Samuel Švec

Designers always consider the end-user or customer when creating physical or digital "worlds." Their focus is on making solutions desirable and usable. Business design adds another layer to this: ensuring the solution is also profitable.

The latest guest on the Minimum Viable Podcast is Alžbeta Ivanovičová, who has been working in service design and business design for several years. Michal Blažej talks with her about what business design is, how it works in practice, and how anyone can benefit from it.


Do you know your organization's CX maturity level? Find out in few seconds by answering these 6 questions.




Minimum Viable Podcast is brought to you by the CX design studio Lighting Beetle*. It's usually recorded in the Slovak language, however, you can read an English transcription of this episode below. For more English content, including case studies and handouts, visit our Journal.

Today, we’ll talk about something called business design. Where did the concept of business design actually come from?

I think business design has always been around; we just didn’t know to call it that or realize we wanted to call it that. Designers, when creating physical or digital worlds, have always focused on the end customer. They care about whether their design is useful, whether people can use it, and whether they want to use it. That approach is great but has its limitations. Let me explain with an example.

I have pretty long legs. Every time I travel by plane, I think, why can’t budget airlines—or any airline, really—make the seats bigger so I can stretch my legs and feel more comfortable during the flight? But when you look at it from a business perspective, giving passengers more legroom means fewer seats on the plane. Fewer seats mean fewer passengers, which drives ticket prices up.

Then the question becomes, would anyone want to take a weekend trip to Milan if the ticket price skyrocketed? Essentially, business design recognizes that not all customer desires can be met. It puts pressure on designers to align their work with the business context of the company they’re working for.

How can this design approach help businesses?

It can help in three ways. First, it brings structure. It ensures that we don’t stray too far from the business challenge and approach it in a systematic way to solve it effectively.

Second, it fosters understanding among stakeholders—whether customers, employees, or collaborators. It helps everyone see why a particular solution is important and why it’s the best fit for the specific context.

Finally, there’s impact. Business designers are hands-on. They tackle challenges by creating prototypes—concrete solutions—and testing them with customers. Then, they take it a step further by implementing these solutions. This means they cover the entire lifecycle of a service, from creation to integration into the business ecosystem.

You mentioned thinking about problems from a business perspective. Does that mean business comes first in business design, or is the customer still the priority?

In my view, every organization should have a strategy—an idea of where it’s headed—and from that strategy, business challenges naturally arise. When I talk about business challenges, I don’t mean specific issues faced by a single salesperson. I think of them more as goals the organization wants to achieve. Customer insights should serve as inspiration for solving these challenges. So, it’s not about one taking priority over the other; it’s about finding a balance—they go hand in hand.

It sounds like if I have a challenge I can’t solve alone, I’d turn to an external consulting firm. Is business design different in this respect? Is there competition between the two?

Management consulting certainly has its place, and some people excel at it. In my view, the difference is that consulting often relies on tried-and-true solutions or approaches. It’s built on years of experience and proven methods. Business design, on the other hand, tends to be more exploratory and tailored, creating solutions that fit the specific needs and context of the challenge.

I read somewhere that business design focuses more on the top lines of the profit and loss statement, while management consulting focuses on retaining as much of those funds as possible and achieving profitability. From my perspective, business designers are often more integrated within an organization. They create specific solution proposals, prototypes, and meet directly with customers. It's not about providing generic advice. Many times, qualitative or quantitative research guides our thinking, helping us outline the next steps for a project.

What specific problems can business design address?

For example, struggling to retain customers, losing them, or being unable to increase revenue that's stagnating. Or cases where the competition is doing better than we are, or a new product we developed isn’t successful and nobody uses it.

There are also challenges related to organizational structure. For instance, rapid growth that we couldn't manage well, wanting to achieve more but feeling lost, or processes taking too long. Customers might expect changes or innovations that we can’t deliver because of organizational, technological, or other internal limitations.

How can business design tackle such significant challenges?

The approach is key. You use methods that break the challenge into smaller pieces to identify the underlying problems. Then, you systematically search for solutions, test them in practice through experimentation, and implement what works. In medium or large organizations, it’s challenging to validate and sustainably roll out solutions without causing disruption that could create new problems.

How does the analysis differ when addressing an internal organizational problem versus involving management consultants?

I’d say it’s valuable to have insights from consultants to understand the situation objectively.

In organizations, different people often focus on different issues and sometimes forget that they are all working toward a common goal.

What's unique about this approach is that it centers on the customer and their inputs. By analyzing feedback, motivations, needs, dissatisfaction, and expectations—whether through existing sources or customer research—you build a clearer context around the business challenge.

Do you have examples of clients who successfully addressed major challenges using this approach?

One example is our project with the Bratislava Water Management Company. They wanted to improve cash flow by encouraging customers to pay invoices faster and reduce the number of calls to their support center regarding confusing invoices.

We analyzed call center recordings to understand customers’ questions and identified what made the invoices unclear. Based on this, we redesigned the invoices. Then we conducted guerrilla testing in a shopping center, asking people if they understood the new design. As a result, invoice payment times improved, boosting cash flow, and customer experience also got better, as people no longer had to decipher the invoices.

My favorite approach is that when faced with a significant business challenge, you can always refine or narrow the scope of the task. You can either focus on a specific target customer group or specialize in a particular product or service. By narrowing the business challenge this way, you can work much more effectively with the subsequent analysis, research, and solutions.

Don’t you get feedback that narrowing the target audience excludes other users?

We often hear that concern—companies wanting to target everyone. However, I believe there’s always a dominant customer group. Strategically, every company knows who their long-term priority customers are.

Can you share another example of a business problem?

Sure, let’s talk about NAY Elektrodom, the largest electronics retailer in Slovakia. They wanted to shorten the time it took to serve each customer in-store. They felt their process wasn’t efficient enough. We conducted customer research to understand their shopping journey for electronics and also analyzed the in-store service process.

We found a conflict: online sales were competing with physical store sales. Customers viewed buying large appliances as an important decision—they wanted to research in-store, consult with staff, then go home and buy online. This left sales staff frustrated because they lost commission.

We focused on improving the customer experience in the sense that we developed an app that helped sales staff provide better advice and prepared an online order for the customer. The customer received a list of recommended products via email, and the salesperson still earned a commission.

By improving the employee experience, we enhanced the customer experience, shortened service time, and reduced frustration.

Are there any principles on how business design should work?

Our approach always relies on several pillars. One important aspect is customer orientation and all other stakeholders involved. Every project includes a phase where we identify the customer group or determine who will ultimately benefit from solving the business challenge and who will gain value from it.

Then, the second pillar is data, both quantitative and qualitative. We usually use quantitative data to determine the impact or to define the problem. So when we identify the business challenge together with the customer, we also want to know how big it is, whether there is a possibility of return on investment, and if we’ll really make an impact within the organization.

Another important pillar is visualization. We usually try to capture all our findings, whether they’re quantitative or qualitative. For example, it could be a service blueprint or a customer journey map. In this way, we try to visualize the insights so that stakeholders within the organization better understand the sequence of individual steps.

I’ll stop you here for a moment, you mentioned visualization. Why is it important?

Different people within an organization usually focus on different things, and sometimes they forget that they’re all working toward the same goal. And that goal is, let’s say, providing quality customer service. So they’re all co-creating the customer experience. That’s why everything should work together and logically follow one another. When employees look at a visualization, they understand, “Ah, this is where I am, this is my agenda, but it influences these other people and processes within the company.”

And then, another important pillar is prototypes. Once you know the starting point and have some potential solutions, it’s good to create prototypes—small designs you can try out in practice.

Do you have a specific example? I can imagine a webpage prototype, but what if it’s a larger change in organizational processes?

Let’s take an insurance broker as an example. Based on analysis, you realize that customers don’t fully understand the details of the insurance coverage. You can take just this small part and iterate on it. You give these proposals to, let’s say, 10 salespeople and ask them to try out the prototype, and then you ask them how the customers reacted.

Then I also think about A/B testing, which we did with one of our retail clients. How would you handle that?

When you’re dealing with a retail chain with several stores, scaling can be quite difficult. You need to do a lot of tests in one location to determine what the functional model is, and then move on to other locations. But there might also be regional differences. However, you can define certain principles. For example, the product should be displayed in a way that doesn’t get in the way, it should invite the customer to visit your store, and it should be relevant to them.

What should the first step be to get things out quicker and confront them with the user?

