Your customer is the lifeblood of your company. We hear this over and over again. Yet, companies don’t do a great job of crafting a customer experience that actually meets our needs, values our time, and helps us achieve our goals.
Customer experience is all the rage – why do so many companies get it wrong?
Today, Aransas Savas and I discuss the myths of customer experience strategy: where companies go wrong in aligning the entire business around the customer’s experience and why those end-of-call automated surveys just give you useless data. She shares her own experiences with brands on creating shifts in how the company views customer needs. Aransas shares the concept of “Jobs to Be Done” as a useful way to segment what customers need from you, why journey mapping and Net Promoter Scores don’t give you a holistic picture of customer experience, and why it’s far more useful to consider modes instead. We discuss how measuring Time Well Spent, Time Well Invested, and Time Well Saved helps both B2C and B2B brands more effectively understand what customers perceive as valuable. Finally, she shares the important highlights from Stone Mantel’s recent 2023 Customer Experience Trends Report.
To access this episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- Customers are not robots – they will not likely follow the journeys you lay out in an idealized situation. You need to consider the customer every step of the way.
- The wrong questions are being asked during traditional data collection – as we change the questions and how they’re being asked, you will be able to gather more valuable data to move forward in understanding your customer’s experience.
- While AI can help to identify trends, it does still require a human touch to interpret the data for best use.
- Having a company purpose does not mean you understand your customer’s purpose.
“There’s a functional job to be done, and there’s an emotional, social, and aspirational job. If I can understand what all four of those are, I create a much more valuable product than if my product experience is strictly based on the functional job to be done.” — Aransas Savas
About Aransas Savas, Coach & Experience Designer
Aransas Savas is a coach, an experience designer at Stone Mantel, and the co-host of the Experience Strategy Podcast. Drawing on over two decades of experience, Aransas combines behavioral science and coaching to partner with experience strategists at leading consumer brands, including Weight Watchers, Best Buy, Truist Bank, and Clayton Homes to create meaningful, and often, transformative, customer journeys.
Based in Brooklyn, she is a 20-time marathoner, a wife to a newscaster, and a mother to a 200-year-old sourdough culture, a fluffy pup, and two-spirited, creative girls.
References:
Stone Mantel’s 2023 Experience Strategy Trends Report
80-page report of the latest must-know Experience Strategy Trends for 2023, a deep analysis of cultural and customer trends based on insights collected from more than 3,200 customers and over 200 experience strategists over the course of 20 months.
The Empathy Edge Podcast, Melina Palmer: Why Your Customers Can’t Tell You What They Want
Connect with Aransas Savas
Stone Mantel: https://www.stonemantel.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aransassavas/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aransasrose/
Podcast: The Experience Strategy Podcast
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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society, it’s great for business. Your customer is the lifeblood of your company. We hear this over and over again. And yet, companies don’t do a great job of crafting a customer experience that actually meets our needs. Values are timed and helps us achieve our goals. Just grab a coach airplane ticket or try to get your cable fixed. And you’ll know what I mean. Yeah, customer experience is all the rage. So why do so many companies get it wrong? Today, Aransas SAVVIS coach and experienced designer with stone mantle breaks down the myths and trends of good customer experience and why empathetic research and thinking is required. She is co host of the experience strategy podcast and with more than two decades of experience combines behavioral science and coaching to partner with experienced strategists at leading consumer brands, including weightwatchers Best Buy truest bank and Clayton Homes to create meaningful and often transformative customer journeys. We discussed the myths of customer experience strategy, where companies go wrong in aligning the entire business around the customer’s experience, and why those end of call automated surveys just give you useless data. She shares her own experiences with brands such as Weight Watchers on creating shifts and how the company views customer needs. Aransas shares the concept of jobs to be done as a useful way to segment what customers need from you. Why journey mapping and net promoter scores don’t give you a holistic picture of customer experience, and why it’s far more useful to consider modes instead. Finally, we discuss how measuring time well spent, time well invested and time well saved helps both b2c and b2b brands more effectively understand what customers perceive as valuable. And finally, she shares the important highlights from stone mantle’s recent 2023 Customer Experience Trends Report. This is such an insightful episode for every marketer and marketing leader out there. Take a listen. Let’s get connected. If you’re loving this content, don’t forget to go to the empathy edge.com and sign up for the email list to get free resources and more empathy infused success tips and find out how you can book me as a speaker. I want to hear how empathy is helping you be more successful. So please sign up now at V empathy edge.com. Oh, and follow me on Instagram where I’m always posting all the things for you at Red slice Maria. Welcome Aransas to the empathy edge Podcast. I’m so excited to have this talk with you about customer experience strategy.
