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SM-CXE-001 · Evaluate

The Lathe

CX Evaluator

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Overview

The Lathe evaluates customer experiences. Paste a URL, upload a journey map, or describe an experience in text. The Lathe returns a scored evaluation across five journey stages — Discovery, Onboarding, Engagement, Support, Retention — with actionable, prioritized recommendations. Built on twenty years of consumer experience research, not a generic AI wrapper.

Product
The Lathe — CX Evaluator
Model No.
SM-CXE-001
Input
URL · uploaded journey map · text description
Output
Scored CX evaluation across 5 stages + prioritized recommendations
Pricing
$19/mo · free trial included
Access
Web app · Google Chrome extension. Start free at lathe.significantmachine.com.
Export Formats
PDF report · Shareable link · CSV data export
Stages
Discovery · Onboarding · Engagement · Support · Retention
Built on
20 years of CX research, journey mapping frameworks, Fortune 100 engagement data
From the workbench · Live evaluation Fig. 01

Two regional health
systems. One rubric.

On May 3, 2026, we ran the public-facing websites of two Virginia healthcare systems through The Lathe: HCA Healthcare, a 189-hospital national operator, and Inova Health, Northern Virginia's leading nonprofit provider. Same rubric. Same crawl. Side by side, the gap is small. The story is not.

Inova Health
inova.org
EVAL-2026-0503-INV Rubric v1.0
72
CX Score: Above Average
5 stages scored. 5 prioritized recommendations.
Wins 4 of 5 stages versus its national peer.
Discovery
78
Onboarding
65
Engagement
75
Support
70
Retention
68
Top finding
Strong information architecture and prominent MyChart access — but the homepage is content-heavy enough to overwhelm first-time patients, and there's no dedicated "new here" pathway.
HCA Healthcare
hcahealthcare.com
EVAL-2026-0503-HCA Rubric v1.0
68
CX Score: Average
5 stages scored. 5 prioritized recommendations.
Wins on Support; loses ground where redirects do the work.
Discovery
75
Onboarding
55
Engagement
70
Support
78
Retention
60
Top finding
The site functions less like a destination and more like a switchboard. Careers, patient portal, and local hospitals all redirect to external systems — every redirect is a chance to lose the user.
Discovery
78vs.75
Onboarding
65vs.55
Engagement
75vs.70
Support
70vs.78
Retention
68vs.60
Analyst's read · Comparative POV Fig. 02

What The Lathe found.

Four points separate them on paper. In practice, the gap is a story about strategy: one health system treats its homepage as a destination, the other as a directory. The patterns The Lathe surfaces are ones that incumbent teams — too close to the work — tend to miss.

01
Scale is not a strategy
HCA operates 189 hospitals and over 320,000 colleagues. Its homepage acts like a switchboard: careers redirect to careers.hcahealthcare.com, the patient portal lives behind an external link, local hospital experiences live on entirely separate sites. Inova, regional and one-tenth the size, integrates instead of redirects — and outscores HCA on four of five stages because of it.
02
The friction tax
Every external redirect is a chance to lose a user. HCA's 10-point onboarding deficit (55 vs. 65) is exactly that cost made visible. Inova's MyChart access is one click from the homepage; HCA's MyHealthOne portal is mentioned only in the FAQ. When discovery is the easy part and onboarding is where the patient actually needs you, fragmenting the experience is the most expensive choice a health system can make.
03
Where HCA wins, and why
HCA takes Support outright: 78 vs. 70. A 24/7 ethics line, exhaustive FAQ, and centralized contact infrastructure. This is the version of scale that does work — when 189 hospitals share a backbone, users in real need can route to a single source. Both systems share the same weakness: retention sits in the low 60s. Healthcare CX is built around acute episodes, not relationships. The "between visits" layer — nobody's doing it.
Top recommendations · Both systems Fig. 03

Where Lathe says to start.

No.
Recommendation
Impact
Effort
01
HCAIntegrate the career application flow
Stop redirecting candidates to a sub-domain. Surface the first three steps on-site, then hand off — preserves intent through the abandonment cliff.
Med impact
High effort
02
INOVABuild a dedicated "new patients" pathway
A homepage section that walks first-time visitors through registration, scheduling, and MyChart in linear order. Highest-impact, medium-effort move on the table.
High impact
Med effort
03
HCAAdd prominent emergency-care guidance
"Call 911 or go to the nearest ER" is buried in the contact page. For a 189-hospital operator, this should live on the homepage. Low effort, high impact.
High impact
Low effort
04
INOVAStreamline homepage content hierarchy
The homepage tries to serve every audience equally and overwhelms first-time visitors. Reorder around the top three patient tasks; demote the rest.
High impact
High effort
05
BothAdd email capture and communication preferences
Universal weak spot. Neither system has visible newsletter signup or preference management. Lowest-effort retention move available; both score in the low 60s on this stage.
Med impact
Low effort
Methodology · The five stages Fig. 04

How The Lathe scores.

Every customer journey decomposes into the same five stages, weighted to reflect their commercial weight. The rubric isn't opinion — it's two decades of CX engagement compressed into a repeatable instrument. Same questions, every site.

01 · 20%
Discovery
First impression · trust
Value clarity, navigation, trust signals, audience segmentation. Can a first-time visitor tell what you do, who you serve, and why they should stay?
02 · 25%
Onboarding
First-use · activation
Sign-up flow, progressive disclosure, first-task completion, friction at handoffs. The stage where intent most often turns into churn.
03 · 25%
Engagement
Core experience · depth
Information architecture, content quality, task efficiency, scannability. How well the site actually does the thing it says it does.
04 · 15%
Support
Recovery · resolution
Discoverability of help, channel coverage, self-service depth, response paths. What happens when the path forward isn't obvious.
05 · 15%
Retention
Return · relationship
Account features, ongoing communication, loyalty mechanics, the "between visits" layer. The cheapest revenue, almost always under-invested.
Demo See it work
Fig. 02 · The Lathe in motion · 0:30 · muted · autoplay

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