You need to identify the business challenge, i.e., what you want to solve. Then, you should be able to define hypotheses related to the issue and conduct either quantitative or qualitative research. After that, you need to ideate possible solutions and create prototypes, and then it’s also good to know how to implement the changes—how to manage that change.

What tools do you use for change management, and how does it look?

We often use stakeholder mapping to understand who all is involved in the business challenge so that no one is left out. If there’s resistance to change, it’s usually because some needs haven’t been heard.

Business design helps to build and maintain a competitive advantage.

It’s also about evangelizing the approach, explaining why we’re doing this and what it should bring. Positive examples are very effective, as well as communication about what has been achieved, and on the other hand, sharing lessons learned from what didn’t work. Being open about this kind of transparent communication tends to work well for us.

The key to all of this is being willing to experiment and learn. And to have persistence, be flexible, and react promptly when something doesn’t go as expected. That’s why communication and involvement from the start are so important—so everyone understands.

Finally, I’d like to look a bit into the future. Is business design the answer to the challenges that organizations might face? Is it a tool for the future?

Yes, for the future, but also right now. You can already work on an organization's business challenges, and there’s no reason to wait.

Business design is something that helps you build and maintain a competitive advantage. So, listening to customers means that you’ll not only serve your existing customer base well but when something changes in that base or a new customer segment emerges, you’ll be able to respond to their needs and innovate your products and services. Plus, thanks to business design, you’ll be able to monitor what’s happening in the market because you’re in direct contact with it.


The full interview with Alžbeta Ivanovičová in Slovak:

Minimum Viable Podcast is brought to you every two months by the design studio Lighting Beetle*, which focuses on creating an exceptional customer experience.

In Minimum Viable Podcast, we use relatable language to dive into customer experience design. We invite unique guests to chat about how Customer Experience influences business success. A special thanks to Mojmír Procházka for his production support.

We are looking forward to every listen, follow, share, and suggestion for improvement. You can send us your tips for interesting personalities with whom we can talk about design to podcast@lbstudio.sk.

Enjoy!

Minimum Viable Podcast #28: Business design

When paying taxes, we often feel like we are the state's last priority. We have to study legal paragraphs and use a calculator to figure out what to fill in boxes we don’t fully understand. A few people at the Bratislava City Hall took on this challenge and tried to redesign the tax payment process.

We are starting the fifth season of the Minimum Viable Podcast with Slavo Oslej, who used the service design method to propose a new way for Bratislava residents to pay taxes. Michal Blažej discusses with him what the work of a service designer entails and how to design services that put the customer first.


Do you know your organization's CX maturity level? Find out in few seconds by answering these 6 questions.




Minimum Viable Podcast is brought to you by the CX design studio Lighting Beetle*. It's usually recorded in the Slovak language, however, you can read an English transcription of this episode below. For more English content, including case studies and handouts, visit our Journal.

To begin, I’d like to talk to you about the redesign of the tax payment system. Not everyone may be familiar with the project you worked on, so what was the outcome of your work?

Essentially, we looked at the service overall, starting from the first moment—filing a tax return or the real estate tax declaration and then the actual tax payment—so the entire service process. What we delivered was a new form that’s more intuitive and a payment method, so now you can pay the tax directly from an email or from a Bratislava account using Apple Pay. Now, people don’t have to go to the post office to make a payment.

What was wrong before? Why did you take on this project?

It was part of a larger initiative for digital transformation. When I joined the city administration, it was around April 2020, and we got a program from Bloomberg, called Think Big Start Small. We had to choose one service to try and transform gradually from start to finish. We picked the real estate tax because at the time it was the largest transactional service, generating the second-largest revenue for the city. It also had the greatest impact on users. The process was very cumbersome for users; people were paying in ways that were no longer suitable for the modern age.

Whose initiative was this digital transformation within the city administration?

We had electronic services similar to the Slovensko.sk with high-cost development and very few users. We needed to make these services more efficient. Bloomberg helped us organize everything. They encouraged us to start with one service and gradually learn from it, applying those lessons to further transform other services the city offers electronically.

How did you approach this? How was it different from how things were done before?

We started collaborating with Bloomberg right after I joined. What was great was the very broad Discovery phase. For me, it was an amazing moment since it coincided with my onboarding. When you think about it, Bratislava is essentially the largest service provider, from public transport to street lighting to paying for municipal services like pools, sports facilities, etc.

The portfolio of services is huge, and during the Discovery phase, we looked at basic things—what services actually mean to people, what the city provides them, and if they even realize it. We did exit interviews after people completed tasks at the contact center, conducted observations, and ad-hoc surveys in parks. We combined various research methods.

You really focused on understanding who the citizens of Bratislava are and how they interact with the city.

Exactly. We took a broad approach and used a 'Double Diamond' framework. We focused on one service, real estate tax, but the 4-month Discovery phase provided insights that helped us with other projects as well.

For instance, it led us to start working on a new Bratislava.sk website because we noticed people were calling the contact center mainly because they couldn’t find information online. So, these insights directed us to further projects.

This is fascinating, especially the Discovery phase. Balancing the scope of research to avoid becoming too abstract and ensure the research remains valuable. Sometimes research can be too broad, revealing strategic insights that aren’t necessarily actionable. How did you select the takeaways, and how did you present them?

From day one, Bloomberg guided us towards high standards, like making research transparent within the organization. After each stage, we presented our findings to about 300 people, showing them what we discovered.

"The findings from the Discovery phase were that it is very difficult for city residents to handle anything with the local government."

The key findings were that it’s really difficult for city residents to handle tasks with the city administration. Most processes are manual, and people usually have to come in person. Just obtaining information or completing a task online is impossible for many because they don’t have an electronic ID card. Ninety percent of the processes are offline, which causes frustration and bad user experiences.

So, the Discovery phase confirmed that digital services were failing, which led you to work on the city’s digital transformation.

Yes, that was the core issue, but we also explored other areas. After identifying these problems, we moved into a targeted Discovery phase and focused specifically on real estate tax services, from filing the declaration to paying the tax.

So, after the broad Discovery phase, you narrowed it down and selected real estate tax as the service to target. What happened next?

We started working closely with the local taxes and fees department in Petržalka. We conducted interviews with users to understand how the current tax declaration works or doesn’t work for them and what issues they encounter. We also mapped out the current state and tested the existing offline and online forms. When it came to payments, we identified several pain points.

You even observed the back-office operations?

Yes, I spent time in the front-line tax offices and saw that when users didn’t pay their tax, the city would sometimes call them six or seven times to follow up. For example, when the invoices were generated in April and May, they had to be physically sent to the post office and signed. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case. Another issue was that during December and January, when tax declarations are filed, there were 300-400 people daily needing help with the form. The city police even had to manage the crowd.

That sounds familiar. In 2016, we started observing back-office processes and call centers, and the insights we gained were often far more useful than customer interviews.

I completely agree. That’s when we first started using Journey Mapping. We mapped the entire process from filing the declaration to making the payment, identified pain points, and created five concepts ranging from small improvements to full transformation.

One of the first concepts was simplifying real estate tax payments. The second was finding a new way to authenticate users into a digital environment without relying on Slovensko.sk, as only about 6-7% of individuals had access to it. Another concept was helping people fill out the tax declaration through tooltips and nudges. We also considered involving third parties like notaries, lawyers, and real estate agents in helping users complete the form. The final concept was removing the user from the declaration process altogether.

In the end, we decided to focus solely on the payment aspect because it had the greatest impact, and we found a legal loophole that allowed us to test digital tax payments.

What team was behind this whole process?

Back then, it was two or three of us. Mainly our internal team, plus we worked with a service design agency, and they expanded our team with a service designer and an IT architect. Of course, we also had the local tax department involved, and to the extent possible, our IT department, lawyers, and others.

You mentioned you created a service blueprint. It’s not a commonly used tool here, and people often don’t know what it is. What is it, and how did it help you?

We used it to map the as-is state and also to map out an ideal state. What helped me was being able to visualize and fully understand how the service operates.

Another thing was that I could get different groups and stakeholders around one table so that everyone could see on one screen, in one Miro, what impacts the user and their experience. I could see everything holistically — how it works versus how it should work — and thanks to that, I discovered some potential inefficiencies.

What did your service blueprint look like?

If you imagine a customer journey, it shows what the user does to meet their goal or fulfill their need. Above that, we had some evidence or a visual reference of what the user actually sees. Then we had the front-end interactions they might have with our staff or some interface. There was also a technology section, linked to some form.