Aransas Savas 04:04
Thanks for having me, Maria. So happy to be here.
Maria Ross 04:08
So before we dive into our questions, tell me a little bit about how you got to this work of being a designer and a leader in customer experience.
Aransas Savas 04:17
I tell people all the time that the great joy of working in experience strategy is that you get to work with humans who like humans. And so as an experienced strategist, I have the great luxury of collaborating with people who are inherently human centric, and who have learned how to translate human experience into something that is valuable to businesses and brands. And so we talk a lot in our work about impact. And to me, impact is only valuable, if it’s sustainable and That means that it is meaningful to customers and impactful for them and their needs. And it’s impactful for businesses and brands. And so, like so many people,
05:10
I
Aransas Savas 05:12
grew into experience strategy, I talked to a lot of people who came to it as a second or third chapter in their career, because it is one of those things that you sort of find through your passions and gifts. And I think for many of us, we probably studied the arts or storytelling, or I psychology, and maybe we started in business and marketing or brand or research, and through time, just wanted to get closer and closer to the consumers who may be customers. They may be employees, but they are the people who ultimately are the end users of the
05:51
products and services. So
Maria Ross 05:55
a little curveball here, why is this such a hard It feels like it’s such a hard concept for many corporate leaders to understand. I mean, they pay lip service to the customers everything, and yet, their processes, their policies, their actual experience is horrible. From a customer point of view, like, what, where’s that disconnect?
Aransas Savas 06:19
It’s inherently complex, and organizations are bad at solving inherently complex problems. And we chase the quick ROI. And we chase the quick solves. And then time and time again, we find that it doesn’t yield any real result. And we do our work in a very collaborative fashion. And so we believe that problems are only solved by bringing organizations together around a strong customer led vision. And so oftentimes that mean, stepping on some toes, because, like you said, we all get that customers are important. This is can’t survive without customers who believe that our products and services are valued.
07:17
And yet,
Aransas Savas 07:18
that means that lots and lots of different teams, lots of different leaders, lots and lots of different visions, all have a say, and how to get that done. And so I think the biggest challenge for most organizations, especially older organizations that have a bigger bench, and have more hierarchical structures, is to integrate and unify that experience. And to see the customer at the center and set up the organizational structures.
Maria Ross 07:55
Right. And I think that’s the challenge is, how do you do that within the construct of, you’ve got marketing, you’ve got sales, you’ve got finance, you’ve got your internal processes, what what does that really mean to organize the company around the customer experience, I guess, that leads me into related is, what is the myth of customer experience strategy?
Aransas Savas 08:18
Yeah, I think these are very much related. For so long. We have mapped our customer journeys as though we were mapping them for robots, or machines. And we’ve planned these idealized journeys for them to follow, and then wondered why what our customers played back sounded so different than what we envisioned. And so much of the work that we have done with our clients that has been really successful is just to look at customer modes. And when we talk about modes, we’re talking about a mindset and a set of behaviors that a customer gets into in order to get the job done. And you think about it, and you see it in your own life, right. Apple now has done a really great job with this over the past few years at designing for modes. And so they invite you to reflect on what mindset Are you in? What job are you trying to get done? How are we going to set our tool apt to be responsive to that mode. But as humans, thanks to technology, we’re constantly shifting modes. And sometimes we’re in three or four modes at once. We did some of our early research in home with customers witnessing their mood shifting, and we watched a mom, probably not unlike you and I who was simultaneously making dinner, sending an email to work while voice texting her husband about a pickup from a soccer game. And so she is in this extraordinary hyper productivity mode, where she’s literally using every part of her body To get the
Maria Ross 10:00
neuron in there, yeah, the gods texting, thank God.
