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An initiative that Explores CX Gaps and Uncovers Innovation Opportunities.
The Client's Core Challenge
The client is grappling with several intertwined issues that obstruct their journey toward becoming a truly customer-centric organization:
Growing Customer Dissatisfaction: As customers become increasingly aware of customer experience (CX) approaches and encounter appealing services from competitors or newcomers, complaints are rising. This dissatisfaction emphasizes the urgency for the organization to shift its focus and better address customer needs.
Loss of Human Touch: With the rise of digital transformations and the automation of processes aimed at speeding up operations, reducing costs, and enabling online services, customers have voiced that they miss the human touch in their interactions. This gap highlights the need to balance efficiency with personalized service, ensuring that the customer experience remains meaningful and engaging.
Client's Core ChallenChallenge ...ge
Resistance to Change: Product managers and leaders within specific divisions are anchored in traditional ways of working, primarily focusing on internal needs. This resistance makes it difficult to pivot towards a customer-centric approach, as teams express discomfort with changing established processes and fear they may not achieve desired results.
Limited Vision: Many product managers struggle to see beyond existing services and their specifications. They often derive solutions from current offerings rather than starting with customer needs, which may necessitate a complete overhaul of their products and services.
Unfamiliarity with Agile Processes: The iterative, agile, experimental, and user-focused processes essential for effective innovation are met with skepticism. Feelings of ambiguity and a perceived loss of control hinder acceptance, leaving only a few front runners willing to embrace these methodologies.
In summary, the client faces a complex challenge of overcoming internal resistance, expanding the vision of product managers, embracing agile methodologies, responding to customer dissatisfaction, and maintaining the human element in increasingly automated services.
The strategy involved several key elements:
1. Training and Coaching
2. CX Standards Development and Implementation
3. Identifying and running New Innovation Opportunties
TRAINING AND COACHING
Comprehensive training and coaching programs focused on customer centricity, innovation (specifically design thinking), and agile ways of working were implemented. These sessions aimed to equip teams with the knowledge and skills necessary to adapt to new methodologies and embrace a customer-first mindset.
CX STANDARDS DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION
The research, design, and adoption of customer experience (CX) standards were carried out organization-wide. These standards provided clear guidance for every employee on how to act, design, and plan with customer needs at the forefront, ensuring a unified approach to enhancing customer interactions.
IDENTIFYING AND RUNNING NEW INNOVATION OPPORTUNITIES
User and customer research was conducted to uncover opportunities for improving existing services and creating new offerings. This research served as a foundation for innovation projects, enabling the organization to align product development with actual customer needs and expectations.
Through these strategic elements, the organization aimed to create a culture of innovation and customer focus, empowering teams to break free from traditional practices and embrace new ways of thinking and working.
The Journey in an image
Outcomes
SHIFT TOWARD CUSTOMER-CENTRIC CULTURE
Mindset Shift: The training and coaching programs, along with the CX standards, would have helped product managers and leaders break free from internal, traditional ways of working. This cultural shift toward customer-centricity is critical in driving more meaningful engagement with customers.
Adoption of New Ways of Working: Teams likely started embracing design thinking and agile methodologies, allowing them to better understand and respond to user needs. The resistance to change would have decreased over time as employees became more comfortable with iterative, user-centered approaches.
Improved Collaboration and Innovation: The strategy would have fostered better teamwork, empowering cross-functional teams to collaborate more effectively and deliver innovations aligned with customer insights.
ENHANCED CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX)
The organization-wide CX standards provided employees with a clear roadmap for improving customer interactions. This would have led to a more cohesive and consistent customer experience across the board.
The human touch that customers felt was missing from automated processes may have been restored to a degree, with efforts to balance digital efficiency and personal service. This could have improved customer satisfaction and retention.
EMPOWERMENT AND CONFIDENCE
Product managers and leaders would have gained confidence through coaching and training, enabling them to think beyond existing services and embrace innovation projects. This newfound vision likely allowed them to take calculated risks, develop new offerings, and make data-driven decisions.
Teams learned how to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty, fostering a more adaptable and resilient mindset.
BUSINESS GROWTH
Increased Digital Sales and Engagement: 74% of core products sold digitally by end of the year
Revenue Growth and Profitability: 13.6% ROE for the year. By identifying new innovation opportunities and aligning services with customer needs, the organization has been able to attract more customers and cross-sell more effectively, as indicated by the 70% increase in sales YoY.
Customer Retention and Loyalty: The proactive customer centric and engaging measures boosted customer loyalty, with long-term relationships being reinforced.
Competitive Positioning: The client became a leader in responding to customer needs, driven by the innovations introduced.
Methods Tools Techniques
In this complex, organization-wide transformation, our approach focused on orchestrating the timing of initiatives while staying flexible to achieve business goals. The strategy was centered on shifting the culture, starting with mindset transformation and empowering leaders to drive innovation and customer-centricity across the organization. Here's how we structured the process:
1. MINDSET TRANSFORMATION
Objective: Start with cultural change by fostering a customer-centric and innovative mindset among key organizational leaders.
Method: We carefully selected a cohort of front-runner leaders to participate in CX and Innovation Mindset Training. This training was designed to equip them with the tools to lead by example and spread this mindset across their teams.
Ripple Effect: These leaders became early adopters, influencing others and creating momentum for further initiatives.