Below that was the entire backstage. And then there was the technology part that, for instance, sends you a one-time code for logging in, etc. We also had KPI tracking, showing how the user progressed through the service. Thanks to that, we could see where and what we could measure. For example, how quickly payments were made, whether the user chose a QR code or a payment gateway, and how many people clicked on feedback… So, we had the entire service described. Since we all understood how the service worked, we could review everything that might go wrong before and after its launch.

You mentioned that you first launched a closed beta for the payment. What happened next?

Back then, we realized that we could display the tax in a digital environment, but you still had to receive the decision in paper form. That’s how the closed beta unfortunately worked. However, we were able to verify that this method was correct. What else did we need?

The result was that within fifteen days, 72% of payments were made. Previously, over 90% of people had to go to the post office to pay their taxes. Let’s say it was at the post office for 18 days, you had 30 days to make the payment, and then 15 days to finalize it. Altogether, it could take two months. Often, people would stick the paper on their fridge and then forget about it or lose it.

We introduced the payment email, which included a QR code and a payment gateway. If you wanted to see the details, due to tax secrecy, you received a one-time code. You accessed a secure zone where you logged in via a code sent to your phone, and there you could view your tax.

The results showed that people have no issue paying taxes if you make the process easier, and everything moves faster. It’s just another bill to pay.

How long did it take to go from the initial discovery to this point?

One year.

It’s important to recognize how much work goes into creating a simple QR code. Citizens might think, "It’s just a QR code," but it took a year of work.

What’s interesting is that we had 72% of payments within fifteen days. Guess what the percentage was when we told people that if they paid within 15 days, we wouldn’t send them a paper letter?

85%?

94%. So, notice how much value we created for people just by eliminating the need to go to the post office.

By 2022-2023, we had better transactional measurements. We found that 4% of people still wanted to receive paper. In 2023, I understood that there was a willingness on the side of the Ministry of Finance to change the law to allow electronic payments.

We realized that we could change the way taxes were levied. We introduced a notification system, where if you paid by a certain date, you wouldn’t receive anything by mail. It’s similar to paying a fine — once you pay it immediately, you only get a receipt and that’s it.

This year was the first time we applied this, and it’s great to see that it’s working, for instance, in Petržalka and other cities. Petržalka, for example, gave a €5 discount if you paid digitally. After the first year, 50% of people were using it. This applies to property taxes, municipal waste fees, dog taxes, and other smaller fees.

What makes the role of a service designer unique, and what does a service designer bring to the table? Why should organizations have service designers?

I think it’s a very important role. Service designers connect different roles and create multidisciplinarity. They’re also advocates for the user and work to deliver the best possible experience to the user.

But it’s not just about the user experience; it’s also about ensuring that the organization can deliver services as efficiently as possible in terms of time and money. So, it’s a crucial role that puts the user first while managing all the assets together.

What skill set do you think a service designer should have? What would you look for on their CV?

They should have a bit of a researcher in them, to be able to ask the right questions and listen. Visual thinking is also key—being able to draw some synthesis from what they hear during facilitation and collaboration. I’d also look for some project management skills so that they can organize resources and options. And definitely, the ability to think outside the box. It also helps to know what the front end is, and what the back end is, and understand infrastructures.

You had a brief internship in New York and got a glimpse of how not just service design but also innovation teams work. What did you see in New York?

It lasted four days, and every day I was with a different department. What was interesting was that the city had an external team hired from an agency, and they were doing six-month behavioral projects for various New York departments. They focused a lot on communication, and I noticed that using plain language was very important. Using simple language is crucial for services, especially municipal ones.

"It is not only about the experience but also about ensuring that the organization can deliver services as efficiently as possible in terms of time and money."

I also liked that they didn’t work individually but always in teams of three, which ensured good coverage and information sharing. Another day I was with an internal service design team. They had a sister product team, which was relatively small, just three to four people.

It certainly wasn’t for all of New York, but I liked that despite being only three or four people, they had "office hours." That meant every Friday, government employees could sign up with their problems, and they would mentor them. This allowed them to increase their impact. I found that very inspiring.

But what impressed me most was their co-design project, where they hired 12 residents over six months and turned them into designers. They passed on their design skills to the residents, allowing them to go through the design process and create a service for their community that was missing. The result was a multi-generational center focused on digital skills, as many groups in New York only have basic education.

Another thing that comes to mind is when I visited 311, which is a non-emergency call center. They don’t have any front offices where you have to go in person; you just call for everything. They handle 35 million interactions a year, and what’s amazing is that they have a knowledge base of 2,000 questions and can answer in the top 11-12 languages anytime. They even guarantee responses in all world languages within a certain time, which made me think, "Wow!" It’s incredible that they have one place where you can call and solve your issues.

In Bratislava, we managed to create one such service. How could we achieve standard thinking like this in local government or public administration?

This is a very complicated challenge. After these four years, I see the biggest barrier as the ability to not only pass on the know-how but also transfer the operation of existing services to the original owners. Because I only had the role of product owner on loan, and in local government, there’s no such thing as a service owner or product owner.

I’d like to get to the point where one day, we are not just tax administrators, road administrators, or sidewalk administrators, but service providers. Not just bureaucrats, but civic servants.

"Using plain language is crucial, especially for municipal services."

But this is gradually happening. Departments are slowly hiring stakeholders who are also part of the innovation department, meaning they are full-time employees. The same approach is being used for the Bratislava transport company or other city organizations, and it’s spreading.

So people from the innovation team are being sent to other city enterprises?

Yes, or hired. But it’s still centralized in one office. The challenge is to move this forward. In the case of local governments, a large percentage of their effort goes into just keeping things running, leaving little room for development and streamlining. We definitely need more people to gradually transform this.

If someone wanted to become a service designer, what would you recommend?

I had a very broad path, but my first impulse came from design thinking, which kickstarted my journey toward service design. Then I tried it out in practice in telecom, where I had an amazing mentor. After that, I took a course through the Butterfly Effect as a UX researcher, and Bloomberg also helped a lot—it was all learning by doing.

But you can also get close to service design if you’ve been a product owner or anyone who has worked in design, like UX or UI. These are very similar professions that can lead to service design. Fortunately, more and more schools focus on this now as well.

One final question I ask all guests. What is your biggest design challenge that you’d like to solve?

I have two. The first is that this morning, as I was unplugging my phone from the charger, I thought, "We’re soon going to Mars, but our phones still only last one day." The second is scaling the design mindset and approach within organizations.


The full interview with Slavo Oslej in Slovak:

Minimum Viable Podcast is brought to you every two months by the design studio Lighting Beetle*, which focuses on creating an exceptional customer experience.

Design is all around us. Minimum Viable Podcast explores design with a small “d” – the one that looks for solutions to people's problems. In it, together with our guests, we address topics that are related to design, but we normally do not associate with it. Thanks to our production manager Mojmír Procházka for the cooperation.

We are looking forward to every listen, follow, share, and suggestion for improvement. You can send us your tips for interesting personalities with whom we can talk about design to podcast@lbstudio.sk.

Enjoy!

Minimum Viable Podcast #27: Creating better cities

Minimum Viable Podcast #26: Innovations in retail

Minimum Viable Podcast #24: From designer to investor

Logistics is a complex discipline with many variables. Building a good customer experience within it is therefore even more challenging. However, Packeta proves that it's possible. Each year they rank in the TOP 10 of CX ranking compiled by KPMG.

In the 23rd episode, Michal Blažej speaks with Alexander Jančo, Managing Director of Packeta Slovakia. They discuss how Packeta came into existence, how they build customer experience across thousands of pickup points, and where they see the future of the delivery industry.

Minimum Viable Podcast is brought to you by the CX design studio Lighting Beetle*. It's usually recorded in the Slovak language, however, you can read an English transcription of this episode below. For more English content, including case studies and handouts, visit our Journal.

The first question is, what sets Packeta apart from the competition?

I think we have a team that can execute our strategy well. Also within the logistics segment, we are most focused on the customer. We look at the customer differently and we ask them how they would imagine these services, and what is comfortable for them.

You mentioned that you have a good team that can execute the strategy well. Could you give an example of something in the past that you accomplished? A strategic goal that made you exceptional on the market?

That's about two years ago when we grew acquisition-wise in the delivery to address product. Then we decided to acquire the company Remax Courier Service. I am very data-oriented as well as our company. We adhere to the idea that a person without data is just a person with an opinion.

