3.Case Studies

The following chapter provides a six case studies for each of selected customer focused innovation methods. The case studies offer an explanation of the method, followed by a description of the case. Each case study discusses only one method in particular, although in each case it was often a combination of methods to reach the right conclusion regarding latent customer needs.

3.1. Immersive interviewing

About the method

Interviews are face-to-face consultations that can be useful for understanding customer perceptions, opinions, motivation and behavior concerning products, services or to gather information form experts in the field. It is an innovation method that is commonly used, yet there are still ways to learn from a proper interview set-up to truly find latent customer needs. (Delft Design Guide, 2014)

At Deloitte the interview technique is called immersive interviews, as these more in-depth and are carried out in the interviewees’ daily work place. This makes sure you understand the context of the customer better and that the interviewee feels more comfortable. The goal of immersive interviews is to dive into the daily life of a customer in order to understand what he or she experiences.

The case Situation

A material supplier for photovoltaic panels needed to investigate the customer needs in the downstream part of their value chain. The request to Deloitte was to help them in understanding the need of customers that operate and maintain solar PV farms. As this is a new set of customers they were lacking a full customer understanding, but did have a hunch that data that they were generating in testing their materials might be of high value to these customers.

Goal of the immersive interviewing

The goal of the immersive interviewing was to get a better understanding of the unmet (data) needs of these customers (the project developers, operations and maintenance providers and asset managers).

Process

Two hour immersive interviews were performed at the customer’s working place. In preparation a topic guide and initial idea of a “day in the life” was prepared by the interviewers. The process followed was:

1.

2. 3. 4. Description of a typical day in the working life by the customer, e.g. “what are the main activities and tools used in these activities?” Mapping the high and lows for these activities (e.g. what causes pain and what is pleasant?) Imaging the dreams for improvements As the interviews were carried out on the working place, the customer also provided insights into the data and tools used (on the computer) and provided a tour of the working place (the solar PV farm).

In between different generative sessions the project team shared their learnings with the customers and adjusted the questions for follow-up sessions accordingly.

Results

In total six immersive interviews were conducted (each with different customer categories) and analyzed. The result was a prioritization of the customer needs regarding the use of data. Figure 3 shows an example of the impression made for each immersive interviews with photos of the site visit. Figure 4 shows how the customer needs were prioritized after performing six immersive interviews, based on the need and the potential of data usage.

Figure 3: Example of a “day in the life overview” made after an immersive interviews visit

Figure 4: Customer needs prioritization performed after immersive interviews

Reflection The method was quite new to both our client (who was more comfortable with quantitative market analysis). A few things made sure that the client was convinced of the value add of these methods:

Perform the interviews in pairs of consultant and client to teach them how to perform the immersive interviews themselves and experience the value of the insights generated. Use the customers later in the process to validate. The customers proved to be good contacts for validating assumptions and opportunities. Some of the customers that were interviewed are now launching customers for the newly developed service. Align the qualitative insights with quantitative insights. Once you will have seen that a certain problem or need exist it is good to put numbers next to this. In this case it meant finding out how much energy loss certain breakdowns would have.

3.2. Participants diaries

About the method

Participant diaries or diary techniques are a different inquiry technique to find customer needs. A participant diary typically self-report or ‘contemporaneous assessment methods’ in which a customer receives a diary filled with questions regarding a customer’s day and experiences or to collect certain thoughts regarding your research topic. This can be a hard copy diary, but there are actually a lot of different ways you can collect diary entries. Participant diaries will help you get a longer and more regular insight into the experiences of a customer. And since they change the interaction between the research and customers, as it less of an interrogation, the customer has more autonomy to share what they want, as well as where and when (Bolger et al. 2003).

The case

Situation The team leaders of a mail delivery company are currently using an app to keep into contact with a hundred mail delivers each. The app is a mean to help the delivery company in reaching their goal of Enterprise mobility, meaning that the team leaders should do their job on the road as much as possible without being too attached to a workstation. The current app was helping, but not used as much as it needed because of lack of user friendliness and technical issues. So the question to Deloitte was how to improve the app in such a way that it supports the team leaders in their daily job, the communication with the delivers and in becoming more mobile employees.

Goal of the participant diaries The goal of the participant diaries is to map the daily activities of a team leader, what the pains and gains were, and how these activities can be supported and improved by using the app.

Process The participant diaries were executed by 9 team leaders. Each of them received an online request every day on four different days to answer a couple of questions. The choice for an online method was because it was more practical, but also more flexible. As the researchers learned from the outcomes, they were still able to adjust the questions for the following days based on these new learnings.

