Innovating in a massive time of change

Part of our design ethos is not getting trapped in a single static viewpoint. We try to remain flexible, letting our customer-led research show us, and our clients, the truth behind their assumptions.

That flexible approach is what allows us to adapt when, during our mission to create a compelling wellness value proposition for our Property Client, the Coronavirus crisis changed everything.

As an owner of commercial buildings, they quickly recognised that the impact of COVID-19, and the social distancing measures that accompanied it, would have a considerable effect on their customers and their attitudes towards wellness in a commercial environment.

Partnering with us, they looked to define their customer’s core needs during a time of significant upheaval and how they could provide added value when attitudes towards working space were in constant flux.

Our first step in helping our Property Client reposition in such a way that they could continue to offer value to their customers was to absorb their perspective and understand the current experience from their perspective.

Stakeholder interviews and meetings with leading customer representatives helped us define the roadblocks to be overcome. We also conducted visits to their buildings that enabled us to immerse and gain insight into the experiences of the building community.

At a time when crisis on a global scale has left so many people raw and confronted, it was more important than ever to listen to their truths and let those verbatims be the primary driver of innovation.

Through researching global best practice, reviewing surveys and social media and conducting customer interviews, we were able to discover and understand customer feedback about specific business challenges.

Since we show you what simple data can’t, we created eight sets of needs states. Four pre-COVID and four post-COVID. These need states translated raw data into simple, but meaningful statements that would inform the activities that our Property Client produced and recommend.

The difference between the pre-COVID and post-COVID needs states allowed them to empathise with their customer’s struggles, both functionally and emotionally, during the crisis. This kind of deep understanding of customer needs is how we find the why that opens the how.

Having identified the core needs of the customer, and how those needs were evolving in the face of crisis, we created and connected eight enablers to those need states that would keep the customer at the heart of operational decision-making process.

Because of the extremely fluid nature of how wellness is perceived during times of crisis, we also incepted a scorecard to evaluate their buildings regularly. This scorecard would allow them to stay connected to their customers, updating their value proposition in response to feedback and adapting to the new normal.

By embedding deep customer understanding into how they approached their value proposition, we provided the insight and clarity they needed to make confident innovations during a time of significant uncertainty.

These innovations allowed us to develop new and exciting ways to offer value that were outside the core deliverables of a building owner. These deliverables were then prioritised around their customer’s need states so they could continue to innovate into an uncertain future.