Experience Innovation: How to Unlock New Ideas to Delight Your Customers

Between the pandemic, emerging technologies, and the ever-changing ways we engage with one another, our life experiences are evolving faster than ever. As a result, so is the buyer journey. The buyer’s journey no longer follows the traditional sales funnel. Today’s consumers may jump from awareness to consideration and back to interest before making a decision. This can be tricky for businesses to navigate.

Experience Innovation is a process that can help. Through Experience Innovation you:

• Get a broad understanding of a consumer’s experience with a product or service;
• Develop an understanding of your customer’s thoughts, behaviors, and experiences—also known as your customer’s journey;
• Gain a deep understanding of your audience through effective quantitative and qualitative research.

The insights generated from this process are then used to reduce friction in the customer journey, creating a better experience and, ultimately, delights customers. 

Qualitative research has the superpower of allowing us to dive deep into the mental models, unmet needs, motivations, goals, and pain points of our users. We get rich data filled with stories that can lead us to truly understanding what our users need to accomplish and build the right products to solve their problems.

Experience Innovation is a new approach for business differentiation and growth. It gives you the opportunity to look at a spectrum of ideas for developing new experiences that can drive new growth.

Beyond the data

You can have all the tracking, statistics, and research you thought was ever needed, but having data doesn’t mean you truly understand your customers or the cause of a business challenge. We need to look beyond the data.

Successful Experience Innovation requires a true understanding of an organization and its business model as well as tools for designing a customized research approach. This research uncovers the actionable insights needed to spark relevant physical and digital experience ideas.

This work involves a team approach with a champion from the leadership team who is committed to driving change. The champion also enlists cross-functional experts who are essential for forging connections between ideas that lead to new and innovative experiences.

The ability to push the thinking on what is possible is an essential component of any innovative process.Teams need to overcome uncertainty to focus on building solutions and implementing change.

The role of innovation coach and catalyst

As leaders stabilize their core businesses and think about how they can use innovation to drive new growth, they need more than a desire or passion for innovation. The challenge is finding the necessary innovation skills among employees. When the focus has been running the core business efficiently, it’s hard for employees to switch gears and reimagine the future or to find time to build up the right skills for innovation. 

This is where coaching can help. An innovation coach can help teams learn new ideas and techniques for uncovering opportunities and to move projects forward. Consultants or leaders skilled in innovation and coaching can ask the questions that challenge people’s preconceived ideas about what works and what doesn’t. They can also play a neutral role with the team and inspire others. 

Coaches are challengers, facilitators, and advisors. They provide practical tools that can be learned and applied continuously. They help move employees from just satisfying customers to finding ways to delight them.

Stepping into your customer’s shoes

Designing a truly innovative experience is complex, but it doesn’t need to mean higher costs. Think about Dollar Shave and Warby Parker. Both companies found ways to streamline their process, reduce costs to the customer, and offer more for less. 

Unlocking new business models and identifying opportunities for growth, begins by taking a broader view of your customer and their experience. By being customer-centric, you start to look at your core product or service offering through a new lens, leading to new opportunities to meet customer needs in the surrounding spaces. That’s what Experience Innovation is all about—finding new approaches to delight your customer.

Learn more on our Experience Innovation process or book a consultation with ArtScience Group