I mentioned in my post on the Customer Experience Cloud that it provided a good foundation for delivering experiences. To deliver compelling experiences, it needs to be combined with other Experience Design tools and techniques and paired with an approach that enables fast changes so that the experiences delivered are able to adapt quickly to changing customer needs and emerging situations.
A lean + agile approach can solve the rapid response need. And, applying design thinking can provide the customer focused techniques. Finally, align all of the teams toward a customer-oriented metric as outlined in Chief Customer Officer to keep the focus on serving the needs of customers rather than only serving the internal needs of IT, marketing, sales, or support. Ensure that the Customer Insights team is set to deliver fast and meaningful metrics and insights that enable teams to respond quickly and deliver customer needs.
Design thinking takes a solution-focused approach to problem solving, working collaboratively to iterate an endless, shifting path toward perfection. It works toward product goals via specific ideation, prototyping, implementation, and learning steps to bring the appropriate solution to light. Agile refocuses software development on value. It seeks to deliver working software to customers quickly and to adjust regularly to new learning along the way. Jeff Gothelf & Joss Seiden in Lean UX
When you combine the infrastructure of the Customer Experience Cloud along with Design Thinking, Agile, and Lean, you have the capability of delivering seamless experiences that truly differentiate your organization.
That is the core idea of the team I spent 2015 building. I called it Agile Marketing Sciences because it paired the data driven approach of marketing sciences along with the ability to adapt quickly from agile. Whatever you call it, the combination of data, insights, and agility are the key to delivering better experiences and business value.
The basics of the Agile Marketing Sciences approach are:
- Apply Agile and Lean Methods. Fast 2-4 week sprints with daily updates. Respond to change. Reduce waste – focus on activities that improve outcomes and deliver what works.
- Use a Build, Measure, Learn approach. Focus on building MVP (Minimum Viable Product) where a “product” can be a tweet, video, email, or any part of the end to end experience. Work to continuously improve. Engage users and customers in the design process. Write requirements so they can be tested; measurable user stories. Gather quantitative and qualitative data and use it to iterate quickly.
- Make a cross-functional approach the core of your process. Use the best tools and techniques from all relevant disciplines; UX, CX, Service Design, Digital & Inbound Marketing, Customer Service, and more. Be highly collaborative. Apply ‘Yes, and…’ thinking from Improv.
One important concept is to write requirements as measurable user stories. Not to get too technical, but you should have a hypothesis that can be tested. The test can be a usability test, an A/B test, or whatever is relevant to get the insight you need.
A Measurable User Story looks like: “If we create or do _______ for _______ persona, that helps him obtain _______ outcome and we will see an increase in _____ KPI.”
You build something to solve that statement. Try it. Measure it. See if it worked or not. You should be working toward a goal or benchmark that determines if what you build succeeded or not. Then, repeat the process as needed, working toward continuous improvement.
Another key element of this approach is a daily standup. However, in the context of experience design, the daily standup can be a bit different from what you might be used to in Agile. In addition to reporting out what I did, what I will do, and blocks to success – the team needs to identify and assess external issues and opportunities. Experiences are never delivered in isolation. Emerging themes in social media or the news can impact what you should deliver. The daily standup is a chance to review what you are delivering and identify if something else is more relevant today. I provided a quick insight into this idea in What is Social Listening.
For more background on Lean, I highly recommend the Lean UX book & Lean UX Workshop and the Lean Startup book.
Have you tried an approach like this? I would love to know about your experience. Leave a comment here or find my on Twitter @XDstrategy.