The Experience Strategy Podcast: Modes Series, Episode 2: Applying Modes Thinking to Shopping Platforms

July 05, 2022

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Jamie Norwood, named to Inc.’s Top 100 Female Founders and Forbes 1000, is the co-founder of Stix, a fast-growing startup in healthcare challenged by how to serve extremely distinct customer needs. In this episode, we look at how Modes can create confident shoppers, a sense of community, and continuity across shopper journeys. Tune in and discover how you can apply these frameworks to businesses of any size or category.

Voiceover: [00:00:00] Welcome to the experience strategy podcast, where we talk to customers and experts about how to create products and services that feel like time well spent. And now here are your hosts experienced nerds, Dave Norton and Aransas Savis.

Aransas: And welcome to the experience strategy podcast. I'm Miranda Savis.

And Dave today we are joined by Jamie Norwood. She has been named to inks top 100 female founders and Forbes 1000. And she's the co-founder of Styx a health brand that actively empowers women. Confident decisions starting with reproductive and vaginal health products. And before starting sticks, Jamie was on the founding team of hungry harvest where she built and scaled the customer experience and product departments.

And so while she's in this growth mode, this feels like really exciting opportunity to talk to her about her customer [00:01:00] experience and. Ways to use things like modes thinking and some of the frameworks that we work with so actively to create a deeper, more lasting and more meaningful connection with our customers.

Jamie, we are so grateful to you for joining us on the show today. Thank you for being here.

Jamie: Thank you so much for having. I'm looking forward to learning all about moats.

Aransas: Yay. This'll be fun. So before we dive into that, Jamie, tell us a little bit more about sticks and what you guys do over there.

Jamie: Yeah. So you gave a wonderful description.

Um, sticks is health brand and our mission is to empower confident health decisions. We started about three years ago and our first product is a pregnancy. We've since expanded to the UTI category, the yeast infection category, and on June 21st, we are launching our first ever morning after pill called restart.[00:02:00]

And this really comes at a time where reproductive health is so important and critical. So we are really thinking about how to. Work it into our customer experience. You

Aransas: are clearly in a clear and focused mission right now. And I think that that alone is so powerful in terms of understanding the jobs to be done and really ensuring that customer needs are met.

But the nature of any startup is puzzling through customer needs and creating a customer experience that. Delights customers and meets their needs and hopefully new ways that are, as I said before, both meaningful, but, but also deeply impactful. So, so what are some of the customer puzzles that you are [00:03:00] sorting through right now?

Jamie: Yeah, totally. We think a lot about personalization knowing. We have such a devoted, wonderful customer base, but they have extremely different needs. So if we were just selling, for example, prenatal vitamins, which is one of our products, it would be very clear that everyone was trying to conceive or pregnant.

We do offer. You know, the morning after pill and we offer Eastern infection treatment and the suite of products that really applies to a lot of different life stages and different moments in time. So making sure that, you know, every interaction with sticks feels personal and. Relevant to our customers is important.

We do a ton of customer interviews, a ton of customer surveys, constantly learning, you know, our product roadmap is super informed by what our customer needs. So just trying to figure out how to remain focused [00:04:00] and build solutions that apply to different types of customers and still feel relevant to our mission.

Yeah,

Aransas: I think that's so interesting because it's really exclusively. Yeah, each moment. Right? So like each customer is really coming for a specific product and a specific moment in their journey as a woman. And the products that I need are vastly different than the products that you need. And so there is an individualization there that, that not every.

Company has such a clear cut view of, so, so Dave, I know you've been doing a lot of work around personalization and individualization and how, how this modes based thinking can influence customer journey. So when you work with companies like Styx, what, what are some of the initial questions that you ask?

Dave: Well, first of all, kudos for being focused on personalization. I think that's really important. [00:05:00] I think it's a large part of what companies are struggling with right now. How to we actually serve different customers with different needs in the proper way. When I think about the definition of personalization, I think about what a company.

Is trying to do to support the preferences, the individual preferences of customers. And that's great people like to be able to share their preferences with the company and have those preferences remembered. When I think about what most customers are looking for. Uh, from experiences today, it goes far beyond personalization.

It goes to what we call individualization and individualization is all about [00:06:00] the customer. Actually having more control over the experience and being able to be supported. In that experience, the way that they want to be supported. I'm a classic distinction between this, as you think about when you sign up for like a new streaming service and they ask you, do you like these particular shows?