So before, I did research, where I found out what people want and what they need and what bothers them about delivery to the address. Everyone was bothered by not seeing the exact delivery time. So with colleagues, we formed a team and I got into it and I said let's deliver at an exact time.

And we succeeded. Of course, it has a standard curve that happens with changes. Some people doubted it. We had to replace some couriers who refused to be under such scrutiny because it means that the courier doesn't plan his day according to themself, but the software creates a route for them. They choose some segments of breaks they need but they must stick to it precisely.

That sounds like a success story. So you are a Czech-Slovak company. I'm not entirely clear about the structure. Could you just tell me how you are divided?

I would start by saying that our founder Simona Kijonková is a very good boss who gives freedom to individual Managing Directors in each country. She says she hires us as experts in that specific market and we have to say what we need. According to that, we proceed either globally together, or we will only make local changes.

In this case, when we were preparing delivery to the address, we had an advantage because, with that acquisition, we were also buying a system for that service. And I am for one team, so it wasn't necessary to deal with it as a group. All other services run on a common system.

Packeta has many pick-up points, which are also stores of various kinds. How did you come up with this idea?

Let's go back to 2010 when Simona Kijonková founded Packeta, her husband Jaromír Kijonka was already doing business on the internet and selling sunglasses, prescription glasses, and contact lenses. He and many other Czech e-shop owners expanded to Slovakia as their second country. So they were looking for a cheap alternative to solve transportation from the Czech Republic to Slovakia.

And the system of pick-up points that Simona saw abroad was cheaper. That's why the idea of pick-up points was born.

What are all the components your customer experience consists of?

When I start with logistics, it has a lot of KPIs. The most important thing is how many shipments we deliver the next day. And then some parcel parameters. For example, we monitor individual couriers on how efficiently they function during the day. We also monitor partner pick-up points, how efficient they are.

So we monitor efficiency, process, and quality, and this happens daily. This also happens at our Z boxes. We have many qualitative parameters that our team monitors daily and this is transferred to the reward system and to the individual departments and people.

So you have KPIs tied to rewards, and that is the motivational factor you have?

Yes. And when it comes to customer care, we also check how many of the daily number of customers we serve called us and for what reason. Then the input is from our partners and then some quantitative surveys we do within a certain periodicity at least once per quarter. There we go from brand awareness, through NPS to daily satisfaction measurements by recipients.

Instant feedback is very important for us because it's the instant feedback that can move the company the fastest.

KPIs are my favourite topic. Who manages the KPIs initiative at your company?

We have a group perspective and then an individual entity perspective. But as a Managing Director, I put together the whole pyramid and KPIs. Of course, I have some expectations, inputs from the group.

That's a great point. We've talked here with Eva Šípková from Alza about how they set up KPIs, and I like it when the Managing Director owns this initiative and understands it because that sets the quality. What if the KPIs are not met?

We have a separate department that deals with processes and quality management of important KPIs. There is no long-term problem. A short-term problem may arise, such as increased illness in a given region or bad weather.

But these are just daily nuances. Long-term nuances don't happen. If someone doesn't meet the KPI at the level of quality we have, then they are not good enough to be in that position.

When I choose a package on an e-shop, what happens and what impact do the individual elements have on the customer?

Sometimes companies try to come up with a lot for the customer, and then it affects the price. In the case of our business, it is very important to know what to give to the client and at what price so that we achieve the market share we expect.

In the context of the two services we offer on the Slovak market from the recipient's point of view, there is either delivery to pick-up points or to boxes and delivery by courier to the address.

Sometimes companies try to come up with a lot for the customer, and then it affects the price.

In both cases, we offer the customer to choose the service using a widget our partners have implemented. You have all the information there and you can quickly choose the delivery point. We need to give the customer simplicity of choice right in the cart.

In the case of delivery to the address, we tried to solve the fact that most of the clients have to enter the delivery address, and some e-shop verifies it and some don't. When you enter the wrong address, the shipment will be delayed because we have to call you. There are costs associated with that.

We don't want to have extra costs, and we don't want to have an angry customer so we have to do many things as simple as possible. We made a widget where you select the point you want to deliver the shipment to, and you don't have to fill in anything, and the address is correct.

Here is one usability problem that often occurs. I choose a point on the map, but I don't trust that the mapping software finds it correctly. Do you test these widgets?

Sure, we test everything. Our colleagues in the Czech Republic do it. Either we do it to some extent in-house, or we call a partner to do it.

Yesterday I was shopping, I had it delivered through you, but there was no widget, so it probably depends on which e-shop decides how.

We still try to educate and talk about what is important. To some extent, it is sad that CX is underestimated in many e-shops. Often in the past, it happened that the e-shop didn't care which carrier they put in the basket, it was all about the price.

I'm glad that when those companies have CX departments, it's a different communication right from the start because they already ask about the NPS and so on. So the choice of a suitable partner is not just about the price, but also about quality. I am very pleased that we have been holding the first position in NPS in the market in the long term. Within KPMG, every year when they map 100 brands in terms of customer experience within Slovakia, we still rank in the TOP 10.

Do you compare these NPS with each other? Is it an open debate between DPD, Packeta, or other delivery companies? I'm curious because NPS for other agencies is difficult to find out.

We don't have this data from competitors. We pay for these surveys, and it costs a lot of money, but I assume that they do the same.

Again, we are going back to the cart. We selected the address via the widget, what else affects the customer experience?

The customer experience is subsequently influenced by the fact that the customer expects it to be delivered, in our case, the next day. When it comes to the pick-up point, they want to have an experience where they don't wait in a line, where it goes quickly, and where there is pleasant service. In the case of Z boxes, it's easier because the box doesn't talk, it can't mess anything up.

In the case of delivery to the address, the customer expects accuracy, so when we send it in the morning, if we say you'll have the package by 9:30, we usually hit that time frame. Until recently, couriers used terminals if you decided to pay by card. Sometimes it was out of battery, so they'd tell you that card payment wasn't possible.

With the Android devices they use for delivery, there's a barcode reader and NFC, so you just need to tap the card or phone, all within one device. Therefore, it can't happen that you can't pay by card with our courier. If for example, the provider has an outage, we offer an alternative solution - payment through our app.

With the boxes, do you always have to negotiate with each parcel owner and then pay them, or how does it work?

We've automated that already. We have two models. In each model, we pay some money. But I'm grateful for the help from ZMOS. When we started, we mainly went to villages. We know where lower-income people are, and it's a service that's usually 30% cheaper.

In the beginning, we had this strategy, and I'm glad that ZMOS helped us negotiate with municipalities when we pay a symbolic euro in some places. The truth is, in some villages, the box isn't as busy, and from our side, it's a considerable investment.

The second question I wanted to ask is that Alza boxes need to be connected to electricity, right?

Yes, they have a screen and each one is connected to electricity. Alza has about 600 units, we currently have around 1700. This year we plan to build 250 new and enlarge another 250.

Couriers are one customer-facing element, and then there are the pick-up points. How do you train those people?

Starting with partner pick-up points, we have a big checklist of how not only the partner's operation should look but also communication, and so on. So we already have some demands for those spaces, opening hours, to be open at least five days a week, etc.

I'm glad that up to 80% of partners are also open on Saturdays. From the data we have and compare, we have the highest quality network. As for how we train them, we track those KPIs I mentioned. So how quickly they accept shipments, when the courier brings them, how quickly they issue them, up to the email feedback we send after each issued shipment via the pick-up point.

And we have a point system, three strikes and you're out. I'm very proud that 98% of our partners meet these qualitative parameters, and currently, we have over 1200 partners. The reward is progressive based on meeting those qualitative parameters.

But that reward is for me something I would like them to pay us in the future. Because when you look at it from the other segment's perspective like Google or Meta, you pay them to bring people to your site, and they don't even guarantee that people will buy from you, so we bring that traffic there.

But that reward is for me something I would like them to pay us in the future.

It was very important to teach them to look at that customer who comes to the pick-up point as their average margin. We taught this one man who sells fishing supplies and mothers with children would come there for packages. I told him that even mothers with children buy for example repellents. Or they have men in their surroundings for whom they can buy gifts.

That was new information for him, which suddenly opened new horizons for him. That: “aha, I don't have to sell only to those fishermen who come here, but I can see the opportunity in everyone.” And then that person who comes to the pick-up point suddenly doesn't earn those few cents for issuing a package but earns because he sells his goods.

