Voice of the Customer Program

BUSINESS NEED | An established business with 5 divisions and 14 product lines had no unified method for monitoring brand health and customer satisfaction.

SOLUTION | Development of a companywide Voice of the Customer program to track brand health and monitor customer satisfaction, starting with a 1-year pilot with a cross-section of product lines was conducted to establish processes, design instruments and generate baseline metrics. Results from the pilot were used to fine-tune protocols and processes for a companywide launch.

IMPACT | Business leaders were empowered to make strategic, data-driven decisions, pinpoint critical needs and uncover opportunities, as well as align/strengthen internal operations and communication. Internal research capacity was expanded to include a robust customer database, facilitating ad hoc and unbudgeted studies to accommodate dynamic business needs.

Custom Research Solution

BUSINESS NEED | Digital features were added to an existing product, but were not being widely adopted or used as intended.

SOLUTION | A multi-phased research plan combining qualitative and quantitative methods to gain insight into the user experience and market factors, including a field study, contextual inquiry, web analytics, user surveys and in-depth interviews.

IMPACT | Identified short-term critical feature enhancements and product training procedures, as well as informed long-term development initiatives including refinement of the web analytics strategy.

Mobile Ethnography

BUSINESS NEED | A new line of children’s educational toys were under development, but there was little knowledge about the target market and how this product might be used

SOLUTION | A 3-month mobile ethnography gathering a mix of digital and physical artifacts to create a comprehensive understanding of the user experience and to allow for an iterative, dynamic study design to capture generative insights.

IMPACT | Critical issues with the product were identified before going into production. Ideas for product enhancements were generated and tested. Decisions about marketing and positioning of the product were solidified.

Stakeholder Workshop

BUSINESS NEED | Product enhancements intended to address customer frustrations created a new set of customer challenges.

SOLUTION | An internal workshop with stakeholders (“Mock Trial”), where stakeholders tested the product in a simulated environment using role playing to gain clarity of the user experience and implications of contextual factors impacting the product experience.

IMPACT | A new methodology was introduced into the product development lifecycle that helped to identify UX issues in early stage development, reducing costly over-development of features and implications of a poor UX design. Additionally, the internal capacity of multifunctional teams was strengthened through a deep appreciation of user experience and informed future development of training/implementation procedures.

Mixed Methods (Stakeholder Workshop, Diary Study)

BUSINESS NEED | In order to support strategic business priorities focused on the user experience, UX design tools were necessary to build internal capacity and support a newly established, centralized UX design team.

SOLUTION | A multi-phase plan was designed to leverage institutional knowledge, while optimizing bandwidth, timelines and budget.  Phase 1 focused on gathering internal insights. In phase 2, a virtual stakeholder workshop synthesized insights into a baseline journey map. Phase 3 further informed and validated the journey map with customers.

IMPACT | The customer journey map uncovered common gaps in the user experience across business lines/markets that prompted the development of new digital solutions. With crossfunctional participation, internal capacity to deliver user-centered experiences was enhanced.  Personas development was prioritized and funded, following a similar process.