Our Work

Challenge

Our training engagements run the gamut.  A local Chamber of Commerce recently asked us for recommendations for a follow-on course to their highly successful leadership training.  The result? A 9-month, advanced executive training seminar that emphasizes the importance of creative thinking for leadership.

If a shorter engagement is more of your style, we’ve got you covered. A local non-profit wanted to develop a social media strategy but wasn’t sure where and how to start.  We designed a three-hour facilitation session that brought together employees from across the organization to generate ideas and build consensus.

Solution

From college students to senior executives, our customized courses combine classroom learning with dynamic, hands-on activities to keep participants engaged, energized, and ready for more. We have developed training curricula for several Fortune 500 organizations, non-profits, and institutions of higher learning. These are just a few examples of the courses we offer:

• “Think & Lead Differently”
• “Experiencing Design and Designing Experiences”
• “Creative Leadership in the Innovation Economy”

Whatever the size of your organization, we can meet your training or team-building goals.  

Result

Believe it or not, creativity can be taught.  Our customized curriculum has:

• Instilled the design thinking approach in a major US city
• Inspired new architectural designs for a non-profit that serves at-risk youth
• Facilitated the product design and marketing campaign for a new subscription box service
• Infused a customer-centric mindset across divisions of a Fortune 200 financial services company

Project Duration

Vary from a few hours to a few days

Challenge

A large regional bank had recently acquired a smaller bank, and the leadership team wanted to make the transition as easy as possible for its new employees. After all, exceptional customer experiences start with great employee experiences.

The merger involved a major technology conversion, and the top priority was to make the technology section of corporate intranet intuitive and easy to navigate.  Mergers are stressful enough–employees don’t need the added frustration of a complicated Intranet page.

Solution

Technology projects are often designed and implemented by technologists.  But this time, the Bank put its employees in the driver’s seat, involving them in every step of the process.

We developed a research strategy that combined employee interviews and workplace observation to uncover employees’ needs. We also performed an organizational analysis to identify similarities and differences in the corporate culture of the two organizations. With these insights in hand, we redesigned the IT information architecture and created a temporary transition page that put the most critical work tools at employees’ fingertips.

Research doesn’t have to break your budget.  We are happy to customize a research plan to meet your unique needs and build a better employee experience.

Result

The transition was a non-event, which is exactly what it should be.  Employees were able to easily access critical job tools and effectively navigate the transition.

A key factor in the successful transition was the fact that employees felt that their voices were heard, and more importantly, that their feedback was incorporated into the final product.

Project Duration

4-6 weeks

Challenge

A financial services company in New York wanted to become more customer-centric by adopting a life event approach for their contact center. The problem was they didn’t know where to start.

Solution

For this project, we used customer interviews and existing research to find the sweet spot where business and customer needs intersect and used it to design a new customer experience strategy.

Using their existing data, we identified the four life events with the highest customer and business impact. Then, we developed a segmentation framework to identify the key customer segments for each life event.

The next step was research. We conducted 30 in-depth interviews with current clients to understand their perspective on the life events–specifically, what they were thinking, feeling, and doing at each stage.

Then we translated these insights into a customer journey map that revealed opportunities to improve the customer experience and aligned the organization with the customer journey.

Results

At the end of the project, the client received:

• Four customized customer journey maps
• 5 personas
• Design thinking training A Life Event team charter

Project Duration

Challenge

A newly appointed Director of Customer Experience was charged with setting up the CX function in his organization. He had a talented team, but none of the members had a background in customer experience. We had to help him develop a new future state experience and make sure that his team was prepared to carry the vision forward.

Solution

We believe in sharing what we know. We planned the engagement so that the CX team could shadow us during every step in the process, from conducting customer research to leading customer journey mapping sessions. In addition, we created customized training materials to help the team learn best-in-class CX tools and techniques.

We put those teachings into practice right away and the team worked with us to create customer experience future state journey maps and service blueprints.

Result

By the end of the engagement, the team members were able to:

• Reframe a business problem as a customer experience challenge
• Use design thinking to develop customer-centric solutions
• Advocate for the customer within the organization
• Evangelize the customer experience approach across the organization

Project Duration

Projects like that can range from 3 to 6 months

Challenge

A regional bank with 32 branches made Customer Experience a strategic priority. They called us to help them figure out how to start their journey to customer-centricity.

Solution

The organization had a vision; we helped them turn it into a plan. Working  with key stakeholders and SMEs in the organization, we reviewed the current customer experience, including:

• Customer data and analytics
• Cross-channel experience assessment
• Organizational KPIs and metrics
• Strategic priorities
• Key capabilities

We provided a detailed analysis of how their experience stacked up in relation to other regional banks and the financial services industry more broadly.  

With this knowledge in hand, we helped them identify quick wins and longer-term experience opportunities consistent with their branding and strategic objectives.

Results

At the end of the project, the client received:

• A detailed customer experience roadmap
• Quick wins that moved the needle right away
• Recommended customer experience metrics

Project Duration

Typical duration is 2-4 weeks

Challenge

A Fortune 500 life insurance company was struggling to develop products to appeal to affluent Millennials.

Solution

The best way to develop new products is to get a thorough understanding of what your customers want and need.  In this project, we conducted in-depth, contextual interviews with newly affluent Millennials in two markets, Austin and Washington, DC.

We sat down with customers in their homes to collect rich data about what they like and don’t like about life insurance, as well as their financial goals and attitudes toward money. These interviews formed the basis of customer personas and generated key insights about customer needs.

Results

The end result?

• Three new customer personas, including a family persona, that helped bring the new target market to life and spur product innovation
• A segmentation framework to support future persona development

Project Duration