‘Think Tank’: No Experience Without Design, Delivery, And Data

Eight business luminaries from a variety of industries, disciplines, and brands explored the three critical components to building a sustainable, human-centric experience business.

“A great customer experience is the differentiator that separates market leaders from the pack.”

So said Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen during the opening general session at last week’s Summit, in Las Vegas. To glean further insights about what it takes to become an experience business, Adobe organized a Think Tank Facebook livestream with eight business luminaries from a variety of industries, disciplines, and brands. This Think Tank explored three critical components to building a sustainable, human-centric experience business:

• Design: What role does design play in creating experiences that make customers want to come back for more?
• Delivery: How do today’s organizations deliver seamless experiences that are optimized for the consumers in the moment they matter most—regardless of device or environment?
• Data: How do organizations leverage data and customer profiles in ways that show their deep understandings of their customers? How can they incorporate dynamic insights to move persona-based marketing to person-based marketing and rethink the way they measure and predict customer behaviors using artificial intelligence?

Charlene Li, principal analyst at Altimeter, moderated the discussion. Participants were (in order of photo, below, l-r):

• Steven Cook, Former CMO, Samsung North America, current CMO Startup Nation 2 Enterprise
• Ethan Imboden, VP, creative and head of venture design, frog
• Theresa LaMontagne, director, digital marketing and media operations, Verizon
• Rana June, CEO, Lightwave
• Jordan Kretchmer, senior director, GM Livefyre, Adobe
• Li, Altimeter
• Dan Newman, CEO, Broadsuite Media Group
• Nandini Nayak, managing director, design strategy, Fjord (Accenture)
• Jay Schneider, SVP, digital, Royal Caribbean Cruises

Following are select takeaways from the participants on these three components.

• “Every business is an experience business, even technology and product businesses, not just businesses such as Disney or a cruise line, because their product is an experience. Experiences are what people value and buy.” —Nayak

• “If every company needs to be an experience business, then every CEO needs to buy into this.” —Schneider

• “Experience transcends product.” —Imboden

• “We need to put technology aside for a moment—we need to start with, ‘What do customers want?’” —Cook

• “People don’t buy products; they buy experiences.” —Imboden

• “In today’s experience era, the product is the sum total of all of the experiences a human has with that brand.” —Cook

• “We need to remind ourselves over and over that technology is not the way to lead an experience business. The technology needs to be passive.” —Newman

• “At every point of friction for the customer, there is an opportunity to design a better experience.” —Li

• “Design isn’t just about what a consumer sees on a screen—the user interface. It is about everything I see and can interact with for that product.” —Kretchmer

• “Creating experiences needs to be a thoughtful process across all functions in the organization and across all online and offline touch points. This is true for any business today that wants to survive.” —Cook

• “The experiences need to be designed across all touch points and how they interact with each other. You need to think about how the consumer will feel at different touch points about and design this in.” —Schneider

• “Experiences can take many forms. Design can be a source of these experiences. It should be an iterative and collaborative process.” —Imboden

• “We need to understand how to create an authentic experience with our customers.” —LaMontagne

• “If you are moving from a product-driven organization to an experience business, how do we know that we’ve met certain goals?” —Li

• “What if the new metric for success is the ‘I love this’ index?” —June

• “Marketing and advertising are outdated words and constructs from 100-plus years of push marketing. These functions won’t go away, but they need to be evolved with experience design, delivery, and data in the experience era.” —Cook

• “Companies will work together to deliver experience chains. Businesses have to connect to create seamless, unified customer experiences.” —Schneider

• “We need to design with data. This is a responsibility of organizations.” —Nayak

• “Marketers have the opportunity to be evangelists, enablers, and connectors across the organization and through the entire value chain to create human-to-human relationships between a business, a brand, and people.” —Cook

• “Just because you stick all your data into one bucket doesn’t mean you have a data strategy.” —LaMontagne

• “Companies that value trust with their customers will succeed. So, if you want to be an experience company, trust is even more critical for you.” —Schneider

• “Becoming an experience business starts top-down with strategy and … permeates the entire organization. Tech is not an excuse to replace experience.” —Kretchmer

• “What we’ve all done in our careers was always a combination of ‘art and science.’ With all of the tech that is now enabling us, it’s flipped to ‘science and art.’ It’s very important to not forget the ‘art’ part.” —Cook

• “Now it’s more critical than ever for us to over-index on empathy, design, and delivery. All are critical to the success of our businesses, our individual well-being, and our collective future.” —Imboden

• “Experience is every single person’s responsibility in the organization.” —June

• “If you keep your customers close by and build trust, you’ll be in a good place.” —Li

Click here to view one-on-one Think Tank interviews about building an experience business.

Click here to view the complete 90-minute session.