Customer Centricity and The Discovery Process
This is Where Innovation Happens
Customer Centric Innovation happens when you keep the customer top of mind and at the center of your vision. By now, we all know that a successful offering must meet three key tenets:
Viability: Is there a business case for the offering? Can the company make money producing the offering?
Feasibility: Can we technically make the offering. Do we have the technological knowhow to create an offering that performs as expected?
Desirability: Have we delighted the customer? Is it a harmonious blend of usability and aesthetics? Does the offering communicate the desired brand image and is it intuitive? Does the customer prefer our offering over the competition?
How do you answer those questions and where do you start?
You begin by Framing before Solutioning.
Framing: Investigate and Synthesize
Solutioning: Design Solutioning and Testing
It always starts and ends with the customer.
1: Investigate
Connect with the customer to deeply understand their processes, KPI’s, needs and pain points. Map the End to End process with the customer. Create a Journey or Process Map. Document Key findings and Personas. What are the activities, who and what are the interactions between people, departments and systems? What tools or equipment do they use? What are their individual experience outcomes and pain points?
2: Synthesis
Synthesis the Investigation findings with the customer. Gather a divers team of the personas and encourage discussion to identify known paint points and opportunity areas. Encourage discussion with an Innovation Matrix and ask: “How might we” solve the pain point with people, processes, tools, magic wands, etc.?
Decide
Decide with the customer on the Clustering of those ideas into Key Themes.
3: Design Solution
Clearly define the problems identified in the Key Themes.
Clearly define the possible solutions. There can be more than one.
Identify the potential value and impact. What are the KPI’s? How do you define success and measure it?
Internal Activity
Desirability
Always Storyboard the solution. Engage the creative teams early to shape the Desirability of the offering.
4: Testing
Test the value of the Design Solution.
Have the customer or team decide each solution IMPACT and DIFFICULTY to implement.
This will allow the team to prioritize the solutions.
Internal Activities
Viability and Feasibility
Create a Value Walk. Quantify the Value Drivers against the Next Best Alternative (NBA). This will inform the Target Price and determine the Viability of the offering.
Connect with Internal Technical Stakeholders to determine the Feasibility of the offering. Can the offering be made?
Decide
Decide with the customer which is the best solution for further development.
5: Scale
Scale the solution with a Zero to First Revenue (Z21) Workshop!
The Framing and Solutioning process repeats with an internal team following the Zero to First Revenue (Z21) framework. Similar tools and processes that more thoroughly test and refine the offering. The goal is to decide if the offering is Kept, Killed or Pivoted before passing to a full development team.
This has been a brief overview of the Customer Centric Discovery Process I follow.
Always ask the questions of Viability, Feasibility and Desirability with the customer in mind.