Difference only matters if it makes a difference.
INSIGHT APPLIED
In order to deliver effective and transformational design you need real insight into the needs and behaviours of your customers. We spend the time to get to know your customers and your business in order to understand what makes both tick.
We do this by applying proven methods of research and analysis to develop insights that are potent, yet easy to apply. These insights are then translated across all streams of work, customer touch points and across all moments in the customer journey.
Four Simple Steps
No matter how many people tell you ‘their’ process is different and more effective, most design projects break down to four simple stages. This being said, design is never a cookie-cutter process. The inputs and your requirements define the process and ultimately the outputs, meaning no two engagements are identical. The detail wrapped around the steps involved in each stage must be customised for best effect, but the project stages and philosophy behind each step remains the same.
BRANDSPACE
Speaking the same language and agreeing your priorities is essential. The start point for all brand, digital and retail experience projects is the distillation of the business strategy and customer insights to hand. We then develop a snapshot of the visual, emotional and physical landscape, in which a brand or service experience exists. This determines the ideal space and characteristics that the brand will occupy. Using a range of visual and decision-making tools, which we call ‘Brandspace’, we wil work together with you to iteratively build a unified view. This view becomes the platform from which all further design decisions and outputs are developed.
Design is the critical difference
The discipline of design is becoming critical in helping businesses manage their relationships with customers. In effect, design is applied at every level of a business operation, whether formally or informally. From the design of a customer portal to the creation of a new product or service, design is a ‘process’ that helps to explore, hypothesise, visualise, prototype and refine any system or solution. Design and design thinking can be applied by an internal team or delivered by an external provider, or a combination of both. Look around you and you'll see that design is an increasingly important driver, used extensively for business transformation and improvement.
WHAT BRANDing IS
Everyone has heard the saying that a brand is not a logo. What has not always been clear to businesses is, if it is not a logo then what is it? In its most simple terms, a brand is the relationship that you have with customers and the reputation you have with non-customers. This means that your brand is the result of every function of your business, as it aligns to (or in many cases doesn’t) the needs of your customer. At DNA we focus on the most important part of business with respect to brand – the customer interface – to help transform businesses. This requires working at every level of the business to engage and enable positive change. Does your business have a brand and customer-led approach? If not, is your brand anything more than a logo?
Problem SolvED
In order to solve problems you need a considered approach to identifying the real problem. We’ve found that conventional wisdom does not always ring true, and that blanket approaches, or business cache’s, often fail. We are solution-agnostic, until we are clear about where you need help, so we won’t ever come to you with a premeditated solution. This is as true of a technological solution as it is a brand solution. Specific, tailored and relevant strategies and creative responses are more effective and efficient if they’re addressing real problems that you face.
MULTICHANNEL MEANS MULTIPURPOSE
We work across multiple channels within a business helping to ensure a consistent, effective application of design and experience across all channels. We do this with a multidisciplinary team who bring a mix of skills, knowledge and expertise. Our disciplines cut across the primary touch points for customers in their relationships with a business – from digital to retail. We understand how businesses operate and we bring together not only a great ‘designed’ solution, but one that will be customer-centred, feasible and have a positive effect on ROI.
THE CUSTOMER RULES
It is not surprising that design has most effect when developed in sympathy with your business operations and financial position. This brings a sharper, commercial focus to the solutions created. But operations and finance should not subsume the human factor in your brand, channels and service design. More than ever we believe you need to be cognisant of your customers’ value-equation – what matters to them needs to be a driver as much as what matters to you. So what does matter to them? Increasingly its a demand for self-service channels and the personalisation of products and services.
PERSONAS PUT LIFE IN TO PROJECTS
The 'real issues' and the 'right insight' are needed to determine the best approach and smartest deliverables for any customer-led challenge. To help define and articulate your customer groups and their needs we develop customer profiles, personas and service design personas. Profiles (which describe at a high level the users’ tasks and needs in relation to a product or service sector), provide high-level understanding that help guide a specific project.
Project-oriented personas seek to understand the users’ goals and behaviours in relation to a particular channel such as online or retail. They provide a depth of insights focused towards the specific project to ensure good decision-making throughout the process.
Service design personas look at the users’ relationship with a business, across all touch points and channels. These provide breadth, as well as depth of insight, that can be applied across many projects and over a long period of time to optimize the users’ full experience with the business.
TOUCH POINT OPTIMISATION
Customer Touchpoint Optimisation (CTO) is a DNA service, designed to help you find pragmatic business changing ideas for improving your bottom line – through greater understanding of your customers. CTO is ideal for organisations who have a plethora of opportunities and great need to improve their customer touchpoints, but are unsure where to start and how to determine which initiatives will have the most impact? Our methods are based on world class best practice. By the end of a CTO project, you will have blueprints in hand for a set of high impact, feasible projects that you can immediately move on. CTO is about finding you the smartest projects to optimise your customer touchpoints.
THE LAST WORD
“You need to understand me. Understand me, care about me and prove it”. That’s all customers ask. It may be your product and service, but for customers it’s their time, money, needs and goals that matter. Forget this at your peril.