Dominika Babulicová

Consumer brands are facing new sources of pressure. Traditional funnels are now crowded with new competitors, including online marketplaces that push prices down. Market leaders set high standards for customer experience, pushing consumer expectations to a new level. AI and algorithms give an edge only to those already strongest. And social commerce has turned even consumers into brands’ competitors.


Positioning through Experience identities

Although brand interactions are evolving, many consumer experiences fall short. Inflation and corporate cost-cutting often mean consumers are paying more, getting less, and dealing with lower-quality services. With rising inflation, consumers are much more picky about which brands deserve their attention and money. Our consumer behavior research reveals that consumers’ decision-making has shifted substantially in the past five years.

In a constantly changing society, evaluating information is increasingly challenging, and the market is oversaturated with products and brands. Therefore, consumers nowadays assess a brand's relevance based on the role it plays in their lives. From our research, we’ve identified how consumers build brand affinity, and based on that, we developed the concept of Experience identities. This model helps brand leaders (whether they’re CEOs or managers at the intersection of product–marketing) understand and respond to these new consumer expectations.


A scale from convenience to surprise

Experience identities reflect a range of customer needs – from simplifying choices to breaking away from monotonous experiences – and suggest the role a brand should play in consumers' lives:

 * Problem solvers make decision-making and daily tasks easier for customers. Think of leaders like Amazon, Ikea, or local company Alza, which offer services that handle as many purchase-related concerns as possible, covering everything from financing to delivery, setup, and returns.
 * Empathetic experts are trustworthy partners who build communities around shared passions. Through their expertise, they engage consumers also beyond the buying phase, securing their place in customers' lives. Examples include Miele's cooking classes or Isadore's community rides for cycling enthusiasts.
 * Responsibility enablers guide consumers to make responsible purchasing decisions, addressing their increasing sensitivity towards ethical business practices, social impact, and product lifecycle. This explains the rise of circular solutions like Vinted, Recup, or Martinus’ book return program, as well as brands with lifetime guarantees like Patagonia.
 * Magic makers bring back a human touch to an increasingly automated customer service. Instead of bland, templated online stores and customer service bots, they deliver a more human touch. For instance, in the fashion industry, you’ll find magic makers offering personal stylists as shopping curators or smart wardrobes in fitting rooms with selected items appearing upon request.

Deciding which experience identity a brand wants to excel in is a challenging strategic decision. One that enables a brand to deliver a clear and meaningful value to the customer, that will be irreplaceable by any other brand.


Brand = communication + experiences

Customers perceive a brand not only through its communication but also through the feelings it evokes through all interactions. This holistic perception of a brand is called brand experience. Brand experience is built on strong analytics – understanding consumers and competitors and identifying untapped opportunities. The experience identity framework allows brands to identify the right approach, whether they’re focused on revenue, market share, or customer retention.

Our report on new consumer expectations offers a deep dive into shopping behavior, key trends, and numerous examples of world-famous and local brands that understand where they stand on the experience identity spectrum. We’ll show you how these brands innovate based on the needs and future expectations of their target audiences, tailoring their entire service portfolio accordingly. After all, it’s the design and quality of customer services that shape how consumers resonate with a brand, giving it a real competitive advantage.

If you'd like to discuss Experience identities in person or have them explained to your colleagues, don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

Subscribe with your e-mail: www.lbstudio.sk/newsletter

The new reality shapes how consumers perceive brands. How to stay relevant?

Klaudia Balagová

Humans love telling stories. Whether it's the last chapter of a novel, the climax of a movie, or the goodnight stories from our childhood, endings bring meaning and resolution. However, in the consumer world, the thrill of the new often overshadows the final chapter.

Imagine your printer runs out of ink. You buy a new cartridge, maybe even get an email with installation instructions.The printer resets happily and works again, but now you're left with the old cartridge, unsure what to do next. It’s not as simple as tossing a banana peel.

To address these challenges, an expert in consumer lifecycle endings Joe Macleod proposes “endineering”. It promotes the integration of emotional triggers and actionable steps into the offboarding process, in order to make the end of a consumer journey as engaging and meaningful as was the beginning.

“Businesses have become experts at beginning the consumer journey but often falter at its conclusion.”

With decades of experience in product and CX leadership, among others with the Ustwo design studio, Joe’s work brought him to a realization that the design industry has a serious problem of neglecting consumer journey endings. In 2018, he founded the andEnd studio, the world’s first customer-ending business, and wrote a book called Endineering: Designing consumption lifecycles that end as well as they begin, aiming to redefine the industry standards of how we intentionally conclude consumer journeys.

Having Joe in Slovakia for the final ByDesign conference, we seized the opportunity and booked a private half-day training. Together with a dozen of our clients and partners, we explored how to rethink and redesign consumer journey endings consciously to boost customers’ engagement and satisfaction, brand perception and ecological sustainability.


From circularity to linearity

In the pre-industrial era, the lifecycle of products was naturally circular. Waste was repurposed or reintegrated into the ecosystem. Industrialization, however, shifted this circularity into a linear process. We became adept at quickly buying new items and detached from the consequences of their disposal.

We’ve mastered the art of onboarding with the latest gadgets, services, and experiences. But what happens when their appeal fades? Offboarding – the process of ending our relationship with a product or a service – often falls short, leading to environmental and emotional repercussions. Every product or service promises a better future but the end of this journey is inconvenient and detached from the rest of the experience.


