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Saul Marquez:
Hey, everybody! Saul Marquez with the Outcomes Rocket, and I want to welcome you back to another episode of our podcast. Today I have the privilege of hosting the amazing Dave Norton. He is the founder and principal of Stone Mantel, a research-led consultancy at the forefront of customer and employee experience strategy. For the last 20 years, Dave has helped companies like Royal Caribbean, Marriott, US Bank, Best Buy, and Clayton Homes set new standards for customer service and employee experience strategy. Alongside Aransas Savas, he hosts the Experienced Strategy Podcast, a show that explores how organizations create deep and meaningful relationships with their customers in a way that delivers on time well spent, time well saved, and time well invested. He received his PhD in rhetoric from the University of Minnesota and currently lives in Draper, Utah. Dave, I’m so excited to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining me.
Dave Norton:
Saul, thanks for having me on. This is great.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, and look, there’s so many things I find interesting. So, first of all, so cool that you studied rhetoric. I was a classical humanities major in my undergrad, so I got a great appreciation on Cicero and Aristotle, and the greats, and I have a love for rhetoric myself. So, I love that, would love to have a conversation with you on that. Like, what’s the one takeaway on rhetoric that you feel most people need to know that they don’t know?
Dave Norton:
Well, I like to think of rhetoric as the study of context, whereas psychology is the study of what’s going on in the mind, rhetoric is the study of audience and the environment, and the things that are going on that might be influencing the individual to behave in a particular way, to think in a particular way. And for me, the most interesting part of it is this idea of how context influences and encourages people to really behave differently or get more out of an experience. And, of course, when I think about context, I have to also think about experiences, what is an experience but a staged physical manifestation of some kind of meaningful interaction, right, that happens between whoever it is, the patient and the provider, whoever it is that they’re working with. So the study of context, I think, is also very much connected to the study of experiences.
Saul Marquez:
I love that. What a great way to segue into the focus area that you’re really a masterful of creating these customer experiences. Talk to us about how you guys are adding value to the healthcare ecosystem through customer experience.
Dave Norton:
There are a lot of healthcare providers today who are very focused on consumerization. What should the healthcare industry look like going forward? Should it behave more like a retail model? Should it behave more like the way that we purchase services and experiences? And is there value to be created for these organizations around thinking in terms of consumerization? And so we actually had a series of healthcare companies that reached out to us. We have a program we call The Collaboratives, and it’s a year-long program where companies study together, ten companies study together, challenges that they’re facing. They go through a design thinking process, and they come out on the other side with real solutions and new frameworks for solving the challenges that they’re facing. A lot of the challenges that are going on in healthcare today have to do with changing expectations that consumers have, that patients have, for the types of experiences that they’re going to have. Some of that is driven by digital, some of that’s driven by the fact that there’s a lot of frustration that exists in the healthcare system, and some of it is just the changing demographics, the changing way in which we do work, the changing way in which we do play, and then change the way in which we take care of ourselves. So there’s a lot that healthcare companies need to be focused on and thinking about if they’re going to be successful in helping their patients feel like they’re getting the best possible experience.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, I think that’s well said. And going back, where you started, with this is the context, right? And examining that context and asking yourself, what am I going to do about this with what I have today, not with what was here yesterday, and then build from there, right? And it sounds like you surround people with other companies to then provide that outsider perspective, because oftentimes we get stuck in a rut because we’ve been working too close to the things that we work with.
Dave Norton:
Yeah, that’s true. And it’s interesting, we have had a number of healthcare companies go through our program, and oftentimes the number one thing they say is, I want to talk to companies outside of the category. I want to talk to the Marriotts, I want to talk to the Coca-Colas, I want to talk to the Best Buys, T-Mobiles, the other companies in very different categories, and I think part of that is because they get tired of hearing the same complaints over and over again about how the system is broken, and they really want to innovate. They really want to come up with new ideas, and so they want to look outside the category.
Saul Marquez:
And is that part of what you do with the program, Dave? You sort of do this mix of different industries.
Dave Norton:
We do, we have one track that is specifically focused on healthcare for companies that want to be focused on healthcare, but we have five different tracks. One is focused on personal transformation and what consumers want from personal transformation, one is focused on digital experiences, another one is focused on how to deal with uncertainty. You have different challenges that are going on. How does that affect the experience when the Silicon Valley Bank all of a sudden blows up? Well, that’s a really bad customer experience, right?
Saul Marquez:
So, yeah, I would say so.
Dave Norton:
You’re right, it’s like the worst.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, oh, yeah. Where’s my money?
