Current Position

I’ve found that larger organizations have customer insights to use. Having a sense of what the current customers think can provide direction of where to focus. 

• Areas the company excels

• Pain points

• Brand perception

• Net promoter score

Using our banking example, customer data might tell us that the bank is known for excellent customer service but poor technology. As we look to develop our app, we want to catch up in technology without sacrificing the brand’s perception of service. Maybe that leads us to incorporate a ‘book a client call’ function in the app, and that now has to integrate with geo-located customer service representatives in the area. This could itself be a big chunk of development work alone, so we want to identify this as an opportunity, but also a risk if we don’t incorporate it.

Competitive Landscape

With a goal in mind, we can evaluate what’s in the market to understand what delivers success. We spoke of personalization, convenience, security; what is solving this problem today? What is our best alternative?

There are many web-interface banking solutions and apps already in the market. We know we have to meet these experiences at a minimum to gain adoption, plus, we want to learn from the existing points of friction. 

• What features does the app require?

• How do we create convenience with security?

• Where are the most common points of frustration?

I also love to ask what the next best alternative is. Sometimes there isn’t a clear competitor that offers what we’re doing, so how does the customer solve their problem? Are customers forced to go into a bank to get service? Are people phoning in? Write these out and map the journey from need to solution for your customer.

Customer Personas

Building customer profiles also allows us to map a variety of potential use cases. In the example of banking, we have the common, technology comfortable consumer. But we also have aged consumers that are less tech enabled, and the youth consumer that is extremely sensitive to inadequacies in technology.

As an agency or service provider, we often have the luxury of being more like a customer than our clients. Our clients may have spent everyday around their customer’s for years, but that quite often means being too close to recognize opportunity. 

This paradox is quite common. It’s the old ‘see the forest for the trees’ expression. We can come in as outsiders and provide a plain realization of gaps in the experience that businesses often overlook.

Customer Journey

For deliverables like apps, websites or software, mapping the customer journey is essential. Going through this enables you to highlight entry points, key features, integrations or other interactions the customer would experience.

TIP: I’ve found it unbelievably valuable to produce visuals for this phase. Most of the time I find clients will picture something in their heads, and if you can’t connect with that, you’re going to feel the pain later on.

Wireframes

Wireframes are basic boxes and directions of how an interface would essentially work. It doesn’t need any colours or fancy graphics, just a simple ability to communicate functions, priorities and user flow. We often stop short of complete mockups of the solution in the functional specification process, as that often requires considerable creative time and can increase costs significantly. 

Building customer profiles also allows us to map a variety of potential use cases. In the example of banking, we have the common, technology comfortable consumer. But we also have aged consumers that are less tech enabled, and the youth consumer that is extremely sensitive to inadequacies in technology.