Experience Strategy Podcast Newsletter: The 2024 Experience Strategy Trend Report
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The cultural and economic forces influencing your customer in 2024 will have a lasting impact on your experience strategy. Join Dave Norton, Experience Strategy Futurist, and Aransas Savas, lead researcher for our Trend Report, for insights and guidance from our decade-long study into customer behavior and mindsets.
This episode isn’t just a glance at trends; it’s a deep dive into the interconnected tapestry shaping the future of your strategy. In this episode, we dissect the value of time versus money, the paradoxical impact of technology on time scarcity, the evolution of smart homes, and the prevalent loneliness amidst reduced physical interactions. But here’s the kicker – beyond just trends, we discuss the critical need for businesses to transcend superficial personalization. Discover how to authentically align experiences with customer desires and behaviors. Tune in for a roadmap to adapt, thrive, and craft winning experience strategies amid the rapidly evolving landscape.
Welcome to the Experience Strategy Podcast Newsletter! Like our popular and long-running Experience Strategy Podcast, this newsletter is dedicated to those who design, manage, and lead experience strategies for companies large and small. Our big purpose is to catalyze the growth of experience strategy by sharing the tools, techniques, and ideas that are used by the most impactful teams and companies.
In each newsletter you’ll find practical, actionable concepts, drawn from our most popular podcast episodes, that you can use to serve your customers, employees, and company.
In this edition, Dave Norton and Aransas Savas deep-dive into The 2024 Experience Strategy Trend Report. This isn’t just about foreseeing trends; it’s an exploration of the interconnected threads defining the future of your strategy. Join us as we dissect the complex dynamics of time versus money, the paradoxical influence of technology on our perception of time scarcity, the metamorphosis of smart homes, and the profound impact of prevalent loneliness in a world of reduced physical interactions. In this episode we dive into the dire necessity for businesses to transcend superficial personalization, and authentically align experiences with the core desires and behaviors of customers.
Introduction
We are thrilled to announce the release of our much-anticipated 2024 Experience Strategy Trend Report, a culmination of extensive research and insights curated by Dave Norton, Experience Strategy Futurist, and Aransas Savas, lead researcher for our Trend Report.
Key Mindsets and Drivers Influencing Your Customer in 2024
The Power of Modes over Moments: Experiences have transcended standalone moments, becoming intricately intertwined with broader contextual dimensions. Time and money are not merely constraints but foundational components shaping consumer narratives and decision-making processes.
The Impact of Technology Dependency: Despite the common perception of technology granting us more time, the reality is a time-starved existence, fueled by altered expectations and entrenched multitasking norms. Each stride in technological reliance cements a permanent shift, that subsequent adaptations only build upon. Our tech dependence is inevitable, and each innovation deepens reliance further – a pattern consistent in the history of technological advancements.
Retreating into our Homes as our Towns: Homes have evolved into central hubs for multifaceted experiences, driven by technological advancements and societal transformations. Homes now cater to a spectrum of activities encompassing healthcare, shopping, entertainment, and education. This trend marks a fundamental redefinition in people’s perceptions and engagements within their living environments, urging experience strategists to recalibrate their approaches to align with this new focal point of human activity and interaction.
Loneliness & Polarization: Heightened feelings of isolation and societal divisions increasingly influence consumer behavior and decision-making.. As individuals seek connections and belonging in a digitally connected yet isolated world, recognizing the implications of these phenomena becomes crucial for strategists. Strategists need to create empathetic, inclusive, and community-focused experiences that address the prevalent sense of isolation and bridge societal divides, thereby fostering more cohesive and meaningful consumer engagements.
Navigating Political Divides: People gravitate towards those they trust while feeling distanced from those with contrasting views. To navigate shifting alliances companies must foster authentic connections with customers.
Navigating the Future: Five Strategies to Future-Proof Experience Design:
Trend 1: Help me feel like you really, really know me,
While we’ve historically mapped customer journeys based on moments, as technology continues to advance and customer expectations evolve, understanding customer situations becomes a more valuable insight for understanding what customers want and need. However, strategies rooted in situations will also raise important questions about data privacy, ethical considerations, and the need for responsible AI practices to ensure that customization benefits users without compromising their rights or well-being.
What this means for experience strategists
Recent events have taught us that isolated, hyper-personalized bubbles, though initially comfortable, can lead to disastrous consequences, as observed during the pandemic with home-based schooling for children that resulted in loneliness and disconnection.
People have become adept at curating their own echo chambers, preferring smart, tailored content that caters exclusively to their preferences. The challenge for experience strategists will be to find a balance between smart, personalized content and “dumb” data-unaware content that fosters broader experiences and connections. This recent shift towards isolation also presents opportunities for businesses in travel and healthcare, for example, to provide meaningful connections and support cohort groups, catering to individuals seeking interaction and community. Additionally, evolving attitudes toward wealth and money offer financial institutions and other sectors a unique chance to provide tailored solutions aligned with younger generations’ values of using wealth to achieve freedom and a better life.
A warning about the improper use of AI for hyper-personalization: To successfully leverage AI, you must account for your customers’ contexts. How, why, and where are they having the experience? What mode are they in? All of that informs what they want from the experience.
Trend 2: Help me do more at home
As our homes have absorbed the activities we once went outside for, customers increasingly expect companies to understand and design for the systems they've designed to contain these complex and deeply personal environments.