Aransas Savas 10:05
And we become superhuman sometimes thanks to technology. And so understanding what modes your customers in when they are using your product is gonna give you much more information about how to as an organization, integrate and unify your experience to meet that mode. Because if I assume that Maria or Aransas is going to behave in some predictable journey based manner, I’m probably going to find that my solutions don’t sit with her at that moment. But if I can think about it as customer modes, we’ve seen that work really well to bring marketing and sales and product teams and experienced service delivery teams together to meet a need. So you’ll hear us talk a lot about jobs to be done. And it’s a the theory that was originated by Clayton Christensen been used in many, many organizations part of disruptive innovation work, that we look at jobs to be done in a somewhat different way we break them down in to differ as sort of a hierarchy of needs. And with each one, you see customers, looking to achieve different jobs and get used different modes to accomplish those jobs successfully. And so when organizations start to align around, those start to direct their time and energy around helping their customers be successful, we see a real shift in customer satisfaction, which is to your earlier question. The other big reason that it’s hard for organizations to align around, right? Customer satisfaction and experience is because we haven’t had particularly good methods of measuring the value experience,
Maria Ross 12:02
the current methods of even the automated surveys, you got a just make me laugh. They’re constantly like, based on the last person you talked to did yourself, did your problem get solved? Yes, but I had to talk to seven people before I spoke to that person. So me just saying yes or no is not helping you understand how frustrating the process is to me as a customer. And also there’s no room for the kind of like, or the or the this person was lovely and tried to be as helpful as they could. But they were constrained by what you company enabled them to do for me in that phone call or in that chat interaction. And so I feel like, I feel like so many of them are measuring the wrong things just to make themselves feel better.
Aransas Savas 12:53
Agree. And Net Promoter Score is the biggest problem. It can be helpful for marketing, I think, as a referral. That is a piece of data to inform the rate of approval, great, but not to measure an experience to your point that is ultimately about value. And in our work, we’ve really we’ve talked to a lot of customers recently to ask them about their competence in the surveys. And time and time again, they tell us that they’re just making up responses. Yeah. And there’s a lot of paranoia about the data that we get in response to these that will somehow be used to penalize them. They’re wildly biased. In terms of the samples and respondents. There’s a lot of problems with traditional data collection. And there’s a lot of problems with the questions that we’re asking, when we start to ask people about the difference between time well spent. Time will saved time while invested and time wasted. We get a pretty good picture of where we are meeting customer needs. And so I’ve really been encouraging my clients to start to ask their customers more about the value of time. Yes, and about whether or not they’re gonna refer somebody,
14:15
right? Or if
Maria Ross 14:16
did my problem get solved? Eventually? But or maybe not ever. But I want to dig into that because you do talk a lot about Time Well Spent time well invested time well saved. How did you land on that vector of time as something that was most valuable to people in judging whether they’d had a quote unquote good experience or not? What led to that?
Aransas Savas 14:38
It actually goes back to the jobs to be done work. So when we talk about jobs to be done, we look at whether they are functional jobs to be done. Pretty self explanatory, emotional jobs to be done. So meeting some sort of emotional need social or aspirational. We use the acronym FISA. So functional, emotional on social and aspirational, now, our expectations of those jobs vary. And in a functional job, we usually want time to be saved. And so when I’m measuring the success of a functional job or a functional need for a customer, I’m really looking about whether or not I’ve saved
15:24
time for that customer.
Aransas Savas 15:26
We’ve gotten pretty great at that, as an as a as a field we are using technology has improved radically over the last decade in terms of
15:38
successfully meeting the need.
Aransas Savas 15:42
For emotional and social jobs, generally speaking, my aim is to deliver on time well spent. So with those jobs, what I’m really trying to do is to ensure that the time they gave me is time that was valuable, and was a good use
16:01
of their time.
Aransas Savas 16:04
With aspirational jobs, however, where I really want my customer to have some sort of shift. And certainly, so much of the work I did at Weight Watchers was about aspirational jobs, people were hiring this company,
16:23
to create change needs. So we say that we we were hired for hope. And that hope is fragile. And so
Aransas Savas 16:36
when I’m getting any sort of aspirational job, 10, I really want my time to be well invested. But if I give you my time, I want you to give me back something that is even greater than the time I have given you. That amplifies my investment in you. And so when we choose which measurements to use to establish the value of an experience, it really comes down to what those jobs are.
