There are plenty of options for apps and tools for whatever ails you. Breaking into the market with yet another new one doesn’t always make sense. Some brands are starting to realize the best way to serve their customers is to curate these options instead of creating another one. We’re on the search for customer experience innovation examples, and we think this one fits.
Here at South By Southwest, we have seen the trend in several different ways. It’s an innovative way to improve your customer’s experience. Taking into account what is truly best going to serve customers, brands are able to adapt to the quickly changing ecosystem of their customers.
An interesting example of this is CarePass, by Aetna. The idea behind the (almost released) CarePass is to help individuals find the right lifestyle and fitness apps that are most appropriate for their goals. There are several thousand of these types of apps now available, everything from common calorie counters and exercise trackers to diabetes management and smoking cessation reminders. CarePass allows customers to find the apps that will help them specifically with their goals, then puts the best ones together. It’s a compelling way to help customers.
What I really like about this trend is we are moving away from the linear customer experience ideas of the past and evolving into the customer ecosystem. Your customers do not live in a vacuum and they don’t only deal with your product. Just look at what happens when you login into your typical health insurance provider site or financial institution. Yes, there are “tools” for customers, but typically they are housed within the corporate site. You have to remember to log into with your ID that wasn’t every really intuitive and then remember to manually update information. It’s clunky and doesn’t provide the value customers want or need.
It doesn’t work because it’s an island. The success of personal financial management sites like Mint are because they tap into the worlds where customers already live. Mint pulls in information from credit cards, bank statements, etc. and curates the necessary information for the customer. It isn’t an additional place for customers to input their information, it’s all about the desired output. CarePass is looking to provide the same sort of desired output for health and wellness.
There are many advantages to considering your customers’ entire ecosystem, not just their specific experience with your brand or product.
1. Your experience can adapt more with your customers’ real life.
The marketplace, your competition and your customers expectations are changing constantly. Understanding the world they are in and how you can support it will evolve with them a lot more than pushing a product that might be outdated in a few months.
2. Investing in another product doesn’t make sense.
Customers don’t want another product or app when they already use tools that work for them. They want what will make their lives easier. They want to automatically receive the information from your company and use it to live their lives.
3. There is nothing more annoying that a tool that is never updated.
Too often those “tools” available via corporate sites are just left to die a slow death. Customers may feel forced to use them in the beginning, but if the experience looks and feels old it feels like the data is old, too.
Consider your customer’s entire life and constantly changing ecosystem. Is there a way you can support their true goals and deliver their desired output? It doesn’t require creation, but thoughtful curation. Are you ready?
Photo credit: avantard via Creative Commons license