It's interesting how you transform the market of small retail. The world has changed, and with Lidl around every corner, those small convenience stores have to think differently.

I look at it in the context that, for example, colleagues who are responsible for partner sites and boxes are retail experts. Merchants who are in charge of our online stores are experts in e-commerce and expansion.

So in this context, this is how we operate, and nobody sells anything. Everyone just tells you how they could help you. That's very important in the way the company works, how it achieves those results, and then what impact it has on the customer experience.

I think you said it well, that the customer experience often doesn't stem from a well-laid-out process but from that value exchange that happens. Let's quickly talk about the couriers, and then we can talk about the future.

It's standard there that during onboarding, the courier is trained in the process and then they are regularly retrained. They also communicate daily with their partner who is at the depot and go over the daily results.

And of course, then we have trainer colleagues who show newbies or those who don't have good quality how to do it. And these are things we do daily. For some illustration, we deliver 10,000 shipments, but during a seasonal peak, it's several hundred thousand shipments per day.

Do couriers also have KPIs tied to the reward system?

Exactly, and there's also the modus operandi that if you don't meet the quality three times, you're out.

Let's talk about the future now. What new experiences will customers have, and how do you want to compete in the market? How do you want to be better than the competition?

Still keeping the customer first and, like Amazon has that encoded in their DNA, be customer obsessed. Because customer orientation is something that everyone claims, but that's very weak for me.

The company must have it encoded in its culture that we are obsessed with the customer, that we conduct surveys, collect feedback, and constantly monitor it, looking also into the future and in the context of competition, and so on.

We will also focus on our app, which is already used by about a million people in Slovakia today. Through it, anyone can send a package across four markets: Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania. We want to expand so this is possible in 33 countries, as we enable it for e-commerce today.

I see that the convenience of delivery is moving to extreme levels. I read recently that Walmart has a white-glove service, where they will place eggs in your fridge, for example. How do you see the future of delivery, where else will the market move in some medium-term horizon?

Another solution is to have a mailbox not just for letters, but for packages. And in general, it will be open so that when your neighbor calls you and says: “Hey, Michal, I made jam, and you're not home. Can you open your mailbox? I'll throw it in there, and then you can pick it up.”

There's talk, for example, that Samsung should also bring their own software to their appliances, so that when you run out of sth, the system will automatically place an order, and the goods will arrive. But this will firstly work in big cities, not in Bratislava. Even Rohlík hasn't come to Bratislava yet, because Bratislava is small, and a certain size is necessary for the service to be worthwhile from the provider's point of view.

But if I go to such fundamentals, certainly, it's the pick-up points and boxes, but mainly boxes, because they are 24/7. There will definitely be more and more boxes because there are about 12 points - pick-up points or boxes per 10 thousand inhabitants in Slovakia, not just ours. In Poland, it's 40.

Do you have a benchmark for how far it can grow?

The foundation of box delivery is simple. You can deliver many shipments to one address and don't have to call anyone like with the address delivery. If that network grows to such dimensions that the box will be everywhere, you won't even need to order something by courier. So I think delivery to the address will be a premium product and it will be the other way around that not the courier tells me they'll come at 9:30, but I tell them to come at 9:30.

Last question I ask every guest. What is your biggest design challenge you would like to solve?

My dream and desire is that every e-shop has the same checkout process. Even when I go to the smaller e-shop, I know that the checkout there will be ensured by a brand I know and trust. To some extent, the inspiration for me is Apple. Within the Apple account, I have the delivery address filled out, and when I shop, I pay through Apple's payment gateway, and at the same time, Apple knows my address.

Great. I heard that Shopsys tried such proprietary software, that they only do checkouts, and last week I sat with Jan Cifra from Dedoles, and he told me that all checkouts will look the same for it. That it's not possible, that today all checkouts are diverse...


Listen to the whole interview with Alexander Jančo in Slovak:

Minimum Viable Podcast is brought to you every two months by the design studio Lighting Beetle*, which focuses on creating an exceptional customer experience.

Design is all around us. Minimum Viable Podcast explores design with a small “d” – the one that looks for solutions to people's problems. In it, together with our guests, we address topics that are related to design, but we normally do not associate with it. Thanks to the Zeldeo production studio and our production manager Mojmír Procházka for the cooperation.

We are looking forward to every listen, follow, share, and suggestion for improvement. You can send us your tips for interesting personalities with whom we can talk about design to podcast@lbstudio.sk.

Enjoy!

Minimum Viable Podcast #23: CX in logistics

Minimum Viable Podcast #22: Future Thinking

"Even a bank can be loved." That's the slogan of the brand we'll be discussing in this podcast. Customer experience is what sets Air Bank apart from the competition. It's no coincidence that according to KPMG's ranking, Air Bank is in the top position, and this is reflected in the growing number of customers.

In the 21st episode of MVP, Michal Blažej talks to Peter Šmíd, the Head of Market Research, about how the research team functions at Air Bank, what metrics they use to measure CX, and why the devil is in the details of qualitative surveys.

Minimum Viable Podcast is brought to you by the CX design studio Lighting Beetle*. It's usually recorded in the Slovak language, however, you can read an English transcription of this episode below. For more English content, including case studies and handouts, visit our Journal.

We chose Air Bank because, among financial institutions in the Czech Republic, you are virtually a love brand. I'd like to ask how you perceive the customer in practice and how it functions internally. And perhaps, Petr, what makes Air Bank different from your previous experiences?

Internal functioning is crucial because here when you need something, some help, to push a project, you don't feel any resistance. Colleagues always try to accommodate you. They know that when you come up with something, you definitely didn't make it up for your own pleasure, but it makes sense, there's a procedure behind it, and it will be good for the clients.

It's also very open here. We have flexible office space, and anyone can sit where they want. This means that even the CEO can sit at your desk, and it's normal. Every month we have regular meetings for all employees, explaining what's happening, why it's happening, and what will happen next, which then prevents any doubts.

You work in a Research Team, and I'm interested in your organizational placement and how you interact with other departments.

We are quite independent and, in those four years, a rather wandering unit. Originally, we were under marketing, then we moved under CRM, and we even considered being under the product team, but we realized it doesn't really matter where we are because we have to operate independently.

Currently, we're under CRM, and it has significant advantages because we have access to resources and client contacts. CRM communicates directly with clients, so when we want to reach out to clients with some research, we are right at the source, and it's the smoothest process from creating a questionnaire to delivering it. But as I said, it's essentially the same because we serve the entire bank.

How large is the Research Team?

There are three of us, and we handle quite a significant amount of projects. I just looked at the statistics for October, and we've already completed around 180 projects. So, by the end of the year, we'll certainly complete 200 projects, all of which go through that process.

First, you talk to someone about what's needed. Then you look for a quick solution, and you have to process and evaluate it well. So these are not one-time, quick tasks; we somehow have to manage all of this as a team. Additionally, some of these projects, around 5 to 10, are larger and long-term ones.

How did you manage to make the customer perspective mean anything at all? And what are the specific types of activities you perform? Research can go in various directions. What are you actually working on?

When I started, there wasn't so much research happening. However, after some time, when you show that the information you bring truly accelerates decision-making, improves a process, enhances a product, and is genuinely beneficial, it quickly spreads from one team to another.

Now, we've reached a capacity limit where we're starting to think about prioritization because there are so many requests piling up, and the three of us are getting overwhelmed. But when you explain that this project will be done next month and you have good reasons for it, it's perfectly fine. It's about communication.

As for the scope, we cover all research fields. From satisfaction surveys to employee research, and product development, which means we're involved in all stages of product development. From testing of initial concepts to final testing. We're also in traditional marketing research, which means we conduct ad tests and communication tests.

"We prepare the scenario and conduct the entire interview ourselves. This has added value because we can involve colleagues who are relevant to the topic."

Now we're looking at how it works at the branches. We conduct customer journey mapping across various products, feedback, image research, branding research, and UX research. But, of course, not everyone does everything. My colleague Tereza mainly handles UX research and testing. My colleague Honza is responsible for various innovation directions, and monitors the market, what the competition is doing, and what the world is doing. My area is more focused on satisfaction research, feedback, branding research, and PR research.

How is it possible that you manage to handle such a workload?

We've cut out everything unnecessary. For example, we don't create presentations, we only write summaries of what we found and recommend, which saves hours of work. There are, of course, projects that require presentations, but those are minimal.