Do you like these particular sports teams and that's personalization? They're trying to personalize the information, but what I really want. Is full control over my Netflix experience or my HBO experience so that I can kind of custom design for myself, what I want to do on Friday night or Saturday morning.

And that takes it to a totally different level, a different [00:07:00] place. And it's not so much about what you're feeding up to me as much as what I'm able to do. And that's part of the reason why many companies in their user experience design are moving towards dashboards, uh, because dashboards allow for that type of control.

So I think the distinction, the first distinction that needs to be made is between personalization and individualization. And then. Once we're into individualization, we can talk about the situation that they find themselves in and how do we support that particular situation? How do we articulate that situation?

That's where things begin to get really interesting. And then we can start talking about modes a little bit.

Aransas: So what questions should Jamie and her team be asking themselves first day?

Dave: One of the things that I'm interested in, know, Jamie, you, you said that you spend a lot of time [00:08:00] doing research with your customers.

What are you finding from your customers and what kind of research are you doing?

Jamie: Yeah, so we do a lot of focused research and sessions on product development. So for example, before. I started working on the morning after pill. We did a big survey just asking, like, how do you feel about morning after pills?

You know, when was the last time you took one? How has that experience, what words do you associate with that? Just to understand if it was a problem that needed to be solved and how we should be talking about and building this product. So that's one example. We do a post-purchase survey where we try to understand.

What was going through their minds when arriving to our website, looking at the products and checking out so we can better optimize our e-commerce experience. Um, and we'll do a lot of like brand awareness and [00:09:00] affinity research to understand, you know, what people are thinking about when they think of sticks.

So when it comes to personalization, I'd say one. I guess research is our care plan quiz, which is very similar to what you were saying with streaming where, like, what topics are you interested in? Um, so we, we do that. Like, where are you in your health journey? What type of birth control are you on? Just those questions.

So then we can better personalize. Their experience with sticks. So that one feels a bit more relevant to our conversation.

Aransas: Yeah. What are some of the ways that you're using that to personalize that experience? We are

Jamie: mostly using it right now for email and SMS. Any flows. We haven't really worked it into our e-commerce experience yet.

And that's something I'm really excited about. Um, and excited to hear more about like how we can think about it through the lens of individualization rather than personalization. Yeah.

Dave: So when, when the customer gives you [00:10:00] information about themselves and especially if it's very personal, very intimate type of information, then.

Create an expectation that you're going to do something with that information and it's not going to be that you're just going to market to them in a more personal way that the reason why they're giving up that data is because you're going to act as more of a tool for them. And you're going to support them in some way, shape or form.

And I wouldn't be surprised if. There, maybe this sounds really scary to even think about, but when they give that information, they might be seeing you more in a doctor type role than in a service delivery type role. And when you have expectations that then all of a sudden advice becomes important to the.

They're going to want to be able to have access to that data and support it in and use [00:11:00] that data for maybe it's needs to be connected to other parts of their health life. Maybe you need to be connected to apple health in some way, shape or form. And so, so there's a lot of things that incrementally begin to occur when they start sharing that type of.

Very intimate information. And I don't know necessarily if that's part of your value proposition. I don't know if that's part of your business model and maybe that doesn't work, but it does create that kind of an expectation.

Jamie: Yeah, we do. So with that information, we'll then give product recommendations.

So it is connected to e-commerce and that way I kind of flipped that up. Um, and those are directly from one of our doctors. So we've worked with her to really like correlate our products with where people are in their health journeys, um, and health and sex education is a huge part of our value prop and our mission as well.

So we have a platform called real talk. Where you can look through different topics and get answers. Everything's [00:12:00] medically verified. So we do kind of aim to play that role of giving, not necessarily medical advice, but medical resources. So you can make more confident decisions.

Dave: That's a great distinction and I love the way that you've separated that out so that you're providing medical resources.

Okay. So now you're moving into a world that is fairly nuanced, fairly sophisticated, like, uh, Aransas had said you're giving you're delivering products, you're providing services. You're offering advice. You've got. Experts that are involved. So you've got a lot of different resources that you're supplying to the customer.

And the next step in my mind, once we, we understand that we're starting to individualize this experience for the customer and that the. Is what you're delivering. It's not just the product. You are actually delivering [00:13:00] an experience throughout every step along the way. Then the question becomes, how do we support these different women who are in different situations in their lives and may need different types of experiences.

