Our first step was to go out and talk with customers in a way that would reveal the most important issues. We spent time with Australian Ethical investors to truly understand not only what they wanted from their fund performance, plus what they expected from their ethical investments. By getting up close with everyday ethical investors, we were able to quickly bring back the voice of the customer.
Our next step was to involve Australian Ethical staff. We ran a half day session with more than 50 head office staff to share what we'd found, and co-design solutions. The aim was to accelerate innovation and idea development. We created five idea pods with unique themes and helped everyone generate ideas using Post-it notes and giant innovation boards. The result was an increase in staff engagement and lots more ideas than we ever could have imagined if we didn't involve the whole team.
We also reached out to customers who were invested with Australian Ethical. Of everyone we spoke to, it became crystal clear that customers didn't know about the ethical successes that Australian Ethical were creating with the funds. We realised that if Australian Ethical could do a better job of sharing their successes, not only would customers be happier, it would act as a promotional tool for potential customers.
It's one thing to develop a whole range of ideas that might solve a problem. It's altogether another thing to prioritise those ideas for real life success. We used a Customer Experience Pyramid to sort through what ideas were the 'must haves' for Australian Ethical's members, and which needed to come later.
Our customer journey maps build organisation-wide knowledge of customer actions, thoughts and feelings. We created a current journey map based on customers' existing reality, and then with employees we co-created an ideal journey map that showed what an ideal experience would look and feel like for their members. This ideal map aligned employees and provided guidance on exactly how to prioritise, action and execute distinctive experiences that would help Australian Ethical employees empathise with and delight their customers.
The results were overwhelmingly positive. We were able to deliver against Australian Ethical's 3 year roadmap and create 'wow' customer experiences for over 35,000 Australians that now invest and trust their super with Australian Ethical. By combining detailed customer research, co-design workshops and prioritising 100 initiatives, Australian Ethical employees are aware, aligned and prepared to consistently deliver experiences their customer value and solve any new problems.
Proto was able to deliver:
We continue to work with Proto and call them on for advice and guidance to help us improve our overall customer experience. Many companies make big promises, but Proto have shown us that brand is the promise you make, customer experience is the promise you keep.
Allyson Lowbridge, Chief Customer OfficerLet us help you identify the most important thing about your customers that will unlock your company’s growth.
TALK WITH A CX EXPERT“Working with Proto was a leap of faith, but they have become a major strategic partner in our CX evolution. The work they've developed and the way we've been able to embed it in the organisation has been absolutely phenomenal, and we're getting the outcomes we want.”
“Proto were a pleasure to work with. They were adaptive and responsive, and developed a deep empathy for both the client and their customers. The quality of their products and services was outstanding.”
“Without the customer experience insights from the research program, we would not have been able to identify the acquisition issues that we had. Changes to the customer interactions that led up to financial protection have reduced the outflow rates by 50%.”
“From an NPS perspective, I have gone Spinal Tap on you guys and gone to 11. I still think the work you did with us, the way you went about it and the deliverables amounted to one of the best pieces of consulting advice I've ever commissioned.”
“Over the last 18 months, we've constantly referred to the work Proto did for us when designing and developing all the improvements to the app we're making. We've found their work to be highly valuable and has resulted in significant improvements to the MyOptus App that, without their insight wouldn't have been possible.”
“The outcome of the prototyping has been exceptional and we continue to use the knowledge and expertise that Proto shared with us during their engagement. The icing on the cake for me was that Proto captured all of the insights from the customer workshops into an organisational asset that we now use as an integral part of our toolkit for training and briefing new team members.”
“Proto's in-depth customer research helped us to uncover underlying customer needs that wouldn't have been possible without an 'outside-in' approach. The team identified the core customer problems and provided actionable insights that enabled us to remove key areas of customer friction and frustration and redesign a credit card experience like no other.”
“I have worked with Damian and the team at Proto for several years. In this time, they have worked collaboratively with us to build a roadmap of strategic 'outside-in' initiatives that ultimately resulted in a 20 point increase in NPS. They imparted a great deal of CX knowledge, approaches and tools that have been invaluable to the team and the business.”
“Proto revealed and captured a ton of insights, putting Gumtree in a position where we can take our experience from good to great!”
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“The Proto team demonstrated flexibility in their approach which made such a refreshing change. They took the time to coach and mentor each of us in a highly creative and energetic environment. Furthernore, they helped us exceed our customer satisfaction targets, all whilst stripping out in excess of 20% of our service costs in under 12 months. Proto helped us to stay focussed on the customer which enabled us to win in the market.”
“We worked with Proto on an exciting & unprecedented challenge at Optus, to design the customer experience of the future. Damian & the team had high energy & together we operated as 'one team'. Proto worked hand in hand with us to bring the internal team up to speed, & also brought in global experts to work with us to take our deliverables to another level of quality & innovation.”
“Proto developed a membership strategy that addressed points of friction along our members journey, identified opportunities to improve and clarified the types of engagement that our members needed at the different stages in their career. We were impressed with the depth of insight that Proto were able to bring to the project - as well as the energy and ideas that they helped to generate.”
“Working with Proto was very much a partnership. We worked hand-in-hand to put CX on the map within the organisation. The team are flexible, trustworthy and do what it takes to achieve the best outcome. If you’re looking for a quality agency, providing quality data and insights – Proto are your guys. We received over 90 initiatives from the project of which 79% have now been implemented and we are seeing the benefits flow through!”
“Proto integrated into multiple simultaneous projects to ensure we achieved the best outcome. They brought real clarity around customer needs, the fundamental elements of our value proposition and provided a clear roadmap of where we're trying to get to. This allowed us to differentiate beyond the traditional proposition. As a result, one customer-informed initiative we developed was loanScore™. This unique innovation helps customers see how good their home loan is and evaluate their options for a better deal.”