We also do most activities ourselves, which may seem like more work, but it's the opposite. Collaboration with an agency often significantly prolongs the entire research process. We can create questionnaires ourselves, and collect and analyze the data ourselves. This brings us from hours to days within the assignment and the final result.

We often use guerrilla methodologies in research, where we involve the customer in the project within hours. But when there's a two-week research project, that becomes quite a significant blocker. How do you handle this?

For qualitative research, recruiting respondents is really the most challenging part. We leave that to agencies we've vetted. Then, we prepare the scenarios and conduct the entire interview ourselves. This has added value because we can involve colleagues who are directly related to the topic. If it's about loans, we invite colleagues who are responsible for loans because they are experts in that area.

This really builds trust in the research. From my experience, whenever we show someone a presentation or maybe even a recording, it never has the same strong effect as when the person sits right there.

It can also be dangerous because the product manager can form an opinion. They don't know that the previous client said something different, so the final truth from the research must come from us. Also, information don't get lost between the lines. If an agency produced it, no matter how good they are, they're still not experts in banking.

I'm also interested in more specific examples. Could you highlight a successful project where the company benefitted from your research and turned it into specific value for the customer?

I'd probably start with the staggered payment, that we introduced in January as our new product. It's been about two to three years since we started thinking about it. We investigated whether people would even want such a service, and we were surprised that the interest was really high.

Originally it was supposed to be a completely free service, but clients themselves in interviews said it's not entirely right because it's still some sort of a loan, and everyone should think at least a little before spreading their payment. So, a hygiene fee of 50 crowns for the instalment was introduced, which is a one-time payment at the beginning, and then it's interest-free.

"We don't exactly love NPS, but it's a verified metric that works quite well in expressing the relationship with clients."

Although any fees at Air Bank are perceived as a negative thing because we are primarily a fee-free bank, in this case, it's a hygiene factor. Clients understand why it's there, and it's still a very good deal when you can retrospectively split a payment you made a month ago.

It doesn't work exactly like a loan; it's more about managing the cash flow. When you suddenly run out of money at the end of the month, and you can see that last month you paid 10,000 for something, you can get that 10,000 back into your account by just clicking on it. And you only start repaying it from the next month, effectively extending your cash flow for the following months.

So the insight from the customers was that they didn't want it for free, right?

Offering it for free would have led to situations where people would spread even their basic expenses. It's really meant for extraordinary expenses. And the 50 crowns at least make you think about it a bit.

The entire process illustrates your work well. In the background, you do trend hunting, where you see Clarna. You conduct some concept testing and then incorporate it into the development plan. And at all these points, you, as the research team, represent the customer.

My colleague is responsible for trend hunting, and he has developed a method for tracking trends across all industries. We look at what's happening globally and how it's approaching the Czech Republic. When something new comes up in China or the United States, it will be here in a year or two.

Then we show it to the product teams and other people who should focus on it. So they can plan their capacities because there comes a moment when the innovation is so close that you already don't have the time to develop it. Of course, all banks monitor innovations and what's happening, but you must plan your capacities to keep up. For example, when Apple Pay was introduced, there was a race to be the first. Of course, clients are also excited when they are first and can show others how it works.

I'd like to focus a bit more on quick research. You already mentioned the accuracy and credibility of your results. How do you evaluate at such speed whether something might need more time? And how are you sure when it's sufficient?

This, of course, varies from case to case. We have relatively frequent meetings with other teams to know what they are planning. We spread awareness about how long things take. You can't create a customer journey in a week, and you can't complete significant product development in 14 days. We plan it together with the product team to be synced.

We've managed to set up communication so that whenever something starts in product development, marketing, or communication, we are there at the beginning so that we can assess whether it's even necessary to conduct research. If you have better, existing data, it's good to know about it at the beginning, so that you don't do the same work unnecessarily.

"NPS is still just a number; the main work lies in the comments people write to us"

Then we identify the questions that need to be answered, and there's no other way to answer them than by conducting research. We spend the most time on preparation. Once the research is well set up, you can finish it relatively quickly. It's been really useful to have detailed discussions with product teams and communication to clarify what the actual goal is and how the research will be used.

Previously, the requests used to come as: "We need to find out how much people like this product." And we researched how much people liked the product. But the actual goal was how it sells, which is a slightly different question. So, we dedicate most of our time to the initial phase, where we clarify what the research should actually achieve. In the end, no one examines which method we use or how we process it because we know that what we do, we do well, quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively.

There is quite a lot of pressure on us because when we conduct research, it is relatively quickly implemented. For instance, if we say that about seven percent of people will be interested in a product, but two months later, when it's launched, only one percent is interested, colleagues start asking what was the problem. Whether the target audience was wrong, the research was flawed, or the communication was off. But when you're here, it's assumed that you know how to do your job. What you experienced at the beginning of your career when they were asking you why you asked that question instead of another, that, fortunately, no longer happens here.

So, it requires a fair amount of seniority. When a team of three needs to deliver value quickly, experience must be present. We talked about trends. What are the things that you measure in the long term, and at which you look at through your metrics?

First, there's the conceptual perspective where we look at the past, present, and future. In the past, we focus on feedback. This means that we regularly ask our clients how they rate our services, how satisfied they are with us, and what would they improve.

Then we monitor current things, such as brand tracking, where we track how well we are known to both clients and non-clients and the entire representative population. And, of course, we look into the future at new trends and concept testing.

In terms of metrics, we don't have many. The main and only metric for us is NPS (Net Promoter Score). Not because we love NPS, but because it's a metric we can use to compare with others. It's a verified metric that works well in expressing the relationship with clients.

"We collect feedback from 100,000 people a month."

For Air Bank, it's crucial in client acquisition, how people get to us. Almost everyone asks their acquaintances which bank is good and which one to turn to when they need a new product. Our clients must know that if someone asks them, they can say, "Yes, I'm so satisfied with Air Bank that I'll gladly recommend it without hesitation, and with clear conscience."

When is NPS a relevant metric for you?

It's the only metric we track within the measurement of satisfaction surveys. But it's still just a number. It's nice to have a goal and increase it every year, however, the main work lies in the comments from customers that accompany this number."

We approach about one-twelfth of our client base, which means around 100,000 people monthly, with feedback, and every month, we receive thousands of textual responses and justifications for why a person is so satisfied or dissatisfied. This is the most significant treasure we work with. We genuinely read all the comments and categorize them according to the product and team so that everyone has up-to-date numbers every month, knowing what to improve and correct.

It also helps us to see how these topics evolve over time. Some topics emerge suddenly, grow, and continue to grow until resolved. Then there are long-term topics, and when they are fixed, they gradually disappear from the comments, which is the goal. There are also seasonal topics. So, it's an excellent tool for tracking the mood of our clients. What, and when a particular action suits them, like for example discounted rates for foreign currency payments during vacation season.

Do you really read all those comments manually?

So far, we have processed them manually. I'm not saying we won't use technology in the future, but the added value of enriching ourselves with the context of what clients are saying, and how they're saying it, is significant for us. Perhaps certain models can reveal what clients may want, like more ATMs or branches, but what's missing is how they discuss it, whether they are very upset, and so on. So, the quality is still lacking.

Where do you think research at Air Bank will be in a few years?

Here, we can actually do whatever we want if it makes sense. When you come up with an idea that you want to start researching and implementing, and you know why you want to do it, no one will say no.

Even the feedback on NPS wasn't here, and some people were concerned about how it affects clients when we would contact so many of them every month. Whether it would bother them or not. But it turned out that it works; people are happy to respond, and it makes sense. They even respond happily multiple times because besides we ask them questions, we have to show them that we're doing something with their responses.

Things that need to be addressed are dealt with immediately, so we sometimes call customers back, as it also functions somewhat like a complaint department. Every year, we send them a list of things that have changed based on their feedback. Sometimes it's visible, sometimes less, but something always happens. When clients know this, it motivates them to respond, so we have a significant response rate, and you can see how they elaborate on it.

We also organize various informational and entertaining events for colleagues to spread the knowledge we acquire, and we try to connect everyone. We're trying to find an optimal balance in information delivery so that we don't overwhelm them but, at the same time, reach as many people as possible. We're still looking for it and experimenting with different methods, frequencies, and formats to get the information to people. The path forward is more about spreading this knowledge than seeking for new information.

The last question I ask every guest: What is the biggest design challenge you would like to solve in your life?