Separately held. They can't be the same. And that's where modes become a really powerful technique. I bet you that most of your customers do not describe. Their situation as I'm having a particular moment right now, I bet they're more likely to say something like I'm in panic mode right now, or I'm in pain right now, or,

Aransas: or

Dave: I'm focused in mode or.

I'm trying. I mean, trying, trying to get pregnant mode right now. And for them it describes a mindset and a set of [00:14:00] behaviors that they're in now that they recognize. I think that they want to either get further into that mode or they want to get out of that mode, but it's all part and parcel of what it is that are trying to do.

And so the next recommendation that I would have for you is to try to list everything. They're trying to do as modes that they're getting into. And oftentimes that's just by adding an ING and adding the word mode onto it. So it's planning mode. It's like it's, uh, you know, pregnancy planning. Right. Okay.

That's that's one thing. And then, um, crisis mode is a separate thing that doesn't add an ING there, but, but you get the idea and, and what that does for you is it keeps you focused on. The situation, it describes the situation. It describes the mindset you want to be describing. The mindset is best. You understand, you want to ask [00:15:00] your customers, what does it feel like to be trying to get pregnant and help me understand that?

Mindset that's and the behaviors, the set of behaviors that you're looking for. How can I then support you around that particular mode? And. And that's exactly what you want to be doing. Right. Um, it's very customer centered. Let me stop there for a second thoughts, Jamie, that you might have. I love

Jamie: that. I think that I'm just like my brain is spinning on some exercises that I can do with the team app for this, I guess like I might be getting ahead of myself.

As a next step. Like once you define those modes, I think something we're really good about is being tactical and saying like, okay, let's build flows for communication, email, SMS, follow-up all that good stuff. But what are some ways to really like ingrain that [00:16:00] in the experience beyond those, those like more obvious customer touch points?

Dave: Um, There's there's a, what, what you'll often find, I'll just say this as an aside, is that when you start listing all of the different modes, you're going to need a mechanism for prioritizing, uh, because there's so many different modes that you are. Supporting. And so as an aside, I would suggest that you try to figure out which modes are, are the six most important modes that you can support.

And the most important modes does not necessarily mean that they're all the most positive modes. So you don't want to be always about, yes, we can totally support you in, um, Super getting pregnant mode, like whatever that looks like. You already have products that support things where they might be in a crisis [00:17:00] or something along that line.

But you need to be able to support both the negative modes that they get into. And the positive modes, I would choose six to eight modes and make half of them negative. And half of them positive that will create a world for you, where you can begin to see how do I help the customer move from a negative mode to a positive mode?

How do, and like, if you are in fact supporting crisis mode, how do you help them to move to a positive. And obviously in that case, it might not be getting pregnant mode, right. It might be a completely separate thing that you're doing. So you're going to need to be able to prioritize. And then once you've prioritized, one of the most fascinating things about working with modes is that you can talk to your customers using the terms and you can actually use them on your website.

You don't have to hide the [00:18:00] fact that you're supporting their modes. You can be very transparent about it. That's

Aransas: one of the things I love about modes for this specific situation. There was some mashup of particular in specific, um, these Mo modes often I think start to like bleed into identities. And yet in this space, identity is so.

Complicated and fraught with judgment from self and others and story that. Aligned with your mission of creating confidence and making confident decisions. I think your recommendation engine can be really informed by modes as well as any community-based support that you decide to integrate into your experience.

So other people who are in crisis mode cause crisis is gonna. It's going to span a [00:19:00] number of different products and it actually can serve as a unifier. Some of these modes across products in a way that may be moments could not. Yeah, I'd

Jamie: say most of our products do fall under crisis mode, especially, you know, we do a lot of vaginal health products for UTIs and yeast infections and.

You are not feeling good when you need to buy those products

Aransas: now. And I'd like to know what worked for other people in this mode.

Dave: Yeah. So don't be afraid on the website, on the commerce platform, in the materials that you're preparing to actually attach the word mode to what you're doing. It's an ironic thing.

But when somebody says that they're in, let's say, they say they're depressed. Well, that feels really like they're a person who gets depressed. It's a light, you change it. It's a label. Yeah, [00:20:00] but when you change that same thing and say I'm in a depressed mode. It describes a temporary state for them. And they actually are willing to tell you more, they're willing to discuss themselves as that because it's not quite so labeling it's temporary.