4 key challenges of modern offboarding


1. The emotional disconnect

In modern consumerism, the emotional bond between the product and the consumer often breaks apart during offboarding. Where once there was excitement and engagement, there's now confusion and detachment. This disconnect is mirrored in how we dispose of products—whether it’s the old phone that ends up in a drawer or the plastic packaging tossed without a second thought.


2. Loss of identity

The specific identity of the product or service we buy vanishes at the end. When it comes to shoes, you are not buying “just” shoes. It’s the specific brand you like, a specific type with a suede dark red stripe on the sides, ideally buying them in a retail store where the staff knows you. However, when you are throwing them out, they become just another piece of trash, stripped of their individuality.


3. Anonymity of actions

As consumers, we’re seldom aware of what happens to products once they leave our hands. The actions of disposal are anonymized, leading to a lack of accountability and engagement. This anonymity contributes to this cycle where we’re excellent at acquiring new things but lack responsibility when throwing away the old ones.


4. Complexity of neutralization

The process of neutralizing waste – whether it’s recycling or disposal – is often complex and unclear. For instance, while we know an apple core will rot naturally, what about the myriad materials in an electronic device? The complexity of these products makes their disposal challenging and confusing for the average consumer.


Designing for continuity

To create a more cohesive and responsible consumer experience, we need to reintegrate emotional and practical aspects into offboarding. Create a meaning and continuation in the end. Here’s how some companies address this challenge:

 * Creating emotional connections: Companies like IKEA are starting to design coherent end-to-end experiences like second-hand stores and take-back programs to make the end of the product lifecycle as thoughtful as the beginning.
 * Promoting empowerment through design: Fairphone empowers users to replace parts like batteries and cameras by themselves at home, fostering a sense of ownership and continuity. By making the end phase an integral and engaging part of the product life cycle, companies can help consumers feel more connected and responsible.
 * Leveraging technology and transparency: Doconomy offers a credit card that enables the cardholder to track and measure their carbon footprint, making consumers aware of the environmental costs of their purchases. This kind of transparency can drive more mindful consumption and disposal practices.

As environmental awareness increases, the way we end our relationships with products and services becomes more and more significant. Effective offboarding should be as straightforward and satisfying as onboarding, addressing customer needs and reducing frustration. Making the end of consumer journey equally engaging as its beginning not only supports mindful consumption but also fosters a sustainable and pleasant consumer journey, which directly increases customer satisfaction and loyalty.


Become an endineer yourself

Any expertise isn't built by reading one article. If you are hungry for more insights about endineering, definitely start with Joe Macleod's books Engineering or Ends for an in-depth and comprehensive outlook on this issue.

If you feel you'd appreciate assistance with ending an existing customer journey, don't hesitate to reach out to us. We will gladly share our knowledge and look for a solution to your problem as certified endineers.

Subscribe with your e-mail: www.lbstudio.sk/newsletter

Offboarding: How to end your customer’s journey meaningfully

Alžbeta Ivanovičová

Service design is a tool for aligning customer expectations with the company's offer. It's an action of collective creation of people-oriented services. In practice, it means designing corporate resources (people, assets and processes) to deliver value to employees, partners and customers.

The value provided must be tangible to customers. The book This is Service Design Thinking, now essential reading for anyone aiming to create valuable services, reinforces this perspective. The authors outline five principles of service design, emphasizing that the services created should benefit not just customers, but also employees and partners.

 * 1. User-centred – placing a human at the heart of the design process
 * 2. Co-creative – fostering extensive collaboration throughout the entire design process
 * 3. Sequencing – enabling examination of each aspect of customer service individually
 * 4. Evidencing – demonstrating that the service provided delivers its value
 * 5. Holistic – ensuring overall harmony and integration of experience across tangible and intangible services

I'll illustrate these principles with an example of an outdoor equipment retailer, although they are applicable to any industry and company.


1. User-centred

Consider the experience of all individuals involved in delivering the service. Understanding the customer is essential.

Initially, it's important to identify your customer base. Most businesses cater to multiple customer groups. However, when initiating service design, it's beneficial to temporarily narrow your focus. One effective tool for this purpose could be RFM analysis.

Internally, numerous stakeholders play a role in customer service. Understanding their perspectives, the challenges they encounter, and where they perceive opportunities for enhancement is vital.

For instance, consider the target audience of an outdoor store: adventurers, individuals actively participating in various outdoor pursuits. During customer research, our focus would be on comprehending their specific needs and issues throughout their customer journey.


2. Co-creative

Engage stakeholders with different expertise and roles in the design process.

The second principle of service design is close collaboration among employees from different teams, each bringing unique expertise. The most effective way is to create a multidisciplinary work team to enhance collective intelligence. Optimal outcomes are achieved when such teams embrace agile principles.

In the service design team of an outdoor store, participants may include individuals from marketing, production (procurement team), the e-shop or information system provider, and sales representatives from stores.


3. Sequencing

Facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the entire customer journey by breaking it down into manageable phases.

Another crucial principle involves mapping the customer journey, which entails understanding the customer's actions, decisions and interactions. It's essential to grasp the sequence of steps in the customer journey and identify opportunities to add value.

For instance, consider a customer journey where an adventurer realizes they need specific equipment for an upcoming trip. They browse and select a suitable product from the online store and then opt to collect it from a retail location. Their next step involves checking the store's opening hours.