17:08
Okay, so much in there.
Maria Ross 17:10
I love it. I, you know, you did specifically mentioned some work that you did at Weight Watchers. And I think that’s, that’s something let’s dig into that sort of as a case study in JMeter. So how did how did you get the I’m sure it wasn’t a hard convincing to convince them that that was the kind of job that people were hiring weightwatchers for was an aspiration of hope. But what what were they marketing towards or leaning towards before that was impeding their success? Were they thinking that was a functional thing? Were they thinking, Oh, just to lose weight?
Aransas Savas 17:46
Yeah, from a marketing standpoint, I think we always appreciated that it was aspirational. From a product development standpoint, it’s really easy to forget that there is the vulnerable human who’s hanging their hope on your tool. And it’s really easy to get sucked into thinking that the job you have to do is a functional one. How do I so weightwatchers works on a point system, people who are following the program, log their food in the Weight Watchers app. And so if I’m logging my food and looking for the points values for this food, is time a factor? Absolutely. So I have a functional job to be done. And there’s an emotional job to be done a social job to be done, and an aspirational job to be done. And so if I can understand what all four of those are making create a much more valuable product than if my product experience is strictly based on the functional job to be done, which is find the points quickly. And at different stages of the journey I have different needs. Right? Oh, when I am learning the points, system, I am at the most vulnerable, vulnerable motivationally. And I have the least functional knowledge about how to use the tool, even and so it’s a really interesting journey based model to look at how you use that understanding about your customers needs and their mindset mental models in that moment alongside those jobs to be done.
Maria Ross 19:36
And I know you talked about that. And again, this is a very holistic view of customer experiences understanding how those insights impact not just marketing and messaging, but product design, product delivery, buying experience, post purchase, support, all of these things, was it was it how was that like working with Weight Watchers or any of your other you know, well known clients that you’ve worked with, is that a hard sell? Or do they do they quickly see based on how you’re describing, getting them into the mindset of the customer? Do they more easily see, Oh, I see how these other groups need to be part of this conversation.
20:15
I think we all see it. It’s harder still to be it.
Aransas Savas 20:22
And I’ve watched a lot of organizations struggle with it. The ones I’ve seen being the most successful with it, are the ones who bring leaders from multiple elements of the organization, multiple pieces of the organization, to get there to align on a strategy for meeting those needs. And alignment and understanding for meeting those needs. Ultimately, experienced strategists are responsible for knowing your customer. And I think in so many cases, we have sort of assigned experience over to maybe an operations team or a field service team. And in doing so we’ve empowered some aspects of the organization in some ways to meet the needs of the customer. And we’ve inspired and empowered other parts of the organization to take that leadership in different ways. And so it really does in order to integrate and unify, it takes thinking about your customers journey holistically, and creating shared ownership and that that’s a top down exercise. It simply doesn’t work. And I’ve watched organizations work so hard to do it bottom up. But I really think it has to be core to organizational mission and vision.
Maria Ross 21:47
Well, I’m sure that’s a big transformational shift for a lot of companies as well. So they’re not only trying to shift, they’re not only trying to transform what their customers are going through, they organizationally have to transform their own mindset, so that they can serve those customers and achieve the success they want to achieve. And what’s great about this is and this kind of leads me in my next question, which is sort of innovative research methods that you use to really get to understand those customers understand what are the tasks they’re trying to accomplish? What is their what mode are they in, as you said, and of course, empathy plays a huge role in that because it involves seeing the world through their eyes, as much as you can. So can you talk about some of the ways that you gather that Intel? And you you share that with clients? And are they usually are there usually opportunities they haven’t even tapped into to develop those insights? Are they doing sort of like we talked about the surveys that don’t work? The you know, the what, what are the methods they’re using that don’t work? And what are the innovative methods? You’re helping them embrace?
