Ask about the best experience they've had in a completely different category
A deep dive into the technique that steals the standard from somewhere unexpected — and six ways to import the benchmark that is quietly making your category look inadequate
Why this angle exists
Every brand benchmarks itself against its category. It tracks competitors, monitors category norms, measures itself against the best version of what its sector has produced. This is a reasonable thing to do — and it almost guarantees a particular kind of blindness. The standard the consumer is actually using to evaluate the experience has nothing to do with the category. It was set somewhere else entirely. And the category has no idea.
Consumers don't experience one category at a time. They move through a world of interactions — with airlines that know their seat preferences, with streaming services that anticipate what they want before they search, with hotel check-ins that feel effortless, with apps that remember everything and require nothing. Each of these experiences sets a standard. Not a category-specific standard. A general standard for what a good experience feels like. And that standard gets imported, silently and inevitably, into every other interaction they have — including the ones in your category.
This is why a supermarket can be failing against a standard set by Spotify. Why a bank can be measured against a hotel. Why a healthcare provider is being compared, unfavourably, to an Amazon delivery. The consumer doesn't announce these comparisons. They just feel the gap. They can't always name it. But it shapes every interaction they have with every brand in every category — and the brands that understand this can act on it while everyone else is still benchmarking against each other.
The cross-category best experience question makes this implicit benchmark explicit. It gives the consumer a language for the gap they've been feeling without being able to name. And for the brand that receives the answer, it provides a brief that no competitor is working from — because no competitor thought to ask.
When you know you need this angle
The category is functionally competent but emotionally flat
When consumers rate the category adequately but describe interactions with a slight deflation — "it's fine," "it does what it needs to" — the gap is almost always experiential rather than functional. The benchmark being missed was set somewhere else. Find it.
You're designing a service or experience, not just a product
Any time the consumer's interaction with the brand extends beyond the product itself — a store visit, an app, a customer service call, a delivery — their standard for that interaction was set by the best version of it they've encountered anywhere. That benchmark belongs in the brief.
You're looking for step-change innovation rather than incremental improvement
Incremental improvement comes from studying the category. Step-change innovation almost always comes from outside it. The cross-category best experience question is the most direct route to the standard that would make the category look genuinely different rather than slightly better.
The consumer is sophisticated and highly experienced across categories
A consumer who interacts with a wide range of high-quality products and services has a richer and more demanding cross-category benchmark than one with narrower experience. The more varied their experience, the more precise and more demanding their imported standard — and the more valuable their answer to this question.
Six techniques
AThe single best experience transfer
The most direct form — ask the consumer to name the single best experience they've had with any product or service, anywhere, and then ask what it would mean to bring that standard into this category. The single best experience is always specific, always vivid, and always contains a transferable principle that the consumer can usually articulate once they're inside the memory of it. The transfer question is where the innovation brief lives.
WEAK
"What does great customer service look like to you?"
STRONGER
"Think about the single best experience you've had with any product or service — doesn't matter what category. What made it so good? And is there anything from that experience that you wish existed here?"
LIKELY RESPONSE
"A hotel I stayed at once. When I arrived they'd already noted from my previous stay that I prefer a high floor and a quiet room. They didn't ask me to fill in a form or repeat myself. They just knew. And the room had a note saying they'd chosen it based on my preferences. It felt like being remembered by someone who actually paid attention. I've thought about that stay many times since. No product or service I use regularly makes me feel like that. My bank certainly doesn't. My GP surgery definitely doesn't. Even the brands I've used for years don't seem to know me at all."
INSIGHT UNLOCKED
The consumer's highest experiential benchmark was set by a single hotel interaction built on remembered preference and proactive application of it — no form, no repetition, just evidence of attention. She has since applied this standard to every service she uses and found all of them wanting, including those she has used for years. The specific failure she names — being unknown despite long relationship duration — is one of the most widespread service design gaps across almost every category. Banks, healthcare providers, insurers, retailers: all hold years of interaction data and deploy almost none of it in ways that make the consumer feel remembered. The brief is not a loyalty programme or a CRM system. It is the feeling of being known — proactively, without being asked, without friction — at the moment it matters. That feeling was delivered by a hotel. It is available to any brand in any category that is willing to use what it already knows.