4. Evidencing

Prove the value of the provided service and its components.

Evidencing can take various forms. One approach is visualizing services through physical artifacts such as customer journey maps or service blueprints. Another method involves researching customer needs with actual customers and testing prototypes in realistic conditions. My favorite form of evidence is when the value of the service is named/shown not only by the customers but also by the company itself.

A classic example of evidence is a neatly folded toilet paper in a hotel bathroom as a visible sign that the room was thoroughly cleaned after the previous guest.

Evidence in the context of the previously mentioned customer journey can be the number of product reservations and pickups on a given day, as well as a positive CSAT (customer satisfaction score). Thus, we can measure customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction and success/failure.


5. Holistic

Consider the entire ecosystem of the provided service with all interactions and channels.

The final principle ties all aspects of service design together. It's important to think not only about how individual interactions and channels work independently but especially how they function together. After all, the customer perceives the entire process as one continuous experience.

The key tool for mapping holistic services is the service blueprint or service map.

As discussed in the sequencing section, imagine a customer journey where an adventurer realizes they need specific equipment for an upcoming trip. In this scenario, the customer values the ability to reserve and quickly collect the item on the same day. Achieving such a seamless holistic service, however, demands well-refined internal processes and deliberate decisions (e.g., extending store opening hours).

Moreover, customer interactions with the outdoor retailer occur across at least two channels – the website and physical stores – with additional engagement from store employees. As part of the customer experience, interactions range from greeting customers upon entry to sending eco-friendly purchase receipts via email. Therefore, understanding the entire service ecosystem is essential.
When faced with challenges, adopting the customer's perspective and leveraging service design can be advantageous. For those interested in delving deeper into service design, feel free to reach out or explore excellent books by Marc Stickdorn, including the sequel This Is Service Design Doing.

5 principles of service design for easier service creation

Dominik Vaszily

When working in a bureaucratic or government setting, formal language and tone can differ greatly from how people normally communicate. Consequently, users experience problems and frustration gaining access to these essential, everyday services.

At LB*, we understand the challenges of good communication, especially in the digital world of expert environments. However, we can’t expect our clients to drop their customs and simply use easy-to-understand lingo overnight. As content in digital products is an integral part of any design, we act as the mediator between businesses and users. We spot gaps through which we can get clarity into digital bureaucracy. So what can be done to write better, intuitive UX copy?


1. Out-of-sync voice and tone

Maintaining a consistent voice across different channels and for diverse audiences can be challenging. Content may originate from policy makers, subject matter experts, designers, marketers, developers, or business analysts. A cohesive voice and tone are essential for upholding brand credibility. Any disparity between them risks confusing and eroding trust among the audience. But what if you're unsure about defining your brand's tone?

Solution: Brand voice workshop

Imagine that your brand is a person, then write down their personality traits: how they behave around others, their sense of humour (indeed if they are supposed to have one), and so on. You can even describe their dressing style, hobbies, personal preferences, anything that will help you characterise their personality and from it – how they talk.

For instance, Microsoft’s brand voice is defined as follows:

 * Warm and relaxed – We’re natural. Less formal, more grounded in real, everyday conversations. Occasionally, we’re fun. (We know when to celebrate.)
 * Crisp and clear – We’re to the point. We write for scanning first, reading second. We make it simple above all.
 * Ready to lend a hand – We show customers we’re on their side. We anticipate their real needs and offer great information at just the right time.

Once the voice and tone guideline is tested and ready for use, distribute it to all content creators representing the brand, including content designers, writers, editors, marketers, and designers, to gather feedback.

If you're unsure about how to conduct a workshop like this, don't hesitate to message us for assistance in discovering your brand's tone.


2. Inconsistent UX copy

We often observe inconsistencies in punctuation, acronyms, jargon, or technical terms across channels and products within the same brand. This can lead to confusion and misalignment. To address this, initiate a process to standardise language rules within your company.

Solution: Content style guide

How apologetic do we want to be in our writing? Should we use words “sorry” and “please” always or only sometimes? It’s all up to the consensus in your organisation – between you, your colleagues and stakeholders.

Start by documenting current practices within your company. If you identify inconsistencies, establish rules for how you believe they should be addressed. This initiative can proceed even without a defined brand voice (point 1), though having a predetermined tone can be beneficial. When uncertain, discuss proposed rules with stakeholders, ensuring the main decision-maker is clear.

Once you agree on rules, document them. A simple list of dos and don’ts will do. Besides grammar rules and date & time formats, define which components you would like to use for conveying specific messages. For instance, avoid expressing a neutral notification through a bold, red warning message full of exclamation marks. Having such guidelines makes UX writing easier, providing a reference when uncertain.

A guide like this is a living document, it’s alright to start small even with ten rules or fewer. You can always update it and add to it later.


3. Content not tailored to the target persona

Websites are not books and people don't read every word. Websites require content that users can quickly skim for relevant information. The general rule is to follow the context and the impact of the action the user takes. Governmental or bureaucratic environments regularly give legal texts more space based on their impact. Despite the fact that short texts are pleasing to read, in some situations the user needs more in-depth confirmation and reliable information.

Solution: Usability testing

After a long week of onsite design sprint in The Hague with the European Patent Office, we conducted testing sessions to observe how legal professionals interacted with our new solution. To enhance a specific confirmation screen's accuracy in legal procedure, we rewrote a neutral blunt message into a more specific statement providing clearer actions. The confirmation screen read: “We’ve received your submission. Please wait until we reply to you back as soon as possible.”