It smells a bit like a UX question, but I would aim it more broadly. What bothers me in today's world is how diversity, originality, and uniqueness are getting lost due to efficiency and costs, and everything is becoming more and more similar. So, for me, the challenge is to bring back diversity, originality, and uniqueness to any service. So the client knows why they use Air Bank. That it's a bit different, a bit better, a bit more interesting, and more user-friendly. That would be my wish, for it to be more diverse, and for us to be an example of that diversity.

That's a beautiful challenge in this late capitalist world, where everything is a commodity, and everything is also uniform. Analytical work is directing everything towards universal equality. And for that, we must involve creative work as well.

Research probably contributes to it as well because when it's used poorly, you naturally end up with an average of everything, and everything looks the same. Averaging is hell, so research needs to be used smartly and correctly so that the results contribute to that diversity, and don't flatten everything into one grey box.

Yes, and those extremes can be inspiring.

Exactly, and that's usually where trends begin.


Listen to the whole interview with Petr Šmíd in Slovak:

Minimum Viable Podcast is brought to you every two months by the design studio Lighting Beetle*, which focuses on creating an exceptional customer experience.

Design is all around us. Minimum Viable Podcast explores design with a small “d” – the one that looks for solutions to people's problems. In it, together with our guests, we address topics that are related to design, but we normally do not associate with it. Thanks to the Zeldeo production studio and our production manager Mojmír Procházka for the cooperation.

We are looking forward to every listen, follow, share, and suggestion for improvement. You can send us your tips for interesting personalities with whom we can talk about design to podcast@lbstudio.sk.

Enjoy!

Minimum Viable Podcast #21: CX in banking

In this podcast, we often talk about how to transform an organization to prioritize the customer. However, we rarely have representatives from small to medium-sized companies. In our recent survey on the state of CX in Slovakia, it was confirmed that the size of the company doesn't matter. Everyone can be successful.


In the 20th episode of the Minimum Viable Podcast, Michal Blažej discusses building Customer Experience in small organizations with Lucia Čišková, Managing Director of Business Lease Slovakia.

Minimum Viable Podcast is brought to you by the CX design studio Lighting Beetle*. It's usually recorded in the Slovak language, however, you can read an English transcription of this episode below. For more content in English, including case studies and handouts, visit our Journal.

Are you interested in the level of Customer Experience of your organization? Find out in few seconds by answering these 6 questions.

What does Business Lease do?


Business Lease has been providing services for corporate mobility in Slovakia for 25 years. For the past five years, we've also been dealing with mobility for individuals, which includes operational leasing services. Besides that, we offer additional services like short-term rentals under the Biznis Rent brand. We also manage vehicle fleets for clients who don't have their entire fleet under operational leasing but want to use operational leasing services. Additionally, we've expanded into selling used vehicles after operational leasing, which we market under the Cars & Care brand.


How does Business Lease differ from the competition?


We keep the customer at the center of attention. Our vision is to "be the most customer-oriented company in the mobility management segment."


In simple terms, we want to be among the best and most successful companies in Slovakia. To break it down, being the best means being a hero in service quality and then in the approach of our people.


You Are a multinational company. Is the corporate vision defined for the entire group?

Yes. I'm very pleased that this vision came from the top and wasn't just defined locally in Slovakia. In 2018/2019, there was a beautiful alignment and what I wanted to implement in Slovakia was supported by our leadership. Business Lease's main value is care. Operational leasing services are similar everywhere. We need a key differentiator that will propel us forward and we achieve that by our approach to customers. My vision was driven by the desire to make a big leap in finances and satisfaction among both employees and customers. I wanted to double the results, so I started looking for a way to achieve this goal.

Companies often ask themselves how to differentiate, and Customer Experience is one of the possibilities. However, you combined CX with business results, which usually happens later in a company's development. You managed to do it in one step. You mentioned the results. What have you achieved?


In five years, we've managed to increase our fleet by 38%, our profitability from 1.7 to 5.2 million, our NPS score from 41 points to 64, handling complaints decreased from 13 days to 3.7 days, and we moved our Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) score from 70 to 86 points.


Regarding the employees, we've rapidly decreased previously high fluctuation, and nowadays we keep it under 5%, which means a stable and content team. In terms of the willingness of our employees to recommend Business Lease as an employer, we've moved from 67 to 76.5.


It's interesting that customer experience is often more about employee satisfaction. You mentioned several internal KPIs and then financial indicators, which is challenging to connect. How do they influence each other?


It's simple. Increasing the quality of services and the approach of employees causes higher customer satisfaction and higher sales. It turns out that 30% of new customers come based on word of mouth and the good name of Business Lease. This allows us to cut marketing expenses.


So the answer is loyalty and satisfaction of existing customers.


With current customers, we measure the so-called repeat rate. This is our ability to renew the vehicle fleet for a given client. We've increased this from 48% to 62%. Of course, we also have customer churn. We measure churn rate on a monthly basis because we know that acquiring a new customer is much more expensive than retaining an existing one and we want to keep this under control.


I assume that you monitor financial indicators every day. How often do you check the other data?


In 2018 we wanted to get the company results under control and we found out we weren't achieving what we wanted. So, we introduced these so-called mid-month meetings where the entire middle management sits and they are trying to find out where we're falling behind while still having two more weeks until the end of the month to deliver the expected results


Regarding the customer experience, it's measured in various ways. It can't always be done on a monthly, or more frequent basis, but we collect feedback continuously.


Likewise, Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) probably can't be measured on a weekly basis, right?


It's measured twice a year.


What was the journey to implementing a better Customer Experience like?


At the very beginning, we needed to stabilize the team. To have clarity about the vision, mission, values, and culture. We wouldn't have achieved these results in life if we had chaos at home. It took six to eight months of intensive work with the team.


We conducted a major employee survey, based on which we began making changes on a monthly basis. Also moving people to the right positions was also one of the problems. Then we defined the culture we wanted to have at Business Lease so that everyone feels comfortable here.


Imagine about 19-20 bullet points. Openness, open communication, active listening, feedback, and so on.. What was written had to be understood as well. This took from 6 to 8 months.

"We would have never achieved the results if we had chaos at home."

Then we could move on to the second phase. With Jan Urig, we had a two-day workshop, and he asked us which company was close to our hearts. I mentioned e-obuv because I love that within 48 hours I can have any shoes delivered and I can immediately try them on.


We had "Care" as our differentiator, but we didn't know what that meant. How would Business Lease differentiate itself? Then we got acquainted with the customer journey. For me, it was very shocking to find out that our process diagram was vertical. We described everything using our terminology, from our perspective, it was all about "us, us, us." The customer wasn't mentioned at all.


Jan showed us the customer journey horizontally. Everything was defined from the customer's perspective, which was a big difference. The second point was starting to work on it. The third point was how we address problems in the company.


The problem was that four of us, wise heads, sat down, we understood what it was about, we defined it, we implemented it, and we found that the customer still wasn't satisfied. Design thinking is about empathy with the customer. So, we started with mapping customer journeys. We did this through personal interviews with our customers. We put in a lot of effort, and prepared our questions.


So, we have the customer journey of our client, our driver, our Cars & Care customer who buys a used car after operational leasing. We also don't forget about the employees. We have the employee's customer journey as well. It needs regular refreshes, so we update it every year or two based on the feedback we collect through qualitative or quantitative surveys.


Have you identified what your opportunities for improvement are? Or how did opportunities for improvement compare to the customer journey you designed with customers? How did you prioritize among those various initiatives?


You need to distinguish between initiatives for a "quick fix”, "mid-term", and "long-term". You can't do everything, although I have this characteristic of wanting to do everything at once. The customer journey helped us identify where we have room for improvement. It repeatedly showed us that we thought differently.


We thought that our customers really cared about the delivery of a new vehicle, that it was a crucial moment for them. The opposite is true. Of course, they are very excited, but it's not crucial for the customer at all. What's crucial is, for example, the duration they stay with us. They don't want full service only on the day of delivering the car; they want it throughout the entire period. They need to drive, and we need to take care of service, tire service, and continuously improve our services.


Next is the termination of operational leasing. Is that also a source of concern? How does operational leasing end? Customers told us that returning their car is a very emotionally challenging experience for them too. We've marked this as "Red Point."


CX is about emotions. What emotional experience do the customers have at every point of contact with Business Lease. And the question arises here, how to deal with it?


We started doing projects - Rapid Deployment Units (SWAT). This way, we started transforming Red Points into Green Points with very nice results. To this day, we've completed 15 of such projects.


What does a SWAT project look like, and how does it differ from the others?