When to use: The single best experience question works in virtually every research context but is most productive when the category being researched is service-heavy or relationship-based. The more touchpoints the brand has with the consumer, the more jarring the gap between 'we have all this data' and 'we make no use of it to make you feel known.' The hotel example surfaces that gap faster than any category-internal question could.
BThe feeling transfer
Rather than asking about a specific experience, ask about a specific feeling — and then ask which category or brand has made the consumer feel that way most consistently. Feeling transfers are more abstract than experience transfers but often more precise as briefs: when a consumer identifies a feeling they want from a category and names the brand that already delivers it elsewhere, they have specified the emotional outcome the category needs to produce, and given you a working example of how it can be done.
WEAK
"How do you want to feel when you interact with a brand in this category?"
STRONGER
"Is there a feeling you get from a product or service in a completely different area of your life — that sense of being in good hands, or that things are effortless, or whatever it is for you — that you've never quite felt in this category? Who gives you that feeling elsewhere?"
LIKELY RESPONSE
"Confidence. I feel genuinely confident using my accountant — like I don't have to understand everything, I just have to trust that she does, and she'll tell me what I need to know when I need to know it. I never feel that with my health insurance. I'm always vaguely anxious that I'm missing something, that I'll need something and it won't be covered, that the small print will be the thing that gets me. My accountant makes complexity feel handled. My insurer makes it feel like my problem."
INSIGHT UNLOCKED
The consumer has named with precision the emotional failure of her insurance category — not a product failure, not a price failure, but a confidence failure. She knows what handled complexity feels like because her accountant provides it. Her insurer provides the opposite: an ambient anxiety about small print and coverage gaps that makes her feel like the complexity is her responsibility to manage. The brief is not a better policy or a clearer website. It is an experience model built around proactive reassurance — the insurer that tells you what you're covered for before you need to claim, that flags gaps before they matter, that makes the consumer feel like someone competent is watching their back. The accountant does this. No insurer this consumer has encountered does. The category is leaving the confidence gap wide open for the first brand willing to close it.
When to use: The feeling transfer is most productive in high-anxiety categories — insurance, healthcare, financial services, legal — where the dominant consumer emotional state is low-level worry rather than confidence or ease. In these categories, the emotional standard being missed is almost always being met somewhere in the consumer's life by a trusted professional or a particularly well-designed service. Finding who sets that standard tells you exactly what the category needs to feel like.
CThe process transfer
Ask about the smoothest, most frictionless process the consumer has experienced anywhere — the thing that just worked, required no effort, produced no anxiety, and left no residue of irritation — and ask what it would mean for that process logic to exist in this category. Process transfers are particularly valuable for service design because they identify the operational standard the consumer has internalised as possible, even if no brand in the category has achieved it.
WEAK
"What would make our process easier for you?"
STRONGER
"What's the most effortless process you've been through anywhere — the thing that just worked without you having to think, chase, or explain yourself? What made it feel like that? And is there any part of that that this category has never managed?"
LIKELY RESPONSE
"Returning something to a certain online retailer. I click one button. A courier comes the next day. My refund appears before the item's even been received. I've never had to explain why, never had to speak to anyone, never had to wait. Contrast that with returning something to my energy supplier when they'd overcharged me. Four phone calls, two emails, a form, six weeks. It was the same basic transaction — money going the wrong way and needing to come back — but one of them felt like it was designed for me and the other felt like it was designed to make me give up."
INSIGHT UNLOCKED
The consumer has articulated the gap between a process designed for the customer and a process designed to exhaust the customer into abandoning their legitimate claim. The energy supplier's refund process is not a service failure in the sense of being broken — it is a service design choice that places the burden of proof and persistence entirely on the consumer. The retailer's return process has demonstrated that the same transactional outcome — money returning to its rightful owner — can be achieved with one click and no friction. The consumer now carries that standard into every process she encounters, and every category that falls short of it is being silently judged against it. The brief for the energy category is not faster resolution — it is burden removal. Stop requiring the consumer to prove their case, follow up, and wait. Design the process as if the customer is right until proven otherwise, not the other way around.