The participant diary each day contained two parts:

A recurring set of questions, like: o What did you today, how long did it take you, is this a recurring event? o Did you perform these activities on the road or on location? o What systems did you use? A new set of questions changing per day to zoom into specific topics like: o Day 1 –Zoom into daily activities and communications: What are your favorite and least favorite activities? What is your biggest frustration? With whom did you have contact and through what means? o Day 2 –Smartphone use: How do you use your phone? What are your favorite apps? What activities could you do through your phone instead of through your computer?

o

o Day 3 –Current app use: How do you use the team leaders app now? What do you like and dislike? What are functionalities that you use the most or least? If you could change three things, what would those be? Day 4 –Future interactions: Ideal day: which activities and interactions would take place? What role does technology fulfill in this ideal workday? What role does the app play?

Simultaneously the researcher did customer observation with three team leaders to actually see for herself how the daily activities were performed and the app was used. This was essential in validating the outcomes and truly understanding what was written in the participants’ diaries.

The analysis of the participant diaries was done in a semi-structured way. The researcher scanned the outcomes and for certain outcomes (like the app functionalities and requests) she did a count on occurrence and mentioned by whom. She also defined the biggest differences between a working day and between team leaders and already proposed initial suggestions for new functionalities in the app.

Results The outcomes led to a user research report, a persona and customer journey. These results were presented in a workshop with the team leaders that participated. In that way the outcomes could be validated. Based on the initial suggestions for new functionalities, the team leaders designed their ideal app. Based on these ideal designs, the new functionalities were prioritized. Figure 5 shows an example of a day in the working life of a team leader during observational study. Figure 6 shows the outcomes of the current and desired functionalities of the team leaders app.

Figure 5: Photos of a daily working life of a team leader from the participant diary

Figure 6: Outcomes regarding the current and future functionalities of the team leaders app

Reflection  It was a key success factor that the team leaders (customers) were really involved in the process and very happy with the end-results. They had a strong incentive to participate because it affected their daily work and they were viewed upon as the ambassadors by their colleagues. It was also helpful that they got time in their daily routine to fill out the participant diary.  The validation of the participants’ diaries with the observation in three days of shadowing the team leaders was an absolute must. Otherwise the results are hard to put into perspective and now the researcher truly understood the frustrations and could formulate a storyline for the activities. It was also helpful to get insights into the different persons and therefore different needs.  The design workshop was absolutely needed to ensure that the diaries were well understood. Without this validation the redesign of the app would have been more difficult, because the workshop was also used to prioritize the ideas for new functionalities.  Next time the consultant would use an app to set up the participant diary study next time, like Contextmapp. As this would increase the user friendliness and make filling out the research questions more fun for the participants.

3.3. Customer Ethnography

About the method

Customer observation is a method used to study what your users do in a certain situation, i.e. how they use a product or experience a service. This method provides a rich understanding of the context of use and the interrelations with other people or products. Being a fly on the wall can be key in the first stages as you may not wish to intervene in the context too much (Abrams, 2000).

The case

Situation A social health insurance (SHI) that takes care of the health care of the poorest inhabitants, was struggling with their customer experience. The SHI did not know where to get started on resolving this and asked Deloitte to support them in prioritizing the activities. A lot of customer (patient) complaints were coming in. The complaints were mainly regarding waiting times and insufficient information. The goal of the assignment was that the customer should really notice the change and that there would be less negative publicity in the newspaper. Mapping the current customer experience was the first step in

understanding the problems in the organization. Several consultancies have tried to resolve the issue, without a result. There was hardly any data on the customers or the complaints available to analyses.

Goal of the customer observation As there was hardly any data available on the customer complaints, the consultant on the assignment decided to start with creating a rich understanding of the customer experience by observing the customers in the waiting room. The goal of the customer observation is to map this process by observing customers and employees in the natural context. As photo or video was not allowed, notes were taken and sketches were made of the situation.

Process In total the consultant performed five observational studies of five whole days. The first study was a pilot as (Abrams 2000) also suggests to see how the method should be set up. The consultant then decided that the set-up of the customer observation should contain three activities:

1. 2. 3. Observational study Customer interviews Employee observation

For the observational study (1) the consultant had the following observational topics:

What customers are in the room? How do customers arrive in the room, how long are they there? How are employees helping and interacting with them?

In the observational study it was important not to disturb the customers too much and therefore the consultants sat in the waiting room without talking. After an hour or two observing, the consultants started small conversations (2) with customers. These conversations were performed based on the observational study. Through these interviews the consultants validated why certain events were happening, how they were experienced and whether this was a recurring event. In the customer interviews the consultants also asked what people did previous to arriving and how it felt to get there to get a full understanding of the total customer experience.