Um, one of the companies that's doing some great work around modes right now is Pandora. I don't know if you use Pandora or not, but they actually customize the experience. Based on the mode that you're in. If you're in more of a party mode than they're going to serve up songs that are more about partying, if you're in more of a, a, um, socializing mode or an, a personal mode, they're gonna, they're gonna serve up songs that they think will support you more specifically that way.

So I think there's some great things that you can learn Tesla. [00:21:00] They actually just use the term modes when they're describing these different types of experiences and it helps the individual to say, I'm in control. I'm choosing this particular mode. Now I want you to support me as if I'm in this mode.

Not as if I am this.

Aransas: From a behavioral standpoint, too, what it's doing is it's triggering a self-reflection and sort of an intention setting for the experience. So if you can get people to identify what mode they're in, early in the visit, they get a little bit of clarity about their expectations. And of course, so to you,

Jamie: yeah.

I love that. I'm already kind of visualizing how that might look on our site.

Aransas: So what questions come up for you around all this? Yeah,

Jamie: I think beyond kind of the obvious top of mind, ways to incorporate boats. And I've been thinking I'm a little bit like [00:22:00] moods into our e-commerce site. Like what are some other ways that we can better personalize and, and work those modes into the experience, whether that's through, you know, we have a very, um, like standard Shopify.

So, um, I think a lot about like our content platform, real talk and ways to kind of personalize that. So I think the ultimate dream and for we're not quite there yet is to make it. So if you are trying to get pregnant, you know, you don't necessarily see products about birth control and if you are on birth control, you don't see anything about trying to get pregnant.

So yeah. I guess, like how can a company like ours? We're nine people full-time seed stage limited resources, like kind of set ourselves up for success. So that way, when we do grow. These things can't be so far out of reach.

Aransas: I keep [00:23:00] thinking about playlist right now and, you know, the way YouTube organizes channels by playlist.

And I think there is something about allowing people to find buckets of content based on modes. Certainly serving those up as buckets isn't is the easiest way, rather than trying to target them. They can leave. The journey into the path that's most appropriate for them. And that that often is the least resource intensive approach to guiding people.

But I also think this, some of the things that you're already doing right, are an opportunity to get this data and then use it to guide people about the spaces on the. Shopify site, or even the newsletters they want to sign up for it. Maybe you, maybe you do a, you integrate this into those channels as well, real talk [00:24:00] the newsletter, et cetera, so that people are sort of creating their own journey.

And because many of the journeys that your customers are on are not the journey they're going to be on for life with. So you, you have a tight rope there because you want to make sure that they know that you're with them for life and that you have these other journeys, you can support them through once you've developed that trusting relationship with them.

Yeah.

Dave: Yeah. I actually think that sometimes e-commerce sites try too hard to personalize the journey to drive you down a particular path. I love the idea of what our ANSYS is saying. That you can treat them as playlists. You can treat them as hubs and you, you know, And I think you're seeing a lot of the streaming media services move away from trying to be very, very customized based on [00:25:00] preferences towards more of a hub type of format, which I think makes a lot of sense, allows the customer to make the choice and kind of get in.

So you, you might consider setting up kind of these different hubs based on particular modes that they might be in and then allowing them to. To work within that particular hub, but lead to the same type of transaction. It

Aransas: might also be interesting for you to spotlight certain leaders within your team or community to represent or personify various modes.

So maybe you have a doctor on your team who is. Deemed your specialist on crisis mode, or maybe you ha and you may already be doing some of that, but starting to allow those personification to happen for these various modes across [00:26:00] channels, both on the side newsletters and our meal talk.

Dave: Yeah. Versus some storytelling along the.

Uh, as well. I love that. That's fantastic.

Jamie: Yeah. I love the idea of a hub. We've been thinking a lot about toolkits and, you know, um, a page or a part on the website where, I mean, it is similar to that. Kind of idea, but you know, in one place you can see we're building an operation test calculator, so you can get your ovulation tests, calculator, you can read articles about oblation.

You can check out with the product reviews about it. Just kind of like a one-stop shop and kind of using that as an entry point for SEO as well. So I think that's really smart.

