Why do some experiences stand out and woo customers while many just fade away? Harvard Professor, Stefan Thomke, explains that “the difference has less to do with catchy marketing and everything to do with the design of the experience itself.” 

He talks about GE Healthcare as an example of a company making a customer experience turnaround in a recently released learning exercise Designing Transformational Customer Experiences. The exercise helps companies discover design principles that make experiences great. Great customer experiences are not about lesser complaints but increased customer satisfaction. Exceptionally great experiences stand out, create memories for years, increase loyalty, and lead to a massive multiplier effect when one customer shares the details with others in today’s super-connected consumer world. “We forget that the things that really stick, the things people talk about years later, are not the average experiences, but the outliers on the other end of the spectrum,” Thomke says.

What’s particularly novel about Thomke’s approach is that students learn through a methodology called LEGO Serious Play, and storytelling. (LEGO Serious Play, or LSP, has been used by many global companies, including Google, Microsoft, and Fedex, to foster creativity, deepen learning, and solve complex problems.)