2. BUILDING CX STANDARDS
Objective: Develop organization-wide Customer Experience (CX) standards that guide all employees in how to design, plan, and act with the customer at the forefront.
Method: We took a cross-functional, cross-level approach by involving leaders, managers, and frontline employees in the development process. This ensured that the standards reflected the voice of the entire organization and promoted inclusivity.
Supervision Teams: To ensure top-level alignment, key leadership stakeholders and board members were continuously involved through supervision teams, overseeing the adoption and long-term integration of the CX standards.
Methods Tools Techniques
3. SELECTING AND LEADING INNOVATION PROJECTS
Objective: Identify and launch new innovation projects that aligned with customer needs and opportunities for service improvement.
Method: By the time innovation projects were selected, we had prepared a sufficient number of leaders to take charge. These leaders were trained to lead projects using Agile methodologies, enabling them to make bold, customer-driven decisions that had not been taken before.
Facilitation: Throughout the process, external facilitation ensured continued momentum and supported the teams. This external guidance also served as a model for internal leaders, who gradually took over the facilitation, ensuring the sustainability of Agile practices in the long run.
4. SUSTAINING THE MOMENTUM
Objective: Maintain continuous progress and ensure the long-term success of the transformation.
Method: We closely monitored the needs of the teams and provided ongoing facilitation to ensure that leaders remained engaged and empowered to drive change. The gradual transition of leadership from external facilitators to internal leaders ensured that the organization could continue evolving independently.
Duration of the Programme
While the transformation program had no formal end date - since innovation projects and new initiatives continue to be launched based on ongoing human-centered research - our direct involvement spanned 1 year. During this period, we worked closely with the teams until specific milestones were achieved.
The project was designed to be sustainable, and our exit occurred when the following criteria were met:
Leadership Maturity: The project leads and managers demonstrated sufficient maturity in Customer Centricity, Innovation Mindset, and Agile Ways of Working. They were fully capable of leading independently, without external support.
Adoption of CX Standards: The organization-wide adoption of Customer Experience (CX) Standards had proven effective, leading to noticeable improvements in both internal ways of working and customer satisfaction metrics.
Human-Centered Innovation: Teams had fully embraced human-centered and innovative thinking. This was evident in their ongoing commitment to conducting in-depth customer and user research, continuously uncovering opportunities for service improvements and new innovation projects.
ONGOING SUPPORT: LEADERSHIP AND TEAM COACHING
After our formal involvement ended, we continued to provide ad hoc coaching to leaders and teams as needed. These coaching sessions were offered to help teams get unstuck, overcome specific challenges, or accelerate progress on key initiatives. This flexible support ensured that the momentum and progress achieved during the transformation were sustained over time.
Team Structure
The success of this project relied heavily on a collaborative and cross-functional team, composed of both internal and external stakeholders, ensuring that every initiative was aligned with the client’s specific needs and objectives.
CORE TEAM
The core team from our side consisted of:
1 Client Partner: Ensuring alignment between client goals and project delivery.
1 Lead Design Strategist and Learning Designer: Responsible for overall strategy, innovation approach, and ensuring learning was embedded across initiatives.
3 Facilitators: Focused on training, guiding teams, and fostering a customer-centric and agile mindset.
1 Coach: Providing ongoing coaching to leaders and teams, helping them overcome obstacles and accelerate their progress.
Struct
COLLABORATIVE CLIENT TEAM
In collaboration with the client, we established a dynamic and inclusive team structure:
Client Partners: Two key representatives from the client’s side, actively involved in shaping and co-creating solutions. Their involvement was critical for tailoring the program to the organization's unique context.
Internal Cross-Functional Teams: Various teams were formed within the organization, with a strong emphasis on cross-departmental and cross-demographical participation. Leaders and managers were selected based on their strengths, ensuring diverse perspectives and maximum impact on the project’s success.
This collaborative structure allowed for the seamless integration of new ideas and ensured that the organizational change was inclusive, scalable, and sustainable.
Our Learnings
This project reinforced a key principle we always observe: Design Thinking is not just a method for product innovation; it is valuable for developing any kind of solution—including a strategy aimed at fostering a culture of innovation and human-centeredness.
In this case, the strategy we developed was grounded in the deeper needs of the leaders, employees, and, most importantly, the company’s customers. As with any solution created through Design Thinking, it requires continuous testing, iteration, experimentation, and improvement in close collaboration with those who will ultimately implement and benefit from it.
SEVERAL KEY LEARNINGS EMERGED DURING THIS JOURNEY:
Flexibility and Agility in Execution: There were moments when we needed to slow down, take smaller steps, or involve different individuals to ensure the initiative moved forward effectively. At times, additional workshops or coaching were necessary to help the organization achieve its desired outcomes.
Embracing Ambiguity: Even when the core team is fully committed to an agile, iterative approach, the entire organization must also be willing to embrace ambiguity and uncertainty. This requires both leaders and teams to adapt, remain open to change, and actively engage in the learning process.
Continuous Learning Cycle: The journey from concept to implementation is never linear. We found that the spiral of learning and implementation—constantly iterating based on new insights—was crucial to success. This approach ensured that the strategy evolved in real time, meeting the ever-changing needs of the organization and its customers.
In essence, successful innovation is not about following a predefined plan, but rather about adapting to the needs of the organization and its people, while remaining focused on the overarching goal.
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