During testing, we discovered that patent lawyers, in-house counsels, and paralegals meticulously scrutinise details. In five sessions, all our respondents paused at the confirmation screen – expecting an immediate reply. The text read ‘we would reply as soon as possible’, however, in reality it would take weeks.

This particular example demonstrates the importance of precision in writing for your target audience. Not everyone skims pages. Sometimes they are expert users (lawyers, scientists, medics…) and they might behave differently than other groups.

Needless to say, usability tests during the design process can save a lot of uncertainty and validate most hypotheses – including copy testing.


Clarity can exist (even in bureaucracy)

Sometimes, entrenched norms are hard to shift because stakeholders struggle to envision alternative approaches. However, clear language forms a cornerstone of accessible products and services. So if you sense your users and customers will benefit from it, don’t hesitate to start changing things.

Start by enhancing communication clarity with colleagues through enforced collaboration and involving diverse roles in the product design process. Remain mindful of the target persona in every use case and utilise user testing heavily. And don’t forget to document rules and stove for organisational alignment. If I’m ever to be helpful, connect with me.

UX writing: How to make digital bureaucracy understandable

In my article 10 Commandments of Product Discovery, I wrote about the foundation of creating good products and services being a creative process called Product Discovery. This process aims to deliver a functional product to users in the shortest time possible, with the greatest certainty that the product team will achieve the originally intended goal and that the solution will be technically feasible.

I mentioned Discovery Backlog, which is a conceptual repository of ideas, opportunities, and issues ready for the product team to validate – meaning to assess which ones are relevant and should be included in the product roadmap. So, how does one go about building such a repository of ideas?


How to fill Discovery Backlog

Idea generation techniques are divided into quantitative and qualitative based on the type of data they rely on, and into generative and evaluative. Generative techniques help us find new ideas, while evaluative techniques help us assess the current situation.

Let's illustrate this with an example. I have an ecommerce store with the goal of increasing the shopping cart conversion by 1 %. I choose techniques from the four quadrants based on what I want to discover. The best results come from combining techniques from all four quadrants. Techniques from each quadrant can provide the following types of information:

Quantitative – Generative techniques:

 * I can ask all customers who place an order for feedback and thus obtain the CES (Customer Effort Score) of the purchasing process, that is, how difficult it was for them to complete the task. For example, I will ask: "How difficult was it for you to place the order?"
 * How to do it: Survey integrated on the thank you page after the order

Qualitative – Generative techniques:

 * As a customer leaves during any step of the purchasing process, I ask them through the Hotjar tool what they would improve.
 * How to do it: Hotjar survey triggered when a customer leaves the page

Quantitative – Evaluative techniques:

 * For the customers who completed an order and those who did not, I compare the conversion rates of individual steps in the purchasing process. I identify where most customers drop or where the greatest potential to increase shopping cart conversion is hidden.
 * How to do it: Data analysis based on data from Google Analytics

Qualitative – Evaluative techniques:

 * I conduct a usability test of the purchasing process.
 * How to do it: Usability testing of the website


Techniques for seeking ideas


Surveys

A survey is a quantitative technique primarily categorized as generative, but it can also be used to evaluate the current state. The advantage of a survey is that it allows you to gather a larger amount of data in a relatively short time.


Desk research

During desk research, you delve into your own knowledge base or public sources (internet, libraries, archives…). It provides you with both quantitative and qualitative data. Beware, don’t use desk research as a substitution for research with your own customers.

Get ideas from relevant and trusted sources only. Also, consider their timeliness as customer behavior can change over time. Interesting sources of information include archives in the field of social and behavioral sciences or open databases of scientific articles from social science journals published in countries of Eastern Europe.


Individual or group interviews

There is nothing more important than interviews with real customers. These can be conducted either individually (problem interviews) or in groups (focus groups). Before starting the actual qualitative interview, always make sure that you are talking to your real target customers through screening questions.

In interviews, try to capture stories. Don't hesitate to ask "Why?" to uncover respondents' real needs. In group interviews, use an experienced facilitator who can address the risks of groupthink and dominant participants. Our User Interview Cheatsheet will help you ask the right questions the right way.


Competitive analysis

Competitive analysis is a qualitative generative technique that helps you understand how other organizations solve a particular problem. It also helps you discover what can be done better, to gain a competitive advantage.


Data analysis

Analytical work with data is a quantitative evaluative technique. The conclusion of each data analysis should be the interpretation of the outputs, ideally with recommendations. The biggest challenge of data analysis is that either companies don't have such data or it's challenging for the product team to obtain it. However, it can provide very useful insights and even show that some ideas are not worth pursuing because there is no real customer problem or no opportunity arises from them.

If you don't have user and customer behavior data, map out two to three most important customer journeys, identify the key metrics, and implement your findings. The conclusion of each data analysis should include interpreting the outputs with any recommendations. Google Analytics can be a good starting point for websites and applications. To understand more advanced product analytics, I recommend reading the Lean Analytics book.


Usability testing

Usability tests are an evaluative qualitative method where you observe customers using the product. It evaluates the user's ability to complete the assigned task or the degree of difficulty and frustration experienced while doing so. In summative testing, you only need to observe six users to identify 80 % of serious usability flaws.