Aransas: Super smart. Yeah. And it is interesting. I mean, some of these, some of the. These quizzes for lack of a better word, um, lead lead to [00:27:00] really effective recommendation engines.

And as you said, they can, they can generate leads, but they can also provide a really useful service when done well. We were maybe some out there that already, you know, like I'm thinking about that website, find my cup, right? Like I, to my knowledge, it's, it is not sponsored by any. By any company, very intentionally, right?

So it feels very brand agnostic. And yet that's where your that's where your customers are, who are looking for that kind of support. It's a really smart survey. It's it leads to really smart recommendations. And I think there's an opportunity for brands that have products to sell, to start to interact and interface with new customers who are already on that, that search path.

Dave: Totally. You know, it's [00:28:00] just occurred to me. I don't know if this is, I am always surprised at how much I enjoy shopping on Instagram. Browsing the things that it serves up. Um,

Aransas: and you say you're surprised because you're not really the target shopping consumer, right?

Dave: Not, I'm really not. I don't, I only follow like 10 people and most of them are my children.

I have four children and my wife and I, I'm just not following all that much. I, and yet I enjoy what's served up to me and I wonder with. Your Instagram strategy or whatever kind of social strategy you're using. If by supporting particular modes, you could actually even be more customized to those types of platforms, uh, and bring people in [00:29:00] just the right moment, uh, which would be fantastic.

Um, it may, it may, maybe you're already thinking about that.

Jamie: Yeah, we, you know, we segment our Instagram ads based on value prop rather than modes, but it is very similar. So we'll think, okay. Let's see how this adds, that specifically focuses on like fast delivery time. Compares to this one that focuses on, um, quality of reviews.

And, you know, for some people they're going to care more about reviews and some people are going to hear more about fast delivery time, but we haven't really thought about it. We've kind of thought about it product first. Like what are the value props with this specific product? Not like customer need first

Dave: for ads.

We'd love to hear. If you do decide to go down that path, how it works out for you. Um, we, we are strong believers that. If you're going to be customer centered, it means you have to know the job the customer's trying to get [00:30:00] done. Um, modes is a way of articulating the job to be done in a much more specific, personalized individual type of way, but it's.

Dill kind of, it's still a part of that jobs to be done, uh, framework. Um, and so we'd love to hear if you have some successes with that. I think other listeners would love to hear about that as well. For

sure.

Jamie: I'm excited to bring this back to the team.

Aransas: Yeah. And let us know Jamie, we have lots of, um, lots of activities and workshops and exercises that we do with teams that we work with.

We'd be happy to share with you. So let us know if you need, um, some support as you build that out. As we start to wrap up this episode, I hope that. This has sort of, um, gotten your juices, flowing around modes and how they might work with sticks and the help you continue working toward [00:31:00] your, your vision for supporting women to make confident decisions.

What's your big takeaway from this?

Jamie: Definitely. That's

Aransas: a big question

Jamie: that I have a lot. I mean, this has been, so I'm really excited. I'd love any frameworks you have for like going over this with the team. But I think that, you know, customer driven and customer first goes so beyond what's table stakes. Like I think we do have, you know, really wonderful customer support and an easy to use website and helpful content.

But like, I'd say we're just scratching the surface and there's so much deeper work to do around it. So. That's my take away.

Aransas: Yay. I love it. And that's exactly where you. Uh, at this, at this stage, it feels really bad and really exciting that you're already in a place where you can start to ask these big meaty questions.

The truth is we mostly work with companies that have great big customer experience [00:32:00] teams. Uh, not. Uh, not companies that are deemed society that are, you know, nine full-time folks. So the fact that you and your team are already so focused on your customer experience is just a great credit for you and for, for the entire team.

So. Kudos to you for all you have already done and all you're at and aspiring to do. I know your time is, is rare and precious. So we really appreciate you joining us here today on the show. And we look forward to continuing to watch your growth and expansion and the way that you use these modes to meet your customer's needs in new and different ways.

Jamie: Yeah. Well, thank you so, so much for your time. And for having me on this has been so helpful. Um, and then.

Aransas: Thank you so much. And to all of you [00:33:00] listening, thank you so much for tuning in as always like subscribe, rate, review, do all the things. Uh, it helps us bring you great stories of success and innovation and. More to come on modes, just a little tease there. Uh, we have some really exciting guests in store for you.

We can't wait to announce and lots more insight on how to bring loads to life.

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