22:49
Yeah,
Aransas Savas 22:51
I mean, I think sending out NPS surveys, it would probably be my top not working. And I think that’s the one that I’m the one. It’s the one that Miss guides us the most and every angel investor, the first question they’re gonna ask you, if you’ve got a start up is, what’s your NPS score. And so it’s taken on
23:16
this credibility,
Aransas Savas 23:19
that unfortunately, has misled a lot company. And the work that I do is much more based in as I said, from a quant perspective is about time I talk to customers all day long, about time. And over and over again, they tell me that it is their most precious resource. And I say that with some real gravity, because I do talk to customers across the economic spectrum. And even those who have the most money, and those who have the least money, say the same thing, which to me is very telling that as a society, we have fetishized time, and we have hung our self belief and our value and our satisfaction, so strongly on the value of time. And yet, as organizations, we forget that, that’s, that’s the exchange, we think of it as a money exchange. But it really is more and more a time exchange with customers. And so, from a client perspective, most of my work focuses around the value of time. From a qual perspective, I use coaching techniques. I’ve been in coaching and behavior change for almost 20 years. And I find that so many of the assumptions we’ve made about our customers are based on assuming they know what they want.
24:49
Yes,
Maria Ross 24:51
yes. I actually had a guest on the show. Melina Palmer. I’ll do I’ll put a link to her episode in here because she is an expert in behavioral economics. And it’s all about how we think people make decisions and how people really make decisions, and mostly how people don’t know why they’re making the decision that they’re making.
Aransas Savas 25:08
No. And so I use a co creative method and have customers design this within the systems of their lives. Because the other thing we do is we assume that customers are using our products and services in a bubble. But they’re not. They’re using them within the systems of their life. And customers are very aware of their life systems, and the ways that they intersect to inform their use of a product. Can you give
Maria Ross 25:40
us an example of that, like with one of the clients that you’ve worked with?
Aransas Savas 25:44
Sure. So I work with the nation’s leading home Mac manufacturer. So when we talk about home buying with their customers, we often historically have talked to the person who signs the paper.
26:04
However,
Maria Ross 26:06
I knew there was going to be a
Aransas Savas 26:07
however, when I started to really dig deeper with those customers. That wasn’t actually the person making the purchase decision. In most cases. That decision was deeply influenced by their small group, those who have the most influence on their lives and opinion. So increasingly, in my research, I’ve seen children have more influence on major life decisions for family, certainly partners and spouses, but also friends and older family members. When I work with financial companies, I often ask young people, where are they get their financial information?
26:53
The two answers that come up most often. My dad or my uncle, and Tik Tok writing, so frightening.
Aransas Savas 27:04
Tick tock comes up daily and my Wow, across all categories. And across all age groups, people are listening to tick tock. for better and worse, yes, it has, has democratized Yeah, access to information. And it’s also meant that there’s a lot of unreliable information out there. Right. But people are, they’re making decisions, not just based on one facet or factor of their lives, right, we take a pretty holistic view of our lives. And so if I’m making a health care decision, I’m thinking about my finances, and thinking about how this impacts my purchase of a computer. And three months is my thinking about how it affects even my electricity. Right. So all these vastly different impacts are coming together in in the purchase makers mind that they make that decision, then also with the use that because our lives are increasingly interconnected. And I mean, I think you see with products that I mean, I I hesitate to mention nest because there’s Google Nast, I think there’s a lot of things they’re doing well, a lot of things are not doing well. They, I think they are almost too smart for their own good in terms of the technology and the way they use data. But they have taken a systems based approach. And so they understand that you may have a need to control your temperature from different places. And you may want to control your temperature and your home in different ways. They have unsuccessfully rolled out this, this intuitive understanding of how you use time with their product. And I say unsuccessfully because they leap to an assumption too quickly, which I see a lot of companies do vision and then I hear customers often describe frustration with the product isn’t because just because one time I wanted it 74 at 10am on a Tuesday does not mean and I always
Maria Ross 29:18
wanted that. Yeah. Yeah, it reminds me of like my mom, you know, once she knew we liked a cereal or thing, she’d buy it for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks until we were sick of it. Yeah. So it’s using that one data point and extrapolating it out to the customer’s entire experience, rather than really thinking and this is again, where I think empathy comes in. And this is, you know, where I feel we’re gonna we’re gonna be able to compete against AI is bringing that human element of like, is that really true in all cases? Is that really the best next step in every customer’s journey, or even in that customer’s journey every day?