From collecting to exploring ideas

By combining qualitative and quantitative methods, the product team gathers a lot of ideas that can be validated during Product Discovery. Simply describe them briefly and add them to the Discovery Backlog. At Lighting Beetle*, we use the Idea Validation canvas. In the industry, you might also encounter terms like Business Problem Statement or Opportunity Canvas.

Discovery Backlog: How to seek opportunities for better customer experience

Walter Lima

Inquisitive mind? Subscribe to our LB* Insights newsletter. No fluff, just stories to make you think.

Once a company brings customers to their service design process, the first thing they usually do is user testing. Running a usability study is quite effective in bringing stakeholders awareness to moments of frustration that their customers experience. However, user testings have limitations that many designers and managers overlook. They show us how customers might use a service, but very often they fail in telling us whether the customer would want to use the service at all.


How to test for desirability



The approach to determine the demand for your service among customers should be tailored to your current stage in the design process. Below are some tips you can start incorporating to assess desirability.

1. Examine desirability during usability testing

To begin, enhance your user testing process by incorporating desirability questions to the interview. This ensures that participants are not only focused on usability but also on evaluating whether your service addresses their problems, potentially motivating them to pay for it.

At the end of the session, ask the participant how helpful the solution is at solving their problem. Keep in mind it's crucial to carefully select participants who genuinely face the problem you aim to solve.

In a recent project focused on developing a portal to assist social workers in aiding vulnerable individuals, we engaged social workers closely involved with those in need for usability testing. When prompted, many of them eagerly expressed how the solution would significantly benefit their work.

2. Test early concepts, with a focus on problem-solution fit

The depth of feedback you receive correlates directly with the level of detail in your prototypes. In the initial phases, it's important to focus on testing broad concepts to see if your solution addresses an existing problem before assessing usability.

During this phase, it's essential to have well-defined problem statements and to target your riskiest assumptions, ensuring that the testing audience aligns with the problem you aim to solve; employ early-stage concepts to initiate discussions and confirm the existence of these problems while gathering insights on potential solutions. Be prepared to test multiple solutions and avoid attaching to one idea.

Tip: While qualitative insights are valuable, sometimes a blend of qualitative and quantitative data to validate the viability of an idea is beneficial. To add quantitative rigor, you can conduct surveys using established methods like jobs-to-be-done and KANO to quantify desirability in this phase.

We recently partnered with a mountaineering gear importer that directly sells products to consumers while also supplying retailers. To enhance the retail experience within the provider's system, we initiated qualitative interviews to delve into their challenges and introduced our own ideas for discussion.

Subsequently, we conducted a comprehensive quantitative survey to validate the alignment of our proposed solutions with the identified problems across a broad spectrum of retailers.

3. Launch quickly, iterate quicker

A common misconception is that success is conditioned by having a perfect product at launch. However, in reality, success lies in the capability of swiftly embracing and incorporating customer feedback and iterating your product.

While the technical development of your service may require time, gathering realistic customer insights need not wait. Moreover, adopting lean experiments offers a balanced approach. To help pick the right experiment, check our Experiment toolbox.

For instance, a landing page can effectively convey your value proposition, gauge interest, and begin cultivating a customer base without the need for a fully-developed service. You can even offer customers to subscribe to a waiting list or pre-order, prompting them to assess the service's value.

Just release

Ultimately, the most potent feedback regarding the customer’s willingness to pay for your service emerges when you launch it.

What truly sets apart CX mature companies is their adeptness in working with customer data and their recognition that shipping represents merely the initial step in a longer journey towards success.

Once you have proven your solution solves a problem, it's time to start adding new features. To help you find out which features to add first, we have published an Assumption Mapper canvas, that you can use to prioritize features based on their riskiness.


Did you find this interesting? It's from our LB* Insights newsletter. Give it a try.

Desirability: Why usability testing ≠ good product

Inquisitive mind? Subscribe to our LB* Insights newsletter. No fluff, just stories to make you think.

You need a good argument to make the case for customer experience improvement initiatives. One of them is ROI, or return on customer experience investments. We'll show you how to connect CX metrics with business ones.


Definition of customer experience

In order to consciously influence or improve the customer experience, we first need to understand what creates the experience.The Customer Journey Map and the Service Blueprint are the best ways to visualise the customer experience. Both help us understand what activities customers perform and what interactions they have with our organization over time. Besides interactions, the channels where these interactions happen are also very important. In fact, many customer journeys today are multi-channel – we also call them omnichannel – and consistency of experience across them forms a significant part of the overall customer experience.

An example of a customer journey could be a visit to the cinema. Imagine you want to see a new Pedro Almodóvar film. First, you check the website of a nearby cinema on your smartphone. When you find out when the movie is playing, as part of your afternoon email-clearing block, you buy a ticket on the web on your computer. You're glad the cinema has PDF tickets because you care about the environment and besides, you don't have a printer at home. You download the ticket to your smartphone. You arrive at the cinema where you are greeted nicely by the usher. You show them the PDF, from which they scan the QR code, and you go find your seat.

It is clear from the example that the complexity of the customer experience also increases with the device from which the channel is accessed – for the cinema website it was once from a mobile phone and later from a computer.


Metrics related to CX

Since we already know that customer experience is created through touchpoints and channels, let's take a look at metrics related to customer experience.