What this means for experience strategists
The trajectory of experience strategies centered around facilitating activities at home is significantly shaped by a confluence of societal, technological, and economic forces. There’s a noticeable shift towards prioritizing convenience and accessibility within the household, driven by a range of factors including the accelerated adoption of e-commerce, streaming services, telehealth, and remote connections. This accelerated adoption is aided by the fact that the home is often people's digital castle - it is the place where we have our best tech.
During the pandemic, we were forced to develop personal systems for containing our entire lives at home. We aren’t letting go of those.
In order to offer customers maximum value, your solutions probably won’t compete on having the smartest tech (here’s plenty of that to go around). Rather, it will be about the smartest context. The most powerful insights you have are those that tell you how your customer uses your experience in their homes and the mode they are in when they do.
This shift towards home-centric solutions underscores the importance of prioritizing swift delivery and flexible services over pricing, responding directly to consumer needs, and promising enhanced ease and efficiency in their personal systems and daily routines. The question you should constantly ask: Is this experience time well spent for my customer?
Trend 3: Help me feel more connected
Due to a confluence of factors, we feel increasingly isolated and seek more connection.
Paradoxically, while technology has made it easier to connect with others virtually, it has also led to feelings of isolation. Excessive use of social media and digital communication have replaced face-to-face interactions, leading to a sense of disconnection from real-life relationships. Our fast-paced lives have left limited time for socializing and building relationships. Changes in family structures, such as more single-parent households and greater geographic mobility, have reduced the support networks that people once relied on. Our rapidly aging population results in more individuals living alone, which can lead to feelings of social isolation, particularly among older adults.
What this means for experience strategists
The critical challenge that experience strategists must address is how to deploy AI to establish trust and foster meaningful human connections in the digital realm where a vast majority are passive observers and a small fraction actively contribute.
The strategic use of AI can bridge the divide between information seekers and lurkers, revolutionizing the way business information is accessed and shared. Experience strategists need to be pioneers in this transformation, harnessing AI to redefine the notions of trust and connectivity, and thereby shape the future of better experiences.
Experience strategists are on the cusp of a profound shift, particularly in the healthcare domain. The key revelation from our futurists is that the traditional approach to patient motivation and information dissemination is undergoing a seismic transformation. Patients, often reluctant to adhere to drug regimens or engage with healthcare providers, are increasingly turning to online forums for answers and insider secrets from others who have overcome their challenges.
Trend 4: Help me be in the moment
Our attention is increasingly fractured, and distracted. As humans, we find value in presence and feelings of flow. Customers will seek more immersive experiences because they provide a break from the ordinary, and tap into the human desire for exploration, entertainment, and emotional connection. As technology continues to advance, the potential for immersive experiences to meet these desires will only increase, driving continued interest and demand.
What this means for experience strategists
Helping people be in the moment is not just about designing moments for customers; it’s about enabling them to be present in those moments that truly matter to them. This means focusing on how to create immersive experiences that engage users on a deep, emotional level.
Imagine leveraging AR or VR to help people visualize their financial future, giving them a tangible sense of the impact of their financial decisions. It’s about guiding individuals to alter their spending habits and showcasing the long-term effects of those changes, not just on their investments, but on their overall financial well-being. And it’s not limited to financial services; it’s about designing experiences that tap into people’s unique learning and communication styles, helping them grasp complex concepts in a way that resonates with them.
These strategies can foster a deeper connection between customers and the brands that offer these experiences, ensuring that individuals are not just present but engaged and empowered in the moments that truly matter to them.
One of the surest ways to trigger presence is to create moments of intentionality that allow them to consider and communicate what they find meaning and value in.
Trend 5: Help me make good decisions quickly
The rise of AI-enhanced decision support is driven by its potential to improve efficiency, accuracy, and effectiveness across various industries and domains. As AI technologies continue to advance, we can expect even greater integration of AI in decision-making processes, leading to smarter and more data-driven choices.
What this means for experience strategists
AI + humans are better than either alone. AI-assisted decision-making (for example AI alerts a healthcare team to an anomaly in the data, but is reviewed by humans for diagnosis). There is a lot of press on the negative impacts of AI, so transparency on the humans behind the AI or on how the AI is trained is important for creating trust with customers.
Advanced technologies will allow us to make better decisions, faster, with confidence that we are using the most customized data available.
We will also move beyond eliminating friction, into stimulating memory recall, as people increasingly rely on AI-driven personal assistants.
The traditional binary view of either fully embracing or fearing AI has evolved into a more nuanced combination of excitement and apprehension. The AI discussion is no longer purely theoretical; instead, it’s based on the growing realization that AI is an integral part of our daily lives. People are more concerned about job security and how they can carve a place for themselves in the new world.
Conclusion
Your customers' needs are changing rapidly. To build and retain relevance, you must understand how their context has shifted, and what that means for how they measure time well spent. We hope these strategies will help you on your journey, and would be thrilled to support you in boosting value for your company and customer. Reach out to us at www.stonemantel.co to discuss.
To access the full report of insights, strategies and trends shaping the future of experience strategy download your copy of the 2024 Experience Strategy Trends Report here. Tune in to this episode for thought-provoking discussions and practical applications of these trends!