How to manufacture experiences that change customer behaviour

What does “design from the ground up” mean?

Start with a specific customer journey and define exactly what each phase within that journey needs to achieve.

This definition may take the form of a “single minded job to get done” (i.e. one single overarching statement of what we would like the customer to achieve in this phase) or a more refined set of targeted customer outcomes (i.e. a set of more specific customer outcomes that we would like the customer to achieve within this phase).

Map all the existing customer touch points, identify the purpose of the touchpoint and determine whether it achieves the purpose.

Depending on your access to customer engagement data, this may be an actual measured result, or just a gut feel.

For each touch point, answer the following questions:

• What is the purpose of this communication?
• What is the targeted outcome for the customer?
• Does it fulfil the purpose?

Now that you have the ‘as is’ position, you need to shift gears, start from a clean slate and completely reimagine the customer experience you think would motivate the right engagement. 

Try not to get bogged down with operational or technical restraints at this stage. Think from the customer’s point of view only. 

Depending on the information available, this may even require a co-design session with your customers and stakeholders – though in my experience, I have seen some amazing and effective experiences designed using existing knowledge.

For each experience, determine  the following:

• What is the targeted outcome for the customer?
• What are the targeted outcomes before and after this point?
• What information/data is key to enable that outcome?
• How can we best deliver and represent the information? 
• What behaviours do we want to encourage?
• How can we drive/incentivise those behaviours?
• How do we measure whether or not we were successful?

Using the answers to these questions, design the ideal experience from the ground-up. This may require a complete re-imagining of the existing experience, as well as a broader understanding of how each touchpoint impacts the rest of the customer journey. 

It’s important to note that re-imagining an experience does not always require a “rip-and-replace” of the existing experience, it may just require a repackaging or extension of the current assets.