At Lighting Beetle*, we work with a mental model we call the Performance Pyramid. It is a hierarchy of performance measurement in organizations. In order to measure customer experience, organizations should know their operational and financial metrics. They should also work with KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) as a tool to evaluate their benchmark.

An example of a metric might be daily cinema attendance and an example of a KPI, an indicator that the cinema is performing as expected, would be average daily cinema attendance on weekend days, which is at a minimum of 2000 visitors.

As part of measuring customer experience, we work with:

 * CX metrics such as Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Effort Score (CES)
 * Business metrics such as Churn Rate, Retention Rate, Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), number of orders, number of customer service responses, etc.

As an illustration, after leaving the movie theater, a visitor can leave feedback on how satisfied they were with the overall quality of service, which will arrive via email. In addition, we know how loyal this customer is, or we know how many cinema tickets they have historically purchased.


Return on CX can be measured

The moment an organization works with both CX and business metrics, it is possible to measure the return on investment in improving the customer experience. The process is as follows:

1. Choose the CX metric you want to improve

2. Choose a business (operational or financial) metric

3. Divide customers into groups based on their experience level

4. Determine the average business metric for each group

5. Calculate the value of improving your CX metrics*

6. Calculate the cost or investment invested in CX cultivation

7. Compare the benefit and ROI (Return On Investment)

*No. 5 is about quantifying the monetary benefit if your lower-rated customers have moved to a higher-rated group.

“An increase in CX metric will result in a change in core operational business metric, which will drive an increase in revenue or a reduction in costs, for an investment of expense of CX program.” (Source)


Let's look at the example of a cinema:



1. I will choose customer satisfaction score (CSAT) as the CX i.e. customer metric.

2. As a business metric, I will choose the number of cinema tickets sold per customer per year.

3. I will create a segmentation of customers according to their CSAT level. To simplify this for the sake of example, let's assume a customer base of 100 000 customers per year and divide them into 3 groups:

 * Dissatisfied – 25 % of customers i.e. 25 000 customers
 * Neutral – 35 % of customers i.e. 35 000 customers
 * Satisfied – 40 % of customers i.e. 40 000 customers

4. I'll look at ø business metric for each group. For simplicity, let's assume a flat ticket price of 8 €, but ideally we should calculate with real sales:

 * Unsatisfied – buy in ø 2 tickets per year = 16 € i.e. 400 000 €
 * Neutrals – buy 3 tickets per year = 24 € i.e. 840 000 €
 * Satisfied – will buy 6 tickets per year = 48 € i.e. 1 920 000 €
 * Total: 3 160 000 €

5. I will estimate the value of improving CX metrics, i.e. how much the business metric will change if I improve the experience for some part of the customer base. In our case, this might mean, for example, that if I convert 10% of neutral customers to satisfied customers, their ratios and purchases will look like this:

 * Unsatisfied – 25 % of customers i.e. 400 000 €
 * Neutral – 25 % of customers i.e. 600 000 €
 * Satisfied – 50 % of customers i.e. 2 400 000 €
 * Total: 3 400 000 €

6. Thus, improving CX can bring me an increase in revenue of 240 000 € after the first year, which is an increase of +7.59 %. If the profitability of the cinema is, for example, 15 %, it would be in profit of 474 000 € before the CX improvement. However, after the CX initiative, the profit would rise to 510 000 €, which is 36 000 € more.

7. From this example, I can then derive the potential amount of investment, which could be at 36 000–72 000 € in the first year if we want to hit the ROI level of 50–100 %.


ROX is the new CX ROI

There are various business and CX metrics and all departments or teams in an organisation should have them defined – not just those in direct contact with the customer. This allows us, CX specialists and service designers, to look for the intersection between operational or financial metrics and find the customer-related ones. We know from experience that finding the right customer-facing metrics is not easy. We talked about how to link business and CX metrics in practice in the episode of our Minimum Viable Podcast with Eva Šípková, Head of CX at Alza. You can listen to it in the Slovak language or read the English translation.

So if you're concerned about any of our business metrics, I'd love to hear from you. We'll be sure to find a way to help it through improving the customer experience. By the way, don't be surprised if you encounter the acronym ROX instead of "Customer Experience Return On Investment" – expert circles are replacing the term ROI with Return On Experience (ROX).


Did you find this interesting? It's from our LB* Insights newsletter. Give it a try.

CX and Metrics: How to measure the ROI of a good customer experience

Kamil Zahorjan

Inquisitive mind? Subscribe to our LB* Insights newsletter. No fluff, just stories to make you think.

In recent years, car manufacturers have become increasingly focused on delivering a digital experience to drivers through various digital products. Although infotainment (a dashboard multimedia touchscreen) as one of them has been around for some time, it is still in the phase of exploring and understanding the benefits it can bring to passengers.

Working with Škoda Auto for past years, we’ve witnessed the industry's shift towards a more digitized customer experience. Tons of iterations on infotainment products and collaboration with experts on in-car design helped us summarize these most influential factors to keep in mind when designing human-machine interfaces.


1. Safety all the way

The most influential factor for designing HMI is the environment. For cars, the primary interaction will always be driving and we must keep this in mind. Unlike other digital products where the goal is to keep users engaged, drivers’ focus must remain on the road to ensure safety. It might be similar for, let’s say, medical devices for surgeons.

