You may not have heard of Raymond Loewy but he is one of the most influential designers of the last one hundred years. He is credited with designing most of the icons of the 20th century. Loewy’s breakthrough insight was discovering the tension we have between wanting certainty and being attracted to novelty. Loewy summed this up in the concept of MAYA – Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. New things need to be somehow familiar to be accepted. Familiar things need an element of newness to avoid being boring. The secret to creating a remarkable customer experience is MAYA.
MAYA is Most Advanced Yet Acceptable
The QR Code on the tombstone to below is an innovative idea, but is it MAYA? In our experience QR Codes have never really caught on. We suspect it is because they are too advanced. What do you think about the idea of needing a smart phone to read a tombstone? There are many examples of innovations failing to take off because they are ahead of their time.
QR Code Tombstone - too advanced to be MAYA?
The more common problem in Australia is not being advanced enough. According to the Global Competitiveness Index 4.0 (2018) Australia is in the top 20 out of 140 companies for innovation capability. The metric assesses the quantity and quality of formal research and development; the extent to which a country’s environment encourages collaboration, connectivity, creativity, diversity and confrontation across different visions and angles; and the capacity to turn ideas into new goods and services. So we should be quite advanced. However as a national we don’t seem to be capitalising on this capability. In an Australian Financial Review article ‘Australia is rich, dumb and getting dumber’ (2019) Australia fell to 93rd in the world for economic complexity in 2017. Just under two decades earlier we ranked 57th. Over the same period our top trade partner China has improved from 51st to 19th. Economic complexity is a measure of how innovative our economy actually is. Minerals and energy are 70% of exports. Food, alcohol, wool, tourism and metal products are another 29%. In other words we don’t export very much that is innovative.
…data exposes the paradox of the Australian economy: the eighth-richest nation in the study has the export profile of Angola.
Coles Insurance was not MAYA
A good example of this is Coles Insurance. The supermarket giant decided to add on an insurance service to customers in a partnership with IAG. On the face of it this seems like a good idea because Coles can help IAG get access to its customers. Coles believed it could extend its brand to include insurance and IAG got to utilise spare capacity to grow its book. Even better for Coles the insurance product takes up no shelf space, is not perishable and gets pre-paid by customers. But it’s not like Coles customers actually were under supplied for insurance options in the local market.
There is nothing new about this insurance offering. Worse for Coles, the partnership seems to delivering really poor CX if the reviews on www.productreview.com.au at the time of writing are representative. On more than three hundred reviews almost three-quarters rate the service as just one star. Only thirty-seven give it five stars.
Customer reviews of Coles Home and Contents Insurance on www.productreview.com.au
There are so many other ways Coles could have improved their customer experience to attract more customers. Check out their great support for craft breweries here. Another good retail CX example come from Amazon. The online giant has opened a chain of convenience stores in the United States using their Just Walk Out system. The partial automation system allows customers able to purchase products without having to go through a cashier or self-service check out. Amazon Go offers prepared foods, meal kits, groceries and liquor. The Just Walk Out system is available as software for other retailers. The software means customers can make purchases without an Amazon account. QR Codes are part of the Just Walk Out system. In this context they seem to work because Amazon has grown to 26 sites in just two years. Just Walk Out is MAYA.
The National Skin Cancer Centres attracted new patients using MAYA
National Skin Cancer Centres [NSCC] had success using MAYA design to attract new patients. The growing chain offers skin checks to for the early detection of skin cancer. We worked for them to help them improve their CX. This was critical because the group bills as a private provider against GPs who typically bulk bill for their service. In effect NSCC offers a paid service in competition to a free one.
Our customer research identified four different segments of patients. Patients were split based on how concerned they were about skin cancer and how reticent they were to make a healthcare appointment. Most of the industry focuses on Carefuls. These are patients with a high concern about skin cancer and low reticence to make a doctor or specialist appointment. This group is challenging to market to because they tend towards hypochondria and are very loyal to the existing range of healthcare professionals they deal with. The only real opportunity to get them to churn is if they change cities. This meant we had to target other segments.
Two segments were more reticent to make healthcare appointments. The Cajoleds would only get a skin check if they were pushed into it. This happened most of the time when a wife, girlfriend, mother or sister harassed the cajoled patient until they finally gave in and went to get their skin checked. Marketing to this group was complicated by the need to identify and activate potential harassers. Caloleds knew about skin cancer, they just didn’t believe it would happen to them. Cajoleds switched to being Converteds after having a near miss. This could be getting something removed after a skin check or learning about someone close who was diagnosed with skin cancer. This trigger activated them to be evangelical for a short time about the need to get regular checks. They still had a resistance to doctor appointments but their level of concern about skin cancer increased from low to high. Again this group was difficult to market to unless they were already a patient of NSCC.
This left a final group who were not really concerned about skin cancer but also less reticent to book a check. We called this group the Casuals. It turned out NSCC could acquire these patients by setting up a quick, free service in shopping mall chemists. The service involved a UV camera used to show skin damage not normally visible. Combined with a quick family history and a skin type assessment, a suitable qualified nurse could make an risk assessment in under 15 minutes. Casuals who were walking by were happy to take up the service almost as an entertainment distraction. Amazingly up to 40% of them booked a paid appointment on the spot. It was perfect MAYA - most advanced, yet acceptable.
Casuals who were walking by were happy to take up the service almost as an entertainment distraction
The idea that a healthcare service could actually be marketed as entertainment is counter intuitive for many who work in healthcare. However it is an interesting customer strategy particularly relevant for private providers. The starting point to finding new strategies like this is MAYA. The video by Derek Thompson below comes from a 2081 TEDx talk. He explains how MAYA can be used to sell anything. It is also the secret to designing remarkable CX.
Robert Dew is a Founding Partner at CapFeather Global with more than 2o years of corporate consulting and university lecturing in Innovation, Customer Strategy and Customer Experience. His PhD related to improving creativity in strong corporate governance environments. He has also done 60+ start-ups.