For the implementation of CX, onboarding all employees is crucial. Our employees themselves defined they want to put the customer first. We knew about Red Points and started addressing them through SWAT projects. The project consists of four to six people. It takes about six to 8 weeks and has a clearly defined goal. People volunteered for these projects. All areas of the company are represented in the project to cover the entire customer journey. Marketing and communication are also essential. I would highlight two projects that were successful.


Imagine that you have 7,500 cars, that's 7,500 drivers who use your services across Slovakia. We provide services through our partner service network, which is quite extensive. It's crucial that the Customer Experience is what the customer expects and that services work the same way everywhere. Therefore, it was essential to do two things.

"We thought that our customers really cared about the delivery of a new vehicle, that it was a crucial moment for them. However, the opposite is true."

First, unify the quality of services. With us, you get pick-up service, you get a replacement vehicle when yours stays in service for more than 24 hours. When the repair is over 150 euros, we wash your car. We had parameters we needed to standardize across Slovakia.


It was a big challenge to change all the contracts, and it also took us some time. However, we succeeded. Then there was the question of how to get customers into the right services. That's when we implemented a call center line, which we had to teach our customers to call. Today, about 78% or even 80% of our customers call this line, which guides them to repair shops where we have a consistent level of quality.


This SWAT project took longer than eight weeks. What was the time limit you set there? What was the output of this project after eight weeks, for example?


We implemented a call center line and we communicated the information about it through our website, through various documents, we handed over the car with information about the call center, etc. Until then, customers went everywhere, and it happened that they didn't get a pick-up or replacement vehicle.


After every service visit, we also measure the experience. In satisfaction surveys, we saw a clear jump. Previously, we scored around 78 points, and now it's over 90, but we still want to go further.


SWAT projects are intended to bring dynamics to large companies' overloaded processes. The significant value for the company is that it's not burdened by a two-year planned project.


The great advantage of Business Lease is that we have fifty employees, and we can implement changes quickly. We also have a clear vision from our group. The Business Lease Group operates in five countries, so we can implement changes as a group.


We don't have two-year projects here, except perhaps for digital transformation. The vision comes from above, but we have a lot of freedom in how we provide our services. We know our market, we know our customers, so we have a lot of flexibility in this regard.


I would like to go into more detail about the transformation within the organization. How did you manage to get employees on board? Was it part of your corporate strategy?


We introduced a different way of handling complaints through "customer feedback coffee sessions." Employees said they wanted to address customers and they made them their priority. They saw that satisfaction was declining. They named it themselves, and we created a tool.


Twice a week, people from various areas have 15 to 20-minute meetings where they discuss problems and immediately look for solutions.

Creating rituals while giving people the freedom to change things is crucial. Indeed, influencing the Customer Experience effectively cannot happen without a transformation of the culture, which was your first step.


Emphasizing the vision is also important, repeating it constantly, and returning to it. It wouldn't work without goals either. Suddenly, our goals weren't just financial results, the fleet, and profit. Employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction had the same weight. The whole team had the same goals, which were equally important to everyone.


I'll ask about the education of other people, not just management. Have they gone through any training or education there?


Know-how regarding customer experience is very scarce in Slovakia. We have Palo Mikolaj, who is certified. So, he brought knowledge, which I see as an important element in the company's development and growth. I started studying as well, but it's going slowly because I'm always so interested that I want to implement it into the company immediately.


I really appreciate companies that are in Slovakia and focus on CX because they helped us with customer journeys and interviews. We didn't have this know-how. We didn't train people; we simply involved them in activities.

"Knowledge about customer experience in Slovakia is very poor."

When we conducted qualitative interviews with our customers, we didn't do it by hiring a company to do the interviews and provide us with results. We had our employees conduct the interviews with external experts as observers and supervisors. It's best to learn by doing.


CX is about emotions, and those emotions come from our employees. To create a bond with the customer, we need to define six emotional drivers and use them. For example, when a customer says they trust us, or that we fix something for them, or that we keep promises, we try to motivate with it among various positions in the company so that employees know what they can influence and enhance.


Training and knowledge of the methodology are good, but the design of the customer experience is largely about common sense. You've tackled it very well by involving employees directly into real projects. Finally, I have two more questions. What are your challenges? What are your personal challenges?


We would like to expand our service portfolio. We want to introduce a fixed operational leasing product, including all possible costs like inflation fluctuations, interest rates, or the possibility that you might damage the car at the end. We want to launch it in January. This whole idea came from customer feedback.


The second service is called "Go Better," where we adapt feedback from customers. We toyed with the idea of how customers could become carbon-neutral. This Go Better program will enable them to do so. It's about first measuring their current carbon footprint, providing an analysis, followed by driver training for eco-friendly driving.


We have a digital tool for this that we'll implement in cars, which can measure your driving style and provide feedback. Finally, we have a clear process for how we can reduce emissions. In the long term, it's about service quality, and the approach of our people. I constantly keep this in mind and want to keep working on it. So, implementing these emotional drivers into the company and assigning them to specific roles is essential to me. But what I haven't mentioned yet is that on the 7th of August, we implemented a completely new digital system, an ERP system. We digitalized everything.


It's a significant step for us because it allows us to support future growth. With this system, we can easily absorb thousands of more cars. That's important, and that's where we're heading because achieving that five million revenue in one year is one thing, but when it happens for five consecutive years or even more, I'll be satisfied. That's my long-term goal, to truly have those five million consistently.


I'm curious about your design challenge in life that you'd like to solve.


The automation of the entire customer journey in terms of processes from the customer's perspective. So, today, there's a lot relying on the human factor. From our services to handling insurance claims, and more. On the other hand, only the human factor can provide emotion, however, I see a massive opportunity for digitalization and automation in that process. I wish it all went smoothly and automatically, systemically, from start to finish. In the end, the customer will say that they've never experienced anything better, not just because the process went smoothly and systematically, but because it frees our hands for even more humanity. Personalized service. When we manage to harmonize this, customers will be extremely satisfied and will say they've never experienced anything better than Business Lease.


So, you're from the group that sees automation positively because it will give you more time for relationships and interactions. I don't know if you have data from your segment. I recently read agency data from agencies that were able to implement automation, mainly using Artificial Intelligence. In this case, their gross margins increased by 70%. So, automation could also help you achieve your long-term goal.


Listen to the whole interview with Lucia Čišková in Slovak:

Minimum Viable Podcast is brought to you every two months by the design studio Lighting Beetle*, which focuses on creating an exceptional customer experience.

Design is all around us. Minimum Viable Podcast explores design with a small “d” – the one that looks for solutions to people's problems. In it, together with our guests, we address topics that are related to design, but we normally do not associate with it. Thanks to the Zeldeo production studio and our production manager Mojmír Procházka for the cooperation.

We are looking forward to every listen, follow, share, and suggestion for improvement. You can send us your tips for interesting personalities with whom we can talk about design to podcast@lbstudio.sk.

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Minimum Viable Podcast

MVP offers insights into design, which allows you to make things easier in everyday life. Michal Blažej, experienced in business strategy, and his guests debate and discuss different topics.

Minimum Viable Podcast #28: Business design

Minimum Viable Podcast #27: Creating better cities

Minimum Viable Podcast #26: Innovations in retail

Minimum Viable Podcast #24: From designer to investor

Minimum Viable Podcast #23: CX in logistics

Minimum Viable Podcast #22: Future Thinking

Minimum Viable Podcast #21: CX in banking

Minimum Viable Podcast #20: CX in small organizations

Minimum Viable Podcast #19: Customer Experience Maturity

Minimum Viable Podcast #18: CX in complex environment

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Your journey
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Get inspired!

All Stories

Podcasts

Events

Tools

Newsletter

Minimum Viable Podcast

MVP offers insights into design, which allows you to make things easier in everyday life. Michal Blažej, experienced in business strategy, and his guests debate and discuss different topics.

Minimum Viable Podcast #28: Business design

Minimum Viable Podcast #27: Creating better cities

Minimum Viable Podcast #26: Innovations in retail

Minimum Viable Podcast #24: From designer to investor

Minimum Viable Podcast #23: CX in logistics

Minimum Viable Podcast #22: Future Thinking

Minimum Viable Podcast #21: CX in banking

Minimum Viable Podcast #20: CX in small organizations

Minimum Viable Podcast #19: Customer Experience Maturity

Minimum Viable Podcast #18: CX in complex environment

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Your journey starts here

Your journey
starts here