When to use: Process transfers are most valuable in categories where the consumer regularly has to navigate bureaucratic, multi-step, or high-friction interactions — utilities, healthcare, insurance, government services, financial products. In these categories the gap between the friction the consumer tolerates and the frictionlessness they know is possible elsewhere is often vast, long-established, and entirely unexamined by the industry.
DThe surprise and delight transfer
Ask about a time a product or service did something the consumer didn't expect — something small, unrequested, and disproportionately memorable — and ask whether anything in this category has ever done the same. Surprise and delight moments are the most emotionally sticky experiences in consumer life: they are remembered long after the product itself has been forgotten, and they set a standard for what a brand is capable of caring about. Categories that never produce these moments are not just adequate — they are forgettable in a way that makes switching easy and loyalty shallow.
WEAK
"Has any brand in this category ever exceeded your expectations?"
STRONGER
"Has a product or service anywhere ever done something completely unexpected — something small that you didn't ask for and didn't expect — that genuinely stuck with you? What was it? And has anything in this category ever come close?"
LIKELY RESPONSE
"A glasses company sent me a handwritten note with my order. Not a card — a note. Specific to my order, mentioning the frames I'd chosen and why they thought I'd like them. It took someone maybe three minutes to write. I've recommended that company to probably fifteen people since. Nothing in this category — financial services — has ever done anything that made me feel like a person rather than an account number. Not once. And I've been a customer of my bank for twenty-two years."
INSIGHT UNLOCKED
A three-minute handwritten note generated fifteen referrals and a standard of personhood that twenty-two years of banking has never matched. The consumer is not asking for a handwritten note from her bank. She is describing the feeling that note produced — being seen as a person, being responded to specifically rather than generically — and noting that the entire financial services category has never produced that feeling once in over two decades of relationship. The brief is not 'be more human' — that is too vague to act on. The brief is: find the equivalent of the three-minute note. The specific gesture that costs almost nothing, requires genuine attention to the individual, and produces the feeling of being known rather than processed. In twenty-two years, her bank has had thousands of opportunities and taken none of them. The first financial services brand to find its version of the handwritten note owns this consumer's advocacy permanently.
When to use: Surprise and delight transfers are most productive in categories with long relationship duration and low emotional temperature — banking, insurance, utilities, telecoms. In these categories, the consumer has been in a relationship for years or decades with almost no memorable positive moment. The bar for producing one is almost on the floor. The standard required to clear it was set by a glasses company in three minutes.
EThe anticipation transfer
Ask about a product or service that seems to know what the consumer needs before they ask for it — that anticipates rather than reacts — and whether anything in this category has ever managed the same. Anticipation is the highest form of service design: it requires genuine knowledge of the consumer, the confidence to act on that knowledge, and the operational capacity to deliver before being prompted. Categories that only react are leaving the most powerful form of consumer loyalty entirely unclaimed.
WEAK
"Do you feel like this category understands your needs?"
STRONGER
"Is there a product or service anywhere that seems to know what you need before you've asked — that gets ahead of you rather than waiting for you to come to it? What does that feel like? And does anything in this category ever do that?"
LIKELY RESPONSE
"My car's service reminder. It doesn't wait for me to remember — it just tells me when it's time, books me in if I want, and reminds me again closer to the date. I never have to think about it. My dentist does the same — I haven't booked my own appointment in years, they just tell me when to come. Nothing in the food category does that. My meal planning is entirely reactive — I realise at six o'clock that there's nothing in the house and I panic. I've always wished someone would just tell me what to do before I reach that moment."