To ensure the safety of the infotainment, first, we minimize the content and interaction elements as much as possible to reduce cognitive load and to increase focus on driving. There’s even policies, e.g. the law defines the maximum text length that can be displayed while driving. If content cannot be minimized, we implement driving distraction restrictions, such as simple pop-ups that prohibit viewing some content while driving.


2. Diverse range of languages

If you are aiming for an HMI design that is universal worldwide, keep in mind requirements of verbose languages. Good practice is to check the text length for each intended language even before you create the actual interface.

Škoda distributes cars to over 100 countries worldwide, so it is crucial to ensure that the designs can be easily translated and adapted to different languages. We achieve this by testing the copy in multiple languages and defining maximum text field lengths to avoid overflowing texts. In some cases, it’s inevitable to iterate a whole component to fit desired content.


3. Frequent testing

Even when following all best practices and design standards, we can never be entirely sure that our design will work without causing distractions while driving. Therefore, we conduct thorough testing with users, simulating the car environment as closely as possible.

In a recent testing conducted by the Škoda HMI team, drivers were asked to ride a simulated road while conducting a simple task on the infotainment screen. Such testing indicated an optimal position for various elements and a correct size for safe accessibility while driving.

Testing is an essential part of a design process and even if you don’t have a dedicated budget, improvise with lean and guerrilla tests. For example, when we were testing the calendar app, we mounted a tablet to a car dashboard. Other times we simulate the environment in our office.


4. Mapping design patterns

Škoda cars are used by a wide range of drivers and passengers, spanning different ages, countries, and cultures. It is important to design interfaces that are easily understood by all users. By following common design patterns and conducting frequent user testing, we make our designs accessible to a wide range of customers.

For example, while designing the parking app, we looked at how they are set up in different countries across Europe, so that our design would be universal. Seek for patterns your customer segment is accustomed to, and don’t forget to check for technical limitations, as well.


5. Seamless journey across touchpoints

To ensure a cohesive customer experience, we cannot work in a vacuum. Infotainment is just one part of the digital experience provided by any car manufacturer. If we are considering a certain design change, we must take into account all dependencies it causes on other touchpoints and streams.

The Pay to Park service, which allows a user to pay for parking based on the car position, is a good example. Besides infotainment, the feature is also accessible from MyŠkoda App, designed by a different team. While working on the app, we needed to meet with the mobile design team regularly to make sure we are delivering as close an experience between these two touch points as possible. If we want to keep the design user-friendly, it needs to be consistent.


Where do the roads of car infotainment lead to?

Compared to digital products, the slower pace of product delivery in the car industry has historically resulted in technical debt in many cars. As a result, relatively new cars might have interfaces that appear outdated. This delay can make it challenging for car manufacturers to compete with mobile apps providing similar functions or with mirroring services like CarPlay or Android Auto.

On the other hand, it creates huge potential. With the car becoming more of a living organism, we can expect them to be more about software and less about hardware. And infotainment will be a big part of the puzzle. For more visions of the future of the automotive industry, I recommend the episode of our Minimum Viable Podcast with Ondrej Homola, the Lead UX Designer at Volvo. You can listen to it in the Slovak language or read the English translation.


Did you find this interesting? It's from our LB* Insights newsletter. Give it a try.

What designing for Škoda infotainment taught us about HMI

Viktor Šmidák

Inquisitive mind? Subscribe for LB* Insight – stories that make you think.


Subscribe on LinkedIn



In the latest episode of our Minimum Viable Podcast we talked with Eva Šípková from Alza, one of the largest online retailers in Central Europe. Eva is the Head of Customer Experience and if you speak Slovak or Czech language, we highly recommend listening to the interview or reading the transcript on our website. If not, here’s the most important thought!

One of the topics we talked about was finding the common ground between CX and stakeholders / managers in each department. Eva’s approach is simple: "There are some things that helped me. First is the realization that it isn’t our website, logistics nor our developers that bring in cash. It is the customers."


Find common ground

Once everyone acknowledges and aligns with this crucial fact, the next step becomes much easier to navigate. Eva suggests allowing stakeholders and departments to identify a metric connected to customer satisfaction that holds relevance for them. By doing so, they take ownership of that metric and become responsible for achieving it while you gain a clear objective that can be measured and tracked.

Wondering what that looks like in real life? "Let’s say we have a finance department. They argue they shouldn’t be involved in the CX initiative since they have limited direct customer contact.

We thought hard about this and came up with a Money delay index metric. It represents the time it takes for money to reach the customer. Let’s say you’re returning something to an Alza box (note: self-service boxes for picking up / returning orders). The moment you close the box, you should have the money in your bank account.

But here comes the finance department and claims it’s not possible. They have to check the product is undamaged, the packaging is complete, which bank the customer used…"


Put yourself in their shoes

The best way to fight this resistance is through finding an overlap between their challenges and challenges of their customers. If you can prove that changing the process can fix the problem of both sides, they will see the value.

In this case, Eva reminded them it’s also in their interest to transfer the money to the customer faster. "In fact, our finance specialists don’t want pending payments. It creates problems for them too. In the end we made fantastic progress reducing the time it takes to receive the money to hours."

This is a great example of two seemingly unrelated things coming together for the greater good. By allowing stakeholders to select their own relevant metrics, you create a sense of ownership and enable them to contribute to the overall CX objectives.


Stars (and stakeholders) need to align

Whether your company already started or is just embarking on its own CX journey, remember to seek out ambassadors, involve stakeholders in metric selection and foster a shared understanding of the value of customer experience design.