Aransas Savas 29:58
That’s right. Yeah. Right. And with technology, we have the ability to answer that question for that customer on that day.
30:08
And that’s where I think AI can be helpful, right? However,
Aransas Savas 30:13
we need humans to interpret that data and to understand what those trends really mean, or where that trend is worth listening to. Right.
Maria Ross 30:23
So what are some of the other other ways that you gather those deep insights? Can you give some examples and some ideas for people of like, what? What are some ways that we can gather that very subjective data? On our customers?
Aransas Savas 30:38
Absolutely. I am a big fan of talking to people. Why, but what I know, it’s crazy. And really understanding their why. Yeah, so there is a misperception, and then amongst many companies, that it’s their job to be the hero. And to solve the problem the customer doesn’t know they have, and they’re right, the customer may not always know, the problem they have. But they often know
31:11
what they want.
Aransas Savas 31:15
And by that, I mean, not necessarily what it looks like in execution, right. But what would inspire them? What is their desired outcome? Right? What would it feel like to solve that problem? You’re like, yeah, and what might it mean for you if we solve that problem. And so when I talk about using coaching tools and techniques, to get underneath, true deep customer needs, I follow a pretty basic formula. The first thing I ask people is what they want to achieve. And then I understand what success would look like, and how they would measure success, and what gets in their way. And by understanding those four data points, I have an enormous amount of information
32:08
about how to be valuable to them.
Maria Ross 32:12
And notice none of those questions were what, what would solve this problem? Or what does that what does the solution look like to you at
Aransas Savas 32:21
my job? I knew exactly
32:22
exactly. What well, and I think that this is,
Maria Ross 32:27
you know, this is just the common problem in in corporate, America corporate, you know, not even just corporate America, but corporate life in general, is this desire to build something really cool, and then figure out how to retrofit it into people’s lives. And maybe for truly, truly innovative things that we can’t even fathom? That might be appropriate. But for the 98% of things that we’re going to buy and invest in and use every day, whether it’s b2b or b2c? It’s about an existing problem and uncovering what that existing problem is. So I’m always fascinated by it, because I am not. I do not have an entrepreneurial mind. I am not the person that’s like the futurist and envisioning things. And I’m pretty much the laggard on on a lot of advances and innovations. So I really admire people that think that way, in terms of, I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to build a successful business. So instead of starting with the product, I’m gonna start with figuring out the problem I can solve. And then I’ll build the product. I’m like, it makes it just blows my mind that people think that way. Because I’m like, that sounds like a lot of work. But they’re able to those kinds of people, those kinds of innovators, I feel, and I would love to hear your perspective, I feel like their brains work a little bit differently, that they’re able to see the problems and the challenges first, and then determine what could be a good solution they focus on, you know, there 85% of their time is spent on defining the problem. And 15% is on the solution, versus what the rest of us mere mortals usually do.
34:12
I think you nailed it.
Aransas Savas 34:13
That’s exactly it. And it it. It’s alluring to come up with and sexy. Yeah, as human beings. We have a very strong righting reflex.
34:23
We want even wanting that we want to fix
Aransas Savas 34:27
it. And if we see a problem, we will jump in you probably seen it with your mother.
Maria Ross 34:33
I see it with myself with my husband. Oh, oh, you know, he’s having an issue at work. And I go into Have you tried this? Have you tried that? Have you instead of spending the time trying to understand the issue and how it makes him feel and, you know, what are some possible impacts that that challenge has?
Aransas Savas 34:53
I think any question that we think can be solved with an answer is probably better solved with a
34:57
question. Boom.
Maria Ross 35:00
My truck, stop. I love that. So. So other than the talking techniques, are there any other innovative ways or tips you can share? That are great ways to gather that subjective information from customers? Yeah, I
Aransas Savas 35:15
mean, again, I’m gonna go back to measuring for time well spent. And if you do nothing else, but ask your customer, was this a good use of your time, you have a really valuable piece of data. And again, it Weight Watchers, that was one of the early pieces of data that started to upend our understanding of our customer, and what they valued about us. And it’s a simple question, was this a good use of your time? Put it on a scale? Do whatever you want, right? There’s lots of different methods for that, right. But that question, is going to give you a great piece of comparative data to understand how valuable different moments are to customers.