INSIGHT UNLOCKED
The consumer has identified anticipation as the missing service layer in her food category — the equivalent of the service reminder, applied to meal planning. She is not describing a recipe app or a shopping list tool: she is describing a system that gets ahead of the 6pm panic, that knows her household's patterns well enough to prompt before the problem exists rather than offering tools to manage it after. The car service model and the dental model are both built on predictable intervals and proactive communication — principles entirely transferable to household food planning once the data infrastructure exists. A service that monitors household consumption patterns, anticipates depletion, and prompts or replenishes before the consumer reaches the panic moment would not just be convenient — it would eliminate the cognitive load that makes her describe meal planning as reactive and stressful. The anticipation standard has been set by a mechanic and a dentist. The food category has not noticed.
When to use: Anticipation transfers are most productive in categories where the consumer's engagement is driven by necessity rather than desire — food, healthcare, home maintenance, finance — and where the dominant mode is reactive problem-solving rather than proactive planning. In these categories, the consumer is almost always one step behind where they'd like to be. The brand that steps in front of them, rather than waiting to be found, is in entirely different loyalty territory from one that doesn't.
FThe trust transfer
Ask which brand or person — in any domain — the consumer trusts most completely, and what specifically produces that trust. Then ask whether anything in this category has ever produced the same quality of trust, and what the gap looks like. Trust transfers are the deepest form of cross-category benchmark because trust is the most fundamental and most transferable quality in any consumer relationship. A consumer who can describe exactly what produces unconditional trust in one context has written the relationship brief for every category that has failed to earn it.
WEAK
"Do you trust the brands in this category?"
STRONGER
"Think about the brand or person you trust most completely — anywhere in your life, any category. What specifically makes you trust them that much? And is there anything in this category that comes close to producing that same feeling?"
LIKELY RESPONSE
"My builder. Which sounds odd. But when he tells me something needs doing, I believe him. When he tells me something doesn't need doing yet, I believe that too. He's talked me out of expensive jobs I didn't need. He's never tried to sell me something I didn't ask for. I trust him completely because I've seen him act against his own financial interest on my behalf more than once. Nothing in the supplement category works like that. Every brand is telling me I need everything. Every brand has something to gain from every recommendation. I have no way of knowing what's genuine and what's just selling."
INSIGHT UNLOCKED
The consumer's trust benchmark is defined by a single observable behaviour: acting against self-interest on the consumer's behalf. Her builder earns unconditional trust by telling her what she doesn't need as readily as what she does. The supplement category has earned none of this trust because every signal it produces is commercially motivated — every recommendation benefits the recommender. The consumer has no mechanism for distinguishing genuine guidance from selling, and has therefore defaulted to a baseline scepticism that no supplement brand has overcome. The brief is radical restraint: the first supplement brand to tell consumers what they probably don't need — specifically, credibly, and at commercial cost to itself — would not just differentiate. It would occupy the trust position that the builder occupies: the one brand in the category the consumer would recommend without qualification, return to without shopping around, and defend without prompting. Trust of that quality is worth more than any product claim the category has ever made. It has also never been attempted.
When to use: The trust transfer is most productive in categories saturated with claims, counter-claims, and commercial noise — supplements, beauty, financial products, food health claims, wellness. In these categories, the consumer's default epistemic position is scepticism, and the trust standard they apply was set not by another brand but by a human relationship — a builder, a doctor, a trusted friend — built on demonstrated impartiality. The brand that finds a credible structural way to replicate that impartiality has broken the category's most durable defensive barrier.
Follow-up probes once the cross-category benchmark is named
▸"What specifically made it feel different — can you point to one thing that was the real reason it stood out?"
Forces the consumer past the general quality description and into the specific mechanism. 'It was just really good' is not transferable. 'They called me by name and didn't make me repeat my account number' is. The specific mechanism is the brief.
▸"Do you think that experience was expensive to deliver — or could any brand have done it if they'd wanted to?"
Tests feasibility from the consumer's perspective. When a consumer says 'I think it probably cost almost nothing — they just chose to do it,' they are identifying a gap that is a will problem, not a capability problem. Those are the most actionable briefs.
▸"Has that experience changed what you expect from other brands — even in completely unrelated categories?"