The employee observation (3) was performed by standing a whole or half day behind the counter next to the front office employees that had the first interaction with the customers. The consultants noted how tasks were performed and mainly asked why certain tasks were performed.

Results The collected data (sketches and notes) were bundled in:

Visualization of the waiting room (see figure 7) Personas of the customers (see figure 8) Customer journeys for the different personas (see figure 8)

These results were shared with the employees and had a shock effect on them as they did not see how their part in the customer journey was affecting the customers this much. Only after seeing the total experience, including the travel effort that had to be made, and the hassle for the customers, did they realize how important it was to provide good quality service at the counter. Therefore the main result for the employees was that they empathized more with the customers.

Together with management the consultants decided on the four main customer dissatisfiers and determined how to quickly improve these aspects.

Figure 7: Situational sketch based on customer etnography

Figure 8: Five personas and the as-is customer journey

Reflection  Being able to perform customer research is a challenge. Many talks with the SHI were needed to persuade them to let the consultants perform the research and why this could not be done by the employees themselves. The consultants felt that an outsider and 1-2 persons should only perform the research as it was key that someone was able to connect the dots between the different observations. Next to that the independency of the employees who were also sometimes the ones that the complaints regarded could not be guaranteed.  The visual representation opened the minds of the employees, especially since these were lower educated and did not care for previous reports by consultants.  The data to substantiate certain findings in occurrence and severity was missing and would have added value in prioritizing the main dissatisfiers on a more objective basis.  In customer experience analysis and design the outcomes will not only affect one department and therefore if an organization wants to work on improving, this should be a collective effort. This is why SHI appointed a customer journey manager who is responsible for detailing the to-be customer journeys and making plans for resolving the four main dissatisfiers across the departments.

3.4. Digital Ethnography

About the method

Digital ethnography, also referred to as virtual ethnography or cyberethnography, is the act of understanding customer needs through investigating online and social communities (Murthy 2008, Hine 2000, Robinson & Schulz 2009). Digital ethnography studies online communities and cultures by analyzing online data (such as social network sites, blogs, forums, gaming environments, websites, dating sites, wikis etc.). There are many different forms and the guidelines and methodologies are still quite broad. Commonalities between various methods are that a researcher investigates the messages posted by customers online, their interaction with the organization for which a researcher works and their social networks and interests (Varis 2014).

The case

Situation A telephone company asked Deloitte to help them in starting to working with the agile methodology. As a first step in applying an agile methodology is to have a better understanding of the customer, Deloitte was asked to provide this understanding. This customer view (in form of personas) was needed to inform their product development through making user stories.

Goal of the digital ethnography The goal of the digital ethnography was to come up with personas for the current customer portfolio of the telephone company.

Process The digital ethnography method was performed following these steps:

1.

2.

3.

4. Map the online channels for current customer interaction (i.e. the social channels and their usage) and choose one online channel to focus on. Analysis of Facebook profiles: The consultant shifted from an overall view of the customer interaction to specific profiles. Doing this the researcher got a real rich picture of the customers’ lives. Facebook was chosen because this was a good way to capture enough data on the customers that had more interaction with the telephone company. The researchers looked at the highly engaged customers that had a lot of interaction with the telephone company. This focus was chosen, because these tend to be more vocal in word of mouth online and offline and can influence the image of a company. Creating personas: from the rich picture of the different saved social profiles the researcher created the personas. Validating personas: the consultant listened into calls at the customer support center to find out who the people are that call in a lot to validate certain assumptions regarding the personas. This was mainly done, since it was unclear whether the online interaction correlated with the “normal” interaction.

The method was followed by deeper contextual enquiries in people’s homes. This was done to understand their lifestyle and see if there was a big gap between online research and offline research. The outcomes were largely in line, yet the online personas were amplified.

Results The outcomes (personas) were more robust than interviewing ten people face to face, since it not only contained online, but also offline interactions with the company.

Reflection  It is a quick and cheap method. You can easily scroll through 40 profiles in one day. By saving the profile links it is easy also to show examples to clients and make the personas come to live. Do keep in mind that the personas are not meant to reflect real people.

Privacy concerns might play a role in the future. At this point it was not unethical, because people choose to open up their profile. In the future this will change and people will become more and more private, so it might be more difficult to see it. But perhaps then you can also look at Instagram, because it is all visual and public, which is truly insightful for digital ethnography. Use of data analysis tools. Sentiment analysis might be used in the future, but at the moment these tools leave out too much context and human emotion, so that the profiles that are generated are not sufficient enough to provide real insights into customer needs.

