was not. As a result, the memory includes both aspects.
An identical mechanism applies to donor experiences, premium services, new client onboarding and any situation where the official end of a transaction or interaction results in a jarring return to normal friction. The experience doesn't end when the service is provided; it ends only when the emotional tone of the closing has settled.
The Architecture of the After
If the period after the experience has a structured aspect, then it can be designed. Not in a complete way, since no brand can control what a customer thinks about after they have left, but deliberately at the margins.
The right question isn't 'how do we get customers to share this?' because that is a distribution issue and concerns the wrong mechanism; the appropriate question is 'what are we placing in the gap between the end of the experience and the resumption of ordinary life, and what emotional stance does it encourage?'
There's no need for a closing that calls for elaborate gratitude; it only has to be properly directed. It should include a handwritten note listing the things achieved together. The last message should recognize the client's contributions, not just the services the firm provided. A discharge summary from a medical visit should remind the patient of the issues that were resolved, not merely what actions they now need to take. In a post-event communication, the question should focus on what the attendee will carry with them, rather than asking them to fill out a satisfaction survey. All of these examples involve no substantial logistical effort. Instead, they all aim to orient the customer towards what they have received rather than towards what is now concluded.
The way the close is designed also involves checking for any uninvited items that may be occupying the post-experience window. For example, an automatic billing email, a subscription renewal notice, an upsell offer, or a request for the customer to rate the experience—all of these act as evaluation triggers. Instead of allowing the customer to absorb the experience, they are asked to assess it. Since these messages are sent immediately after a positive experience and before it has had time to settle, they shorten the savoring period and introduce an analytical attitude, which research shows actively undermines long-term well-being.
The way the close is designed involves auditing the content currently filling the post-experience window being invited there, and then considering whether it invites the user to absorb it rather than evaluate it.
The Memory Problem for Brands
Beneath the psychological consideration there is also a longer-term commercial one. It is remembered experience which leads to referrals, repeat business, and customer loyalty. A positive experience that has been well encoded into memory has a longer commercial half-life than one that was just as good at the time but was poorly supported in the period that followed.
The study showed that memory-building, the most straightforward method of preserving experiences, was not a good predictor of well-being. This point is worth considering. It indicates that the act of creating a mental record of an experience is not, by itself, what gives the experience its value when looked back on; it is the emotional attitude with which the experience was encoded that makes it valuable. A memory formed from a perspective of gratitude and appreciation differs in its accumulation from one that is formed through evaluation, comparison, or a sense of loss.
By failing to plan what happens after the experience, brands are giving up the ability to determine which perspective the customer takes. Since they had the opportunity to design the experience, they also had the opportunity to influence how it is encoded, yet most of them are not doing so.
In practice, the recommendation should not be included merely as a concluding ceremony; rather, it serves to conclude an interaction—a conscious decision about the customer’s emotional state when the experience is recalled. That decision should be the brand's. The research indicates that it is more important than the sharing that the brand is currently focusing on.
The experience doesn't end when your customer leaves; in fact, that moment marks the start of what they will remember. While most brands plan for what happens before that point, very few consider what happens afterward.
Some ideas are worth discussing in the context of your organization.