Reveals the standard-setting power of the experience. A benchmark that has genuinely recalibrated the consumer's expectations across categories is the most powerful kind — and the most urgent for any brand in any category to understand and respond to.
▸"If this category did the equivalent — what would that actually look like in practice? What would have to happen?"
The transfer question is the most generative probe in this set. Once the consumer has a vivid benchmark in mind, asking them to translate it into the target category often produces a surprisingly specific and immediately actionable brief. They are doing the innovation work. Your job is to capture it precisely.
▸"How loyal are you to the brand that gave you that experience — and has it changed since?"
Measures the loyalty value of the benchmark experience directly. A consumer who has remained intensely loyal to a brand for years on the basis of one experience has demonstrated the return on the investment that experience represented. That return is the commercial case for importing the standard.
▸"Is there anything stopping a brand in this category from doing what that brand did — or is it just that no one has bothered?"
Distinguishes between structural barriers and motivational ones. 'There's probably a regulatory reason' is a different brief from 'I think they just don't care enough to try.' The consumer's read on why the gap exists often points directly at what would need to change to close it.
Signals that the cross-category benchmark is worth pursuing
They can describe the benchmark experience in specific, operational detail. Not "it was just really smooth" but "they texted me thirty minutes before delivery, the driver knew my name, and the packaging had a note saying they'd used a different courier because they knew the usual one had problems in my area." Operational specificity means the experience was genuinely memorable and its mechanism is recoverable. That mechanism is the brief.
The benchmark was set by a brand or person the category would not consider a competitor. A hotel setting the standard for a bank. A builder setting the standard for a supplement brand. A car manufacturer setting the standard for a food retailer. The further the benchmark is from the category, the more invisible it is to competitors — and the more disruptive importing it would be.
They spontaneously make the comparison to this category without being asked. "And the thing is, my bank has never..." or "nothing in this space has ever..." The unsolicited comparison is the consumer telling you, without prompting, that they have been measuring the category against an external standard and finding it wanting. That comparison is the most honest benchmark data available.
The benchmark experience was a one-off that hasn't been repeated. A memorable single interaction is valuable evidence — but probe for whether it has been sustained. A brand that was exceptional once and is now merely adequate has set a standard it no longer meets. The lesson may be about consistency as much as about the original standard.
The transfer seems obvious once named but structurally difficult. "I know why no bank does this — it would cost a fortune" may or may not be true. Probe gently: "do you think the cost is the actual reason, or is there something else?" Consumer assumptions about feasibility are often wrong, and the brief is more valuable than the consumer's guess about why it hasn't been attempted.
They struggle to name any experience that stands out anywhere. Some consumers have not encountered a genuinely exceptional experience in any category and have nothing vivid to draw from. In this case, shift the question: "is there anything you've heard about — from a friend, read about, seen — that sounded like it would set that kind of standard, even if you haven't experienced it yourself?" Second-hand benchmarks are less precise but still directionally useful.
What to avoid
Don't rush the transfer. The most common mistake with this technique is to hear the cross-category benchmark and immediately ask "so what would that look like here?" before the benchmark itself is fully understood. Spend time in the original experience first — what happened, in what sequence, what it felt like, why it worked. The richer the understanding of the source, the more precise the transfer brief will be. A half-understood benchmark produces a half-built brief.
Don't dismiss benchmarks that seem impossible to transfer. A consumer who says their standard was set by a Michelin-starred restaurant is not asking for a Michelin-starred equivalent in a supermarket. They are describing the feeling that experience produced — being attended to, being made to feel the occasion mattered, having the effort be visible — and asking whether any of that is possible here. Almost always some of it is. The job is to find which parts transfer and which don't, not to decide in advance that none of it does.
And don't let the category's existing constraints foreclose the brief before it has been properly heard. "We're regulated, we can't do that" or "our margins don't allow for it" are operational responses to a strategic brief. The consumer's cross-category benchmark is telling you what the experience should feel like. How to get there within operational and regulatory reality is a different and later conversation. Hear the brief fully before you start explaining why it's hard.
Comments
Post a Comment