3.5. Customer journey mapping

About the method

Customer journey mapping is used to understand how customers currently use a product or experience a service by mapping the different stages, emotions and tools used in these stages. A customer journey starts with the customer experience (the front office) and an organization can later add their activities (the back office) to show how they add value or could improve. Important for a customer journey map is that it is developed by a set of customers and not by the organization on its own. It is important to map the customer journey from a customer perspective and not only the customer journey related to your organization, otherwise you might miss out on other touchpoints were you might act upon(Roscam Abbing, 2010).

The case

Situation A Dutch company was investigating the future of mobility and how they could play a role in the rapidly changing demands of customers in the field of mobility. The company knew that mobility would provide huge challenges in the future due to urbanization and a move from owned vehicles to shared and autonomous vehicles. After a thorough market and trend analysis the client required a thorough and more qualitative understanding of the current and future problems and needs in multi-modal mobility.

Goal of the customer journey mapping The goal of the customer journey mapping is to understand how people currently travel; how they plan, make decisions, arrange transportation means and experience certain types of transportation. Mapping the customer journey of multi-modal and complex travels was the starting point for seeing where a new mobility service could provide value and how.

Process The customer journey mapping was performed over 20 times and each of the customers was asked to think about a complex and multi-modal trip they made recently. During the sessions the customers followed these steps:

1.

2. 3. Drawing the trip from the moment of deciding that you wanted to make the trip until you arrive at the destination. The participants were provided with a customer journey template and icons. Next step was to map the emotions with each of the stages in the trip The customer journey was then presented to the interviewers who asked open questions to first understand the trip and why certain decisions were made and where they would like to improve the situation.

After each interview the interviewer and observers summarized the findings and adjusted the questions for the next customer to find out whether certain situations were unique or more common.

Results The result of the different customer journey maps led to being able to define three different types of journey makers that each display different behavior, needs and goals when making a journey. During the development of the new mobility service these three journey makers were the basis for testing certain functionalities.

Reflection A couple of learnings were shared by the consultants performing the customer journey mapping:

Force yourself to learn (at least) three new things from each interview as this will help you to keep an open mind In the analysis you have to make room for both unique and common events as the unique events (that are not confirmed by all customers) can provide you with interesting and innovative thoughts Be a customer yourself and start looking as you’re travelling as a customer journey; try out new travel modes and note your findings. Also have a look, while travelling, at the behavior of other travelers.

3.6. Context mapping

About the method

Context mapping is a customer centric method that involves the customer as the “expert on his or her experience”. It helps to understand different perspective and map the total context in which a product or experience takes place. Generative tools are used to let the customer express their own experience with a product or service (Sleeswijk Visser et al, 2005).

The case

Situation A refugee organization in the Netherlands currently has a platform that matches refugees with buddies. The organization wants to stimulate the (off-line) interaction between buddies and refugees by understanding what support they need to optimally work together. Deloitte was asked to increase the understanding of the needs of both the refugees and buddies and simultaneously to increase the usability of the platform.

Goal of the context mapping In order to improve the interaction between refugees and buddies, the refugee organization needed to gather qualitative insights on refugees through context mapping workshops. The goal of these workshops was to gain a better understanding about their needs and attitudes towards the interaction.

Process Contextmapping was chosen because it is also a method that can help overcome cultural and language barrier. Context mapping and specifically collaging (visualizing) would aid in making the dreams more clear. In working sessions the following exercises were performed with the refugees and buddies:

1. Visualize your dream with the images in front of you (i.e. “when do you feel like you belong? When did you succeed? What is hard about this process?)

2. Presentation of the visuals by refugees to each other and buddies

3. Mapping of the ideal platform interaction by the refugees and buddies. This was done to see the differences and commonalities and was input to inform the designers for the platform.

4. Real life simulation of the outcomes and desired situation to see whether this was an improved situation.

Results The needs of both the buddies and the refugees could immediately be incorporated in a new design for the platform. As the new design was also immediately tested, it was clear for the designers what to build online and what could be left for offline interaction. Figure 9 and 10 provide some visuals on the process that was followed in the contextmapping workshops.

Figure 9: Participants working on the collages to represent their dream

Figure 10: Explaining the dream that was drawn to the participants

Reflection  The method proved to be highly suitable to incorporate different needs. It was definitely worthwhile that immediate prioritization led to a new interaction that could be visualized and tested with a real life simulation.  The ambition was to work with 100 refugees and 100 buddies. Although it was nice to have such an impact, the same results could have been reached with less participants. On the other side the outcomes in this way were easily validated.