36:06
I’m thinking about how this might apply b2b. Put it apply more with? Did this make your job easier? Maybe they can’t maybe they can’t parse it out in terms of time spent.
Maria Ross 36:20
But could it be it? It made my job easier? It enabled me to I guess, this would be time enabled me to work faster? It enabled me to get to an answer faster than I would have? Are those the kinds of things you get if you’re working on
Aransas Savas 36:32
functional jobs? Yeah. And we’ve, we’ve actually designed a full model for applying these questions sets to different types of jobs to be done. But for functional jobs, that are about saving time isn’t absolutely. Okay. If you’re working more long and aspirational, social, emotional jobs, your questions are going to be a little different, right? Because the job is
Maria Ross 36:56
different, right? Is that more about how they’re feeling or their perspective on the world with
Aransas Savas 37:01
or without exciting looks like, looks like actually, with aspirational jobs, especially, I like to create customized metrics for customers. And it sounds really hard when I first say, but I promise it’s a lot easier done, which is to identify what the common goals are for your customers, and how they would measure success toward those goals.
37:27
And then check in. And
Aransas Savas 37:31
we missed so much great data by not asking about felt shifts, and some of the most powerful pieces of data I’ve ever gotten from people, all right, I feel stressed versus relaxed. And to ask them when they enter an experience, what’s your stress level when they exit it?
37:51
What’s your stress level,
Aransas Savas 37:52
and it has a really powerful effect on the memory as well. And that by reflecting on those ships, in the experience, I actually have a greater appreciation of them. People who reflect who shown in our data
38:07
are significantly happier,
Aransas Savas 38:11
in all domains of their lives than those who don’t. And so I do use data to trigger reflection whenever possible.
Maria Ross 38:18
You know, I love this because it’s making me think about even things that I’ve purchased or used for a functional purpose, and how there was still like an emotional shift. In using those things. I’m thinking about different software, or different apps or different technology where it wasn’t just about me getting the task done. Like I felt empowered, I felt like I could, you know, in some cases, like even when the travel apps all hit the scene, it’s like, I can travel more, I can travel by myself, I can, you know, I’ve got this like it was it was very much it, there was an emotional aspect and an aspirational aspect tied into this seemingly very functional thing. And this is what I try to bring out with my tech clients when I’m doing brand advisory is, yeah, they’re buying it for their company. But what does it actually do for them? Like is it about helping them feel empowered in their job, helping them feel more confident, helping them be able to get their work done more quickly, to your point time well spent? So they can go be at their kids baseball game? Like these are all the things I feel like b2b companies miss this when? Yeah, what and how does it make you feel in terms of the legacy you’re building in your career? Does this decision to buy this product that is seemingly functional? What does that actually do for you in terms of being transformational within your own company or changing the game or building a legacy of like, wow, this person really is a change maker in their organization. And it could just be a productivity app. It could just be something that again, seemingly functional. But we as humans invest other things in that decision.
Aransas Savas 40:05
That’s right. And the economic value raises along that progression as well. Yes. So I’m going to spend much less money and I’m on a functional service. And as it reaches upward, social, emotional, social, aspirational, we see people more willing to invest in those as you were talking, I was looking at my pretty little rose colored MacBook Air here, and thinking about how extraordinarily well, Apple has done at meeting functional, emotional, social, aspirational. 100%. And that is their differentiation. Yeah,
Maria Ross 40:47
I mean, I’m thinking, you know, just to call out a great example, there’s a, a collaboration app called monday.com. And they’re not paying me to say this, I use it for my podcast with my podcast production company. And I remember the first time I worked with them three years ago, they said, This is what we use. And I thought, Oh, I gotta learn another app. Right? Another thing? It’s not, is it like the prettiest interface? No, is it? Is there anything super sexy about it? No. But it makes me feel like a boss. Like I am juggling all these different episodes and audio files and getting done and communicating with people through there. And it’s not clogging up my email to your time wasted time, not well spent. It it just makes me feel so empowered. And it’s a piece of software.
Aransas Savas 41:35
Yeah, that’s how I feel about Slack. Yeah. Well, how did I survive without slack?