Dave Norton:
Yeah, a lot of healthcare companies are dealing with uncertainty on a regular basis, and so that’s another approach. And then, we have a track that focuses on employee engagement. So those four tracks, a healthcare company can be a part of any one of those four tracks, or they can focus on, just on healthcare itself. There’s some great things that are going on in healthcare. We give healthcare a hard time about the things that are broken, but one of the things that, where healthcare is ahead of everyone else is in having metrics and tools that focus on patient outcomes, meaning outcome-based metrics. You think about like … scores and different types of metrics that we use to try to get to value-based care. That’s amazing, that’s really exciting stuff. Way better than trying to track some kind of dumb NPS score, which is not going to tell you all that much about your experience.
Saul Marquez:
Well said, Dave, and I agree with you in a big way, and one of the things that came up in my mind around your program that I think the listeners are probably wondering. So you got the year track, are there any sprints? If there was somebody that said, hey, how do I taste this, right? This thing sounds really cool, I feel like I could benefit from it, is there a sprint that somebody could say, Let me try it like a 5K before the marathon?
Dave Norton:
There’s two different ways that you can have a sprint for the program. First of all, you can always just engage Stone Mantel to do consulting work for you, and then we go at your pace. The reason why it takes a year is because.
Saul Marquez:
Good to know.
Dave Norton:
Yeah, the reason why it takes a year is because we’re going at the pace of all of the companies that are involved, but there’s also ways for you to sample the program itself. You can decide to join up for three months, and that’s a great way to get a sense for the type of work that you’re going to do. Or we have our certification program, it’s a 12-week program. We encourage companies to do both. And when you’re a part of the collaborative, you get the certification program for free. If you’re not a part of the program, there’s a per-person fee to participate, but it’s a really in-depth, intensive program, one hour a week, very focused on customer experience and employee experience and patient experience and how to move the needle significantly. So those are different ways that you can sample.
Saul Marquez:
Love it, and that’s great to know. Thank you for the options, because there’s an opportunity for everybody listening to this today to say if there’s a way for me to improve patient experience, employee experience, overall experience, I don’t have to dive into this for a whole year. There’s a way for me to stick my toe into the water, test it out first, and then do it, so thank you for sharing that. If you had to reflect on one of the things that you feel has been maybe one of your biggest setbacks in the business, what would you say that was, and what was the biggest learning experience that you got out of it?
Dave Norton:
Yeah, so the biggest setback is the same setback the entire healthcare industry just went through, right, Covid. We run an in-person program where we bring companies together to work with them in a group, and overnight, we had to switch that to a remote model, right? Remote delivery.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah.
Dave Norton:
So that was a major shift because a lot of the relationships that are built, the friendships, working alongside of each other, just simply the way that we facilitated things, had to shift as well. And yet coming out of that now, we have a hybrid type of an experience. You can come in person, or you can also do it from your remote location, and it serves two very different but important audiences. So we learned a tremendous amount about how to develop our own product going through that major crisis.
Saul Marquez:
…, yeah, you came out stronger. Now more people can access the insights that you offer in the collaboration because, I mean, let’s face it, guys, we get lonely, right? You’re in a leadership role, it can be lonely sometimes, and it’s great to be able to just connect with other leaders and say, hey, what are you going through? I feel like that’s probably one of the big value adds of what you offer, Dave.
Dave Norton:
Oh, thank you. We tend to agree. We really appreciate that.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, well, Dave, look, people listening want to make change happen. They want it to stay, and they’re certainly looking for ways to do it. I appreciate you jumping on today to share what you guys do, how you do it. What call to action would you leave everybody with today, and what’s the best place they could get in touch with you to learn more?
Dave Norton:
Come take a look at our websites. We have two sites that we run. One is StoneMantel.co, and the other one is TheCollaboratives.com, and there you’ll see a lot of the thought leadership, we have, we’ve written a number of HDR articles, one that just came out two weeks ago on the future of digital experiences and digital platforms. So you’re going to see that we’re covering a lot of ground, a lot of important ground that many companies are dealing with. So come to our website, take a look. If you’re interested in being a part in some way, shape, or form, just let us know from the website.
Saul Marquez:
Love it. Dave, thank you for the opportunity to connect. Folks, check out the show notes of today’s podcast. You’ll be able to click there and check out the two sites that Dave just mentioned, two great ways to engage with him and the research and the insights that he and his team are up to. Dave, really appreciate your time, and was a pleasure to connect with you.
Dave Norton:
Thanks, Saul.
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