The importance of storytelling in innovation experiences

In the middle of an interactive session with customers, I had an epiphany: Storytelling is just as much a backbone of innovation experiences as new ideas are.

I and 43 other presenters toured North America as part of InnovationPark, a series of modular experiences that reflect real-life work scenarios, such as replacing a laptop, refilling a prescription, or preparing a store or event to open for the day. We hosted a total of 766 visitors to engage with ServiceNow technology in our 14-city tour, which ended on Oct. 9, 2022.

Gaining new perspectives

We led customers through immersive, tailored sessions to demonstrate what’s possible with ServiceNow technology. Rather than focusing on a particular product, each experience resolved a specific scenario to showcase how versatile tech can be when used across industries and business functions.

For some experiences, we put tablets in the hands of attendees. By leading the audience through stories, the presenters made experiences such as chatting with a chatbot, approving a hotel desk for an employee, or communicating with a supplier about a supply chain disruption come alive in the (literal) hands of customers.

Instead of sitting back and watching a demo, the audience got to engage with technology, putting themselves in the shoes of people in various functions, such as a sourcing manager at a logistics company, a patient checking in for surgery, or an expecting parent requesting time off. This empowered them to empathize and see their businesses from different vantage points.

Speaking with, not at, customers

Business presentations often overload the audience with one-sided information dumps. Rather than droning on at listeners, it’s much more powerful to share intimate conversations with them and foster ideas, as my stint at InnovationPark confirmed.

I especially enjoyed leading customers through Amazon Connect. We instructed attendees to call a hotline to replace their faux broken device. Visitors used to entering logins and codes were stunned when an automated voice answered their call and asked them by name how it could help.

Eliminating friction allowed us to focus our time on dreaming of how and where to use this concept in customers’ own businesses. This is the opposite of how enterprises typically showcase their products.

These interactive sessions helped customers realize they have agency. Instead of simply being shown software, they see the choices they make manifest in real time on the Now Platform.

Through these experiences, customers walked away with ideas about how they can create better work experiences using the ServiceNow technology they already have.

“InnovationPark reinforced the importance of experience,” one customer wrote afterward. “It also demonstrated what is possible to unify systems and create a great user experience.”

Another customer went a step further: “We are on Earth, and you just showed me the universe. How do we get from Earth to what you just did?”

Empowering everyone with what’s achievable

These customer interactions gave me fresh insight into what’s achievable with the Now Platform. That’s what innovation is all about: making connections and finding ingenious ways to adapt existing technology to address gaps and needs.

With economic challenges in the news, it’s more important than ever for businesses to become more efficient in order to survive. Innovation experiences, built using ServiceNow technology, remind me what’s possible when we use existing resources to create solutions and enable human connections. At the end of the day, these innovations are all about storytelling.

Find out more about how ServiceNow helps organizations manage innovation.

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