This Company is Resetting Customer Expectations
Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash
When I worked on last week’s newsletter about resetting customer expectations, I was a little bummed that I didn’t have a more recent example to demonstrate what it looks like when a business resets customer expectations and brings it to future customers’ attention at the awareness stage of the customer journey. Yes, we talked about the iPhone, but everybody talks about Apple, so I was a little disappointed in myself.
Anyway, I found an example. Watch this video:
Forward Clinic Tour with Dr. Nate Favini
What you’re seeing is a tour of a doctor’s office at Forward, a relatively new medical startup. As startup videos go, this one appears relatively low budget (background noise, distracting reflections in glass), but it’s jam packed with compelling information to entice you to give them a try.
What I love about this video is that’s it’s entirely about the customer experience (or patient experience, I suppose). It starts with the doctor welcoming you into the office, “Hi there, welcome to Forward. Come on in.” Immediately you get the sense that this office is different. They show an empty lobby, emphasizing “there’s no waiting here at Forward.”
The rest of the video continues the tour, showcasing the clean and modern aesthetic, and of course wowing you with technology that you most likely don’t see at your everyday doctor’s office. You can really picture yourself showing up for an appointment.
Technology serves experience
They showcase tons of tech in the video, but you’ll notice that the emphasis isn’t on the tech—it’s on the experience the technology is able to deliver.
Body scanner? That enables your data to be sent more quickly to the physician and (presumably) for you to be seen more quickly.
Giant touch screen? This allows you and your doctor to have a shared view of your health. Rather than your doctor holding a clipboard (or iPad) of your data, you’re able to stand side by side and look at your medical data together.
Lab on site? The ability to turn around lab results in 12 minutes means that you can meet with your doctor in one visit. You don’t have to return for a second visit just to go over the results. It’s part of the overall experience.
Contrast the video with the way technology is presented on the Forward website. While the website does a decent job in trying to highlight “how this improves your care”, there’s a ton of focus on the tech. The video, on the other hand, places the focus on the experience, putting the tech in its proper place as a servant to the overall customer experience.
This is a good reminder of how different media is needed to communicate with customers and potential customers. You can list a bunch of features on the site, sure, but does that really communicate the overall experience? And if the whole company is really about providing a unique experience, that’s something you have to consider if you want to attract new customers.
When CX is a strategic differentiator
I’m not sure you could have a clearer example of a company marketing its customer experience as a strategic differentiator. Yes, the tech is cool, but it’s how it all comes together that creates an experience that can reset customer expectations.
When we talked about CX strategy last year, we discussed how companies with good strategic fit have activities that fit together to deliver a good experience. Quoting Michael Porter:
“While operational effectiveness is about achieving excellence in individual activities, or functions, strategy is about combining activities….One activity’s cost, for example, is lowered because of the way other activities are performed. Similarly, one activity’s value to customers can be enhanced by a company’s other activities.”
You can see from the Forward video how different activities compliment each other to lower costs and add value for the customer. It all just sort of clicks.
What’s impressive is not just that Forward is giving customer experience some love, it’s that they’re marketing it. You can’t move any earlier in the customer journey than the awareness stage. When you’re putting in so much work perfecting the customer experience that you end up marketing that experience to prospective customers, that’s the ultimate validation that “CX is really important here.”