Maria Ross 41:40
Totally. How did I survive without Waze? How did I get anywhere in any of the cities I lived in without what I had a paper map
Aransas Savas 41:48
like? So we used to print them out from Mapquest totally,
Maria Ross 41:52
oh, my gosh, I saw a meme on that of you’re dating yourself. If you can remember printing out maps from that question, I had to raise my hand. I’m that old. So as we wrap up, I want to hear something about stone mantels Trends report the 2023 Trends report in experience strategy, can you share and we’re going to have a link to the report for folks to download in the show notes. So don’t fear. Let’s dear listener, can you share a few really interesting highlights from that report that you’re seeing in terms of trends and experience strategy?
Aransas Savas 42:25
Absolutely. And I’ll tell you, I collected this data. So I started out by talking to several 100 experience strategist across a wide range of categories. Then I talked to 1000s of customers across, again, a wide range of industries. Finally, I went through about 20 years of historical data to look at customer behaviors and insights, and synthesized all of that into six key trends. And so the first of those, I call wellbeing everywhere. And
42:58
this is not a surprise.
Aransas Savas 43:02
But we have seen a rapid acceleration in the expectation of well being. And so I say to every company, if you don’t think you’re in the wellbeing industry think again, every customer is being held to task for their ability to think systemically about customers wellbeing needs.
43:23
The second one is powered by customer purpose. And it’s really
Aransas Savas 43:27
a reminder to companies that having a company purpose does not equate to understanding your customers purpose. We talked a lot about that today. Zooming in on small groups, we also covered a little bit. This is really about understanding that yes, the big picture still matters. But you have to think about who your customer spends the most time with, they are influencing them more than you think for uncertainty is certain we live in wildly destabilize times, it’s really pretty unprecedented, the number of sort of foundational fractures that we’ve experienced in the past few years. And so really encouraging companies to think about how to be more modular and more agile in their delivery so that they can use the mode based approach to meet customer needs. Hybrid is here to stay. No doubt about it. We still need humans, but I am seeing the value of human engagement slip downward pretty quickly. When I do this dip again next quarter, I suspect I’ll see something even more stark as people become increasingly rapidly. Trouble with AI. The rollout of of chat GPT kind of upended the way people think about this stuff. And then six context is king. We’ve said for years that content is king, but really place matters more than anything. So how when where why am I using this instead of
44:57
just pushing content people Hmm, I love it. Well, I
Maria Ross 45:01
hope everyone will check out the report. It’s got some great insights in it. And we again will have that link in the show notes. So our answers that has, this has been an amazing conversation, we could probably talk for another two hours about customer experience. But as we sign off, where we’ll have all your links in the show notes, but where’s one of the best places that folks listening can connect with you or find out more about your work? Yeah,
Aransas Savas 45:27
head on over to stone mantel.co. We’re unique like that, that we don’t have the M. It’s stone mantle ma n te l.co. And find me on LinkedIn. Say, Hi, I’d love to chat with folks. This is my nerd verse, though. I can I love it,
Maria Ross 45:44
then an A. And we’ll put the link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes as well. And little public service message from me if folks reach out, make sure you put a note. So she knows where you heard about her from? Yes. Yeah. Personalized, personalized, personalized. Absolutely. And can I share too about our podcast? Yes, because I’m gonna put that in the show notes too. So please share. Yes, I
Aransas Savas 46:06
co host the experience strategy podcast. So if any of this stuff is interesting to folks, that’s the perfect place to hear a lot more about
Maria Ross 46:15
it right. We’ll put the link to the main rate podcast page, but I assume that’s available on players everywhere. Anyone remember a player? Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today and for all these great insights. And I really hope you’ve moved some leaders into rethinking their customer experience strategy today, because we all as consumers, b2b or b2c Consumers will benefit if companies can do a better job of making the experience less painful for people.
Aransas Savas 46:43
It’s good for all of us. Yeah, yes, it’s
Maria Ross 46:45
good for all of us. And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the empathy edge podcast. If you liked what you heard you know what to do. Please rate and review and share it with a colleague or a friend. And until next time, remember that cash flow creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care and be calm. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit the empathy edge.com. There you can listen to past episodes, access shownotes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice Maria. Never forget empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.