Strategy
Creating a customer-centric vision that goes across business lines can be daunting, but the impacts will be felt both to the customer and the bottom-line. Your business strategy and UX strategy work together to ensure cohesive customer experiences and streamlined decision-making processes across all parts of the business, such as: product development, operations, technology, marketing, sales, customer services, etc. Having a compelling UX vision will rally the organization around the simple theme – investing in the customer and treating them holistically across all touchpoints. The Good Life Consulting provides strategic consulting to teams and leaders through projects as well as offsite sessions.
Case Study: Increased Customer Retention
Business Question
A financial services client was losing rank in JD Power studies, specifically in the customer touchpoint of card activation. They wanted to better understand the customer pain points and how competitors were addressing this customer need.
What We Did
The Good Life Consulting conducted a holistic assessment of their customer journeys with screen shots of every touchpoint, analyzed customer data including heatmaps and recordings and conducted a comprehensive UX analysis for the top 7 competitors.
It was identified that there was one primary problem that was underlying all of the pain points – they did not have a cohesive UX vision for the organization and no clear ownership of the customer journeys. Symptoms of the lack of vision were causing customer confusion and friction across business units.
- Too many competing Calls to Action (CTAs) due to competing priorities which made it an unnecessarily long journey.
- The ‘Look and Feel’ of the journey was not consistent because each section was owned by different business units.
- There were no consistent metrics across the organization to measure success.
The Good Life Consulting supported the holistic assessment by conducting a 2-day strategy session with 40+ stakeholders to align on the Point of Departure (POD) journeys and highlighting the top challenges.
Value to the Client
The output of the session was to develop cross functional workstreams to address each of the issues and develop a plan to move forward with reconstructing the journeys under a holistic UX vision. Senior Leadership was excited by the progress and a permanent team with clear ownership was created to move the strategic vision forward across all Business Units.
Competitive Insights
The competitive landscape is becoming increasingly saturated and user experience is becoming a key differentiator in the marketplace. Consumers are no longer satisfied with service that is substandard and they have the tools to quickly evaluate businesses online to determine what company is right for their needs – and they want that evaluation to be easy. Banks in particular need to consistently address user experience gaps and innovate. The most value tool that can be used is a comprehensive landscape of the competition. The Good Life Consulting competitive insights studies provide clients with innovative ideas as well as benchmarks that will help drive digital evolution.
Case Study: Created Competitive Advantage
Business Question
A large bank had declining new customer acquisitions and was losing share to local and national competitors. They wanted to better understand what the competition was doing differently on their websites/mobile apps to inform test & learn plans and ultimately a redesign.
What We Did
The Good Life Consulting identified 10 primary competitors across a variety of banking products and mapped out the user journeys from landing page through to primary Call to Action (CTAs) on mobile and desktop. Provided a screenshot fact-pack for the client that included their site details and all competitors, highlighting areas where changes would bring their sites up to par with the competition and areas where they could innovate to create a competitive advantage.
Value to the Client
The Client was able to evaluate a lengthy list of improvements and prioritize each opportunity based on time/effort/value. The fact-pack gave them a baseline for improvements holistically so that a strategy could be developed to ensure continuous improvements.
Usability Studies
Hearing feedback directly from your ideal customers is the only way to ensure that you are addressing their needs proactively. There are two primary types of research that The Good Life Consulting supports.
User studies such as on-site question and answer sessions are great ways to get real time feedback from potential customers on websites and mobile apps. They are particularly important at the beginning of development to get feedback early that can be used to improve experiences.
Mystery shopping is another tool that can be used to identify gaps in the existing user experience and to provide real life customer journeys. This research can also be conducted for competitors to see parts of the journey that only customers would know – such as emails and direct mail communications.
Case Study: Improved Customer Satisfaction
Business Question
A premier credit card issuer wanted to gain a better understanding of the customer experience that takes place when applying for a credit card. Gain insight into how the journey varied not only by issuer but by card type (entry / mid-range / premier / business).
What We Did
We partnered with a professional Mystery Shopper organization to track a team of Mystery Shoppers from when they first opened the credit card application through the first 30 days after the card was received in the mail. Captured images of all materials received by the shoppers throughout the journey and evaluated the process every step of the way.
Value to the Client
The client was able to identify areas within their onboarding system that could be modified to enhance the customers journey through the onboarding process. This journey provided insight into how they compared to the competitors. It identified issues seen in competitor cards which would help prevent these issues from being introduced into the client’s process in the future.
Data Analytics
Data analytics and reporting provide businesses with a fact-base of how a customer/prospect is engaging with their digital journeys. Along with basic site analytics there are a variety of platforms, such as Clicktale, that provide data visualization and session recordings which enhance understanding of user engagement with real-life examples. The Good Life Consulting leverages internal and external data to support UX improvement recommendations and to measure results of changes made onsite.
Case Study: Data-Informed Transformation
Business Question
A large finance organization was investing substantially in a site uplift project. There were many opinions and user studies that were informing recommendations. The organization wanted to understand what the data could tell them about customer pain-points and onsite engagement that would inform redesign.
What We Did
The Good Life Consulting partnered with internal data analytic teams and external vendor Clicktale to assess customer data in online journeys. We leveraged heatmaps of activity to identify potential areas of customer confusion and opportunities to streamline content when engagement was lacking. We also leveraged recorded online sessions and recorded calls with customer service to bring the issues to light for the Executive Team.
Value to the Client
The Client was able to assess the implicit value of recommendations and ensure implementation of the highest impact opportunities. They were also able to gain additional Executive Team support by providing real life examples of what was really happening onsite, making it a clearer call to action for the organization.
Research
The only thing that stays the same is that the world is always changing, and that has never been truer than today’s environment. As new devices are created and change, as customer expectations evolve and technology advancements come to market – user experiences will need to evolve as well. Businesses can’t create a site then leave it alone. There is a need to keep an eye on the future and integrate those advancements to create user experiences that are always relevant to consumers. We offer research on industry trends, technology, devices, personas, etc. If you are interested in it, we would love to do the research for you.
Case Study: Prepared for the Future
Business Question
A Banking Client had not updated their website in a few years and wanted to ensure they were leveraging all of the technology and UX improvements available to design their new site. They didn’t want to know just what other companies were implementing to improve customer usability now, but what trends they should plan for in the future.
What We Did
The Good Life Consulting conducted extensive research into future looking UX trends such as Navigation, Voice Search, Personalization, AI and video both within the Banking industry and across leading industries such as Retail, Gaming and Online Commerce. We created a fact-pack with relevant case studies to bring the trends to light and also provided insights into how they could leverage them now to improve customer experiences.
Value to the Client
These cross industry case studies provided the Client team with a good basis for thinking outside of the box and were inputs into their long-term strategic plans. The Client was able to integrate the new UX trends into their website blueprint and challenge their internal team to leverage best practices in their redesign.