From our experience, it is a great practice to align all stakeholders on the design problem even before we jump to research and development. It allows us to come up with solutions that are better and more easily accepted across any organization. Check our Idea validation canvas and try it yourself at your next alignment with a resistant stakeholder.


Did you find this interesting? It's from our LB* Insights newsletter. Give it a try.

Resistant stakeholders? Use metrics they already rely on

Inquisitive mind? Subscribe to our LB* Insights newsletter. No fluff, just stories to make you think.

The basis of creating good products and services is a creative process called Product Discovery, also known as product exploration or discovery. The goal of the Discovery process is to deliver a working product or part of it to users as soon as possible, with the most tangible evidence that the product team will achieve the originally intended goal, and with the knowledge that the solution is technically feasible.

To make this happen, the product team seeks answers to the following questions:

 1. Will users want to use it?
 2. Will it bring business results to the company?
 3. Is it technically feasible?
 4. Will the interested parties support this solution?


How to start with exploration

In order to even start with Product Discovery, you need to have a lot of ideas at hand. Don’t be afraid of them, ideas are friends. Friends that need to be collected and categorized.

Ideas can come out of user interviews or research, your customer service or sales department. The insights of colleagues from the "first line" (branch employees) or other teams are also fantastic resources. Last but not least, you can also do data analysis and find patterns.

You can also find tips on where to look for opportunities in this article on exploration.

FOR DOWNLOAD: Product Discovery Guide


Prioritizing ideas

No matter where you get your ideas (opportunities, problems) from, it's good practice to store them in the Discovery backlog. You then have to choose the ones with the greatest potential. I recommend that you standardize the format by answering the following questions:

 * [What] What do we want to solve? What key problem or opportunity does the proposed idea address?
 * [Who] Who does it concern? Who is the target group in this case?
 * [Why] How will we know that we have solved the problem? What exactly do we expect and how could we measure it?

The selection of ideas or their prioritization can be done with the help of one of the prioritization techniques such as PIE, RICE, MoSCoW, etc. If more stakeholders are involved in decision making, the Bull’s Eye Diagram works well.

The prioritized ideas are then validated by the product team. They find out if these ideas make sense in terms of feasibility, demand and business performance, so you can decide which ideas make sense to invest in.

In Lighting Beetle*, we use the so-called Idea validation, but you may also be familiar with Business Problem Statement or Opportunity Canvas.


10 principles of Product Discovery

Before you start with the actual discovery, remember these 10 principles of the Product Discovery phase. I compiled them based on observation and research of successful and less successful exploration teams. They are inspired by the principles of exploration from SVPG from Marty Cagan's diary entries.

1. Customers don't tell us what they want. (As my colleague Michal Blažej says, you don't want the customer to design for you.)

2. The most important thing is to create value for the customer.

3. The goal is to validate ideas as soon as possible and as cheaply as possible.

4. We need to test ideas with real customers.

5. Development is hard, but UX is usually harder and even more crucial.

6. Functionality, design and technology are closely interconnected.

7. Technical feasibility must be verified during the Discovery phase.

8. Prototypes are a great tool in exploration.

9. During the Discovery phase, it is essential to involve all important stakeholders.

10. Most of our ideas won't work, and those that do need to be iterated.

These 10 principles should be the mantra of the product team in a Discovery phase, where a product manager, a UX researcher, an interaction designer and a data analyst should primarily be involved.

This team is tasked with constantly researching user behavior and trying to change it to generate results. For example, if Spotify users spend more time listening to music, their Spotify Premium retention will increase. The team's main goal is to eliminate the risk that the Product Delivery phase will be proposed a solution which will not work or perform as expected later on.

Do you want to find out if you need a product team and who should be in it? Read my previous article about building product teams and their impact on a company's customer experience level.

Looking for concrete steps to launch your product? Read our Product Discovery Guide first. It will walk you through a 7-step process that maximizes your chances for success.


Did you find this interesting? It's from our LB* Insights newsletter. Give it a try.

Get inspired!

All Stories

Podcasts

Events

Tools

Newsletter

The new reality shapes how consumers perceive brands. How to stay relevant?

Offboarding: How to end your customer’s journey meaningfully

5 principles of service design for easier service creation

UX writing: How to make digital bureaucracy understandable

Discovery Backlog: How to seek opportunities for better customer experience

Desirability: Why usability testing ≠ good product

CX and Metrics: How to measure the ROI of a good customer experience

What designing for Škoda infotainment taught us about HMI

Resistant stakeholders? Use metrics they already rely on

10 Commandments of Product Discovery

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

Your journey
starts here

Get inspired!

All Stories

Podcasts

Events

Tools

Newsletter

Insights from customer experience and business are brought to you by experts from Lighting Beetle.

Don’t miss out

The new reality shapes how consumers perceive brands. How to stay relevant?

Offboarding: How to end your customer’s journey meaningfully

5 principles of service design for easier service creation

UX writing: How to make digital bureaucracy understandable

Discovery Backlog: How to seek opportunities for better customer experience

Desirability: Why usability testing ≠ good product

CX and Metrics: How to measure the ROI of a good customer experience

What designing for Škoda infotainment taught us about HMI

Resistant stakeholders? Use metrics they already rely on

10 Commandments of Product Discovery

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

‌‌

Your journey starts here

Your journey
starts here