What Does a Hungry Zombie Really Want? Imagine being a hungry zombie trying to find a decent meal in today's marketplace.

I've been a zombie. Twice.

And not just any zombie. A Thriller zombie. I auditioned to be a dancing zombie in a street performance of Thriller hosted by a local dance studio and made the cut two years in a row. Yes, that's me in the photo, looking a little worse for wear.But somewhere between the choreography, the makeup and channeling my inner walking dead, something unexpected happened...I started to empathize with the zombie. Weird. Right? But when in character...

And I started wondering: How would a hungry zombie fare trying to find a decent meal in today's marketplace? Something tells me it wouldn't be pretty.

A little food for thought (and perhaps a few brains 🧠) in my latest Voice of the Room article.

---

I've auditioned to be a zombie. Twice. Not just any zombie, either. A Thriller zombie and I'm proud to say I made the cut two years in a row.

A local dance studio in the Chicago suburbs organizes a free community performance of Michael Jackson's iconic Thriller every year. It's an opportunity to bring people together and introduce them to dance, not just as entertainment, but as a hobby, a creative outlet, for social connections a community and, for some, the fulfillment of a dream.

And what an experience it is! There's something wonderfully entertaining about a group of perfectly alive people enthusiastically trying to look like they've just crawled out of a grave. The music, the movement, the theatricality and the shared commitment to being just a little ridiculous made the experience memorable for not just myself but for the "alives" in the audience.

Believe it or not, at some point, I came to empathize with the zombie.

Think about it. Here's this poor creature wandering around, looking rather worse for wear, with one thing on its mind. It's hungry. Really hungry. It doesn't want to be entertained, educated or presented with a dazzling array of options. It just wants something to eat.

And not just anything. It wants brains. Just brains. And you have to admire that kind of clarity.

Yet imagine the poor zombie trying to satisfy that craving in today's marketplace.

First, there's the app to download, the account to create and the password requirements. Then come the questions about dietary preferences, the loyalty program enrollment and the inevitable survey asking how likely it is to recommend the experience to another member of the undead. All this when the zombie just wants LUNCH!

Of course, zombies aren't exactly known for their patience or communication skills. But perhaps that's part of the problem. Nobody's bothered to understand what they're really after. Which got me thinking about how often businesses put customers through experiences designed around everything except the thing the customer came for in the first place.

Zombies don't want a customer satisfaction survey or an explanation of the organization's feeding policies. They really just want brains.

Now, before anyone accuses me of comparing customers to the walking dead, I'm not. But there's something useful about imagining customer experience from the perspective of a creature with one unmistakably clear objective.

A hungry zombie isn't particularly interested in your internal processes. It has a need, a goal and very little patience for anything standing between the two. Come to think of it, that sounds rather familiar.

The Customer's Appetite Isn't Always What We Think

Organizations spend enormous amounts of time designing customer experiences. We map journeys, create personas, establish service standards, implement technology and develop metrics to determine whether everything is working as intended.

Yet it's surprisingly easy to lose sight of the most fundamental question: What is the customer actually trying to accomplish?

Consider how often businesses confuse the product or service they're providing with the outcome a customer is seeking. A hotel guest isn't particularly interested in the mechanics of the reservation system. They want somewhere comfortable to stay and the confidence that their room will be ready when they arrive. A customer contacting support doesn't necessarily want a conversation with a representative. They want the problem resolved, preferably without having to explain it three times.

And our hungry zombie? Well, it certainly doesn't want to navigate a 12-step customer journey just to find dinner.

The point is that customers experience organizations through the lens of their own needs, not through the structure of the business serving them. When those two perspectives don't align, friction follows.

When the Experience Starts Eating the Customer

Sometimes the greatest threat to a good customer experience isn't the absence of innovation. It's the presence of too many things that no longer serve a useful purpose. Outdated policies, cumbersome processes, unnecessary approvals and legacy systems can quietly consume the time and patience of customers and employees alike. And the "because we've always done it this way."

Many of these practices began as perfectly reasonable solutions. They addressed real problems, created consistency or helped organizations manage growth. But customer expectations changed, technology evolved and new possibilities emerged while the original processes remained in place.

Rather than questioning whether those processes still made sense, organizations often focused on making them more efficient. They automated the steps. Improved the dashboards. Added another digital interface. Sometimes they simply made the zombie walk faster. It's entirely possible to create a more efficient version of an experience nobody particularly wants.

And that's why innovation needs to begin with understanding the customer, not with finding another way to improve an existing process.

Innovation Requires More Than Fresh Brains

Innovation is often presented as a search for the next big idea. Something new, exciting and preferably accompanied by a compelling presentation. But sometimes the most valuable innovation is deciding what to stop doing.

Breaking that cycle requires curiosity, trust and a willingness to challenge assumptions. Leaders have to be open to hearing that a successful idea may have run its course. Employees need permission to question practices without being seen as difficult. And customers need to be part of conversations that shape what comes next.

This is where co-building becomes particularly valuable. Rather than designing solutions around what organizations assume people need, we can bring different perspectives into the process and create something grounded in actual behavior. It's not always the easiest approach. But it can be considerably more productive than trying to breathe life into an experience that customers have already outgrown.

Give Them Something Worth Coming Back For

There is value in periodically asking whether we're still solving the right problem. What do customers actually want? What are they trying to accomplish? Where are we making it harder than it needs to be? And which parts of the experience exist primarily because we've always done them that way? Those questions may not be as exciting as announcing the next major innovation initiative, but they can reveal where meaningful change needs to begin.

As for my Thriller auditions, they reminded me how much fun it can be to step into an entirely different character and see the world from another perspective. Perhaps that's not such a bad exercise for businesses, either.

Because whether you're dealing with a hungry zombie or an impatient customer, understanding what someone is really after is a pretty good place to start.

And if you keep feeding them something they don't want, don't be surprised when they go looking for brains somewhere else.

---

Laura M. Nozicka looks at how people actually behave, listens for what's underneath it and helps organizations create unique customer strategies. Laura is a strategist, qualitative researcher, facilitator and speaker with 30+ years spent helping organizations across healthcare, wellness, hospitality and lifestyle categories really understand what's going on with their customers and stakeholders, and craft the story behind the dashboard.

She is the founder of Big Idea Tango and creator of the Co-Build Method™, a hands-on, informed approach to co-creating with teams and customers instead of around them. Her newsletter, Voice of the Room, illuminates the conversations that make the story behind the dashboard real.

---

Need someone to ask the questions and get to the real answers?

This is the work I love doing.

If you have an upcoming project that needs an experienced facilitator who can get beneath the obvious answer, make people comfortable enough to reveal what’s really going on and connect the dots, bring me in!

I’m available for moderating in-depth interviews, stakeholder and employee interviews, strategic synthesis as well as facilitating workshops and off-site discussions that lead to decision making. If you or a client needs a trained facilitator to workshop insights or creative problem solve, contact me.  

Laura M. Nozicka

Customer Insights. Facilitation. Strategy.

Big Idea Tango

laura@bigideatango.com

Talk It Out. Shake It Up. Make It Real.