Stone Mantel Experience Strategy Blog
Top Ten Takeaways from our 2022-2023 Collaborative Studies on Meaningful and Transformational Experiences
Each year we partner with the world’s leading consumer brands to survey thousands of customers to understand how customer needs and attitudes are evolving. This year our research focused on identifying the best practices for delivering meaningful and transformative customer and employee experiences.
Transformation is the Foundation of our Collaborative Process
We’ve talked to thousands of customers over the past year about how they define and think about transformational experiences across all their life domains. Their responses can be distilled into this deliberately simplified, but far from simplistic, process: Catalyst > See Different + Do Different = Be Different.
It’s the same model we use to create a truly transformative experience for every member of our hallmark program: The Collaboratives.
Experience Strategy Roundtables
Join our 2023 Experience Strategy Roundtables and unlock the secrets to driving value for your customers and company. Don't miss out on live Zoom sessions with thought leaders, cutting-edge research on experience strategy challenges, and networking opportunities with fellow CX leaders.
The Nonlinear Journey Map
In a recent blog post, I argued that there is a distinction between journey mapping, as most people use the term today, and experience mapping. I also shared four different types of journey maps and made the case for mapping exercises that focus on the job the customer is trying to get done, not the process the company is trying to impose on the customer. Most experience strategists today would contend that they don’t want to impose their company’s processes on their customers and that journey mapping is an exercise in understanding the customer’s pain points, needs, and decision-making process.
Time Well-Spent Experience Strategy: A Key to Reducing Physician Burnout
It’s no secret that there is a continually-worsening clinician shortage in the US and that burnout is a leading cause driving highly qualified, experienced physicians from the profession at a time when the healthcare system needs them the most. Although the physician exodus is just one of the many serious problems fueling the US Healthcare system crisis, it is the most critical to address. Without a sufficient number of physicians, the infinite loop of increased patient acuity driving up the cost of care will spiral out of control, threatening the precariously fragile state of these institutions.
Use Data Experience Design To Encourage Patients To Share Data
It’s the classic chicken and the egg problem. Which came first, data or personalization? Patients want personalized experiences, but many are uncomfortable sharing the data needed to deliver these experiences. This is a conundrum we have been studying for the last six years.
In developing journey maps for the future of healthcare across acute care, chronic conditions, and wellness, it’s clear that people want smart, personalized, and even genius solutions to help them improve their health and wellbeing. In fact, over eighty percent of people want to engage with digital tools that truly enable them to better their health, and over half of people use digital tools and devices to help them today.
So why do many not feel safe sharing their data, and why do so many tools fail to deliver on their promises?
Case Study: Co-Creating A More Meaningful Online Home-Buying Experience
Buying a home is the biggest investment most of us make; it can be a daunting and emotional process. What’s more, many
feel they are not able to finance a home. Clayton Homes ®, a Berkshire Hathaway ® company and national builder of attainable housing, knew how people shop for homes is changing.They wanted to develop a meaningful online shopping experience that not only helps people overcome the barriers to homeownership, but also help them design a home built to fit their life.
3 actions managers can take to ensure employees see their work as time well spent
In most employee surveys, employers ask a wide range of questions—about benefits, ESG, culture, policies, and work productivity. What is often left off the list is how employees feel about the time they spend at work. Employers struggle to frame the questions in a way that yield helpful insights.
Are Your Digital Platforms Wasting Your Customers’ Time?
No one wants digital tools that waste their time.
Companies that understand digital context can vastly increase customer engagement. To do so, they need to understand four different types of experiences their tools can yield, ranging from not-smart (technology that just wastes your time) to genius (technology that ultimately feels like time well invested).
Experience Strategy Podcast: How Conjoint and Max Diff Can Help CX Leaders Make Better Decisions With Craig Lutz
Experience strategists are navigating increasingly complex decisions. Customer journeys are increasingly complex, channels are proliferating, expectations continue to rise, and data is abundant. How do we help our companies make the best decisions about how and where to spend money?
Craig Lutz is uniquely well positioned to help us answer this question. Craig has been a data scientist and researcher at Qualtrics since 2007 where he has conducted thousands of conjoint analysis projects with Qualtrics. He is also the designer of Qualtrics' conjoint analysis DIY technology, the author of Exploring Conjoint Analysis and a prominent thought leader on innovative quantitative research methods. We are thrilled to announce that he also recently joined our team at Stone Mantel as Conjoint Advisor!
Market Research Technique: Conjoint Analysis
There are a variety of qualitative and quantitative research tools that can be used to help businesses understand how best to design and optimize the experiences they are delivering to their customers for customer value and time well spent. Today we will dive into one of our favorite quantitative methods - conjoint analysis.
Experience Strategy Podcast: Why you need a strategic POV on your CX
On today’s episode of Experience Strategy Podcast, hosts Dave Norton and Aransas Savas will prove to you that your business needs a strong strategic POV on your customer experience in order to thrive. Listen in to hear how brands like @Apple, @W Hotels, and @Best Buy’s Geek Squad used a compelling experience POV to innovate and drive business success.
Experience Strategy Podcast: Transformational Travel
Today we are joined by Jake Haupert and Jorge Perez, thought leaders and entrepreneurs in transformational travel. We explore why travel is the perfect launchpad for the transformation economy; how transformational experiences differ from our traditional ways of looking at categories like healthcare, finance, retail, technology and beyond; which customer types seek transformation and why they value it. Most importantly, we talk about how to effectively deliver on transformation.
Key Experience Strategy Trends for 2023, Trend 6: Context is King
Content is no longer king. Context is. As the attention recession deepens, effective experience strategies will increasingly be driven by technology, time, and situation.
Key Experience Strategy Trends for 2023, Trend 5: Hybrid is Here to Stay
Hybrid is here to stay. Church, school, shopping, concerts, and theater are all hybrid for good. IRL alone will continue to wane.
Key Experience Strategy Trends for 2023, Trend 4: Uncertainty is Certain
Now that we’ve proved how adaptable we are, customers will increasingly expect agility. Experience strategists will need to rethink customer journeys and experiences to deliver just-in-time products and services despite outages and political instability.
Experience Strategy Podcast: Wellbeing Everywhere with Sallie Fraenkel
Historically, customers expected categories like hospitality and healthcare to support their wellbeing. Today, categories as wide-ranging as finance and electronics are expected to design for wellbeing. Don’t think you’re in the wellbeing industry? Think again. Cultural shifts and crises have changed the game. In this episode, we are joined by Sallie Fraenkel, the founder of Mind Body Spirit Network, and the former CMO & COO of SpaFinder and EVP for the Global Wellness Summit. Together we look at how changing customer expectations influence the perception of your experience and specific ways that you can meaningfully integrate wellbeing for your customers and company.
Key Experience Strategy Trends for 2023, Trend 3: Zoom in on Small Groups
Historically companies have focused on the segment (the big picture) or on individuals (personalization), but the opportunity is the small group: families, friends, working connections, suppliers, and personal connections.
Key Experience Strategy Trends for 2023, Trend 2: Powered by Customer Purpose
Having a company purpose does not equate to understanding your customer's purpose. With savvier customers, and increased demand for transparency on all fronts, companies that focus on their purpose story will struggle, but those that focus their experience on their customers' purpose will thrive and foster sustainable engagement.
Key Experience Strategy Trends for 2023, Trend 1: Wellbeing Everywhere
Customer needs and expectations are always evolving. What can recent trends in those needs and expectations tell you about what’s coming next? And how can you optimize your experience roadmap and prepare your business for what’s next? These are the big questions we answer in our first annual Experience Strategy Trends Report.