Customer
centric
innovation
Zélia Sakhi
@ilovegraphics
Chief Experience
Officer
The Swedish Way

Can say sjuksköterska
But not a true Swede

Through the looking glass
Digital Art Director
Casus Belli / France
Design Subject Matter Expert
Amazon / UK
Head of Design Nordics
Deloitte Digital / Sweden
Head of Experience APAC
Mullen Lowe / Japan
Chief Experience Officer
Virtusize / Japan

SEOUL STOCKHOLM TOKYO 5
WE HELP CUSTOMERS FIND THEIR PERFECT FIT, EVERY TIME
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SEOUL STOCKHOLM TOKYO 6
OUR PROGRESS SO FAR
Products covered
1.5
BILLION
Impressions served last year
30
MILLION
Users
RECOGNIZED BY
10
MILLION

In the end, it all comes
back to Sweden.
No ma!er where

Why and how
is Sweden a thriving environment for
customer centric innovations?
The key question

What are
customer-centric
innovations
3 key things to remember
What does
success look like
What does
Sweden (and
Virtusize) do
differently
1 2 3

What is
customer-centricity?
And why does it ma!er.

Reversing the business development
process, starting from the consumers
needs first.
The organisation issues
an objective
It generates ideas
It hopes
consumers like it
We understand
customers
We generate ideas
We help
organisations
build them

Adapting the resulting ideas
iteratively (Kaizen), so that they fit the
market and increase customer
satisfaction.
Discover Define Design Data

Why would an e-commerce platform
sell diapers?

Consumers change
their behaviours when
they have a child.
Amazon offers Prime
subscriptions on diapers.

Most newborns wake
up between 3 and 4 AM.
Amazon advertises those
services at that time.

Customer
centricity
generates business
ideas continuously,
by observing
behaviours and
needs.

11.4

It applies to
all sorts of organisations

It can be a
startup
adopting lean
design
methodologies…

20
The tools
A tool to identify what we are assuming
from the beginning.
We use a canvas to map out everything that is
not being backed up by data during the
ideation process.
We then work on validating our most pressing
hunches through small, bite-sized
experiments. What gets proven gets
implemented.
Hypothesis driven
design: Lean canvas

Or a major financial
institution sending
their top execs to
their call-centers to
generate new ideas
based on customer
needs.

22
The tools
A tool to help an organization understand
who their customers are.
Usually presented as a character sheet, it
summarizes what the target customers wants
and needs from the brand.
they are most useful when based on real data
and actual behaviors rather than just
demographics.
Personas

Or a major car
manufacturer
walking a mile in
their consumers
shoes to design their
retail spaces.

24
The tools
A tool to help an organization visualize
where they fail to serve customer’s needs
and how they can create new services.
There are usually many customer journeys for
one client and while we make them look linear,
they are usually way more complex.
They are a conversation starter, not and end-
deliverable.
Customer
journeys

Or simply an
organisation trying to
understand better
what opportunities
lie ahead.

26
The tools
With ultra-personalization as a trend,
clients are trying to define what they can
offer for each customer segment.
It sometimes comes from a branding angle,
sometimes from a business one. What they
are asking is really: what should we do for our
customers, that still makes sense for us as a
brand?
Value
propositions

Good customer experience
Is capitalism 101

Copyright © 2015 Deloitte Digital LLC. All rights reserved.
A 2% increase in customer retention
has the same effect as a 10% reduction
in operating costs.
Source: Leading on the Edge of Chaos, Emmet Murphy & Mark Murphy

!29
A better customer experience is
a business driver in itself
1“The Business Impact of Customer Experience ,” Forrester, 2014
2“Customer Experience is the Future of Marketing,” Forbes, 2015
3,4,5“The Value of Customer Experience, Quantified,” Harvard Business Review, 2014
6“Gartner Predicts a Customer Experience Battlefield.” Gartner, 2015
Customers who have positive
customer experiences will
likely remain customers for 5
years longer than customers
with negative customer
experiences4
T E N U R E
Customers tend to mention
a good brand experience to
an average of nine people,
but will talk about a bad
one to 16 people2
P R O M OT I O N
Customers who have the
best past experiences spend
140% more compared to
those who have the poorest
past experiences3
S P E N D
Delivering great
experiences reduces the
cost to serve customers
by as much as 33%5
C O S T TO S E R V E

Design-led companies reported:
41% higher market share
46% competitive advantage overall
50% more loyal customers
70% digital experiences beat competitors
Design-Driven Companies
Outperform the S&P by
219% over 10 years

One single change in user
experience
outperfomed millions
spent in advertising for
AirBnB.

But Swedish or not
Swedish, not all those
ventures are successful.
Reality hurts

What does success look like?

The reality is very often different.

The 20mn brainstorm

The corporate
antibodies
Introducing

No long
term vision

Internal politics

Diluted
responsibilities

Misaligned KPIs

Lack of
mandate

Arbitrary
timelines

Unsustainable
approach

of those surveyed say that fewer
than 25% of their pilots have
resulted in commercial deals.
81%
Why So Many Corporate Innovation Programs Don’t Work | Fortune

Success is a product that launches.

Success is a product that stays live.

Success is a team that adapts to
changes and deals with ambiguity.
Everyday. Without burning out.

What does Sweden
(and Virtusize)
do differently?

We capitalise on people as
a long term investment.
We promote diversity of backgrounds, to
create teams that can see problems from
all angles.
We nurture individual talents, to grow our
company as a whole.
We understand that a flat organisation
doesn’t equate to an organisation without
leadership or vision.

We understand tools are
crutches to help you walk,
until you can run by
yourself.
We adopt tools in an agnostic fashion, to
serve our needs and our customers best.
We never say “this is how we have always
done it” but rather, this is how we can do it
better or smarter.
We start small and iterate: we are stubborn
on our vision but nimble in executions.

We promote a holistic vision
of success, beyond work.
We understand that top-performers can
only excel when they bring their whole
selves to work.
We cater for life outside of work, as we
want our team mates to find time and
energy for inspiration and hard work.
We embrace modern working practises and
flexibility as a key recruitment incentive.

Innovative futures lie
in innovative cultures.

What are
customer-centric
innovations
3 key things to remember
1
Profitable ideas that solve
consumer problems and that are
iterated over time by observing
actual behaviours
What does
success look like
2
Delightful products and services
that launch, and stay relevant
over time, built by sustainable
teams
What does
Sweden (and
Virtusize) do
differently
3
We promote a culture centred
around humans and agility, not
as a manifesto, but as a way of
navigating business and life

What could you do tomorrow
to foster customer-centric innovative processes?
In short

Talk to your end-customers
Data is no substitute for empathy.
Send your whole team where your end-customers are with
the mission to find one insight they did not know about
previously.

Improve the existing
Existing business ideas should be iterated
Select one of your existing offering and look at what the
customers say to find one key improvement you could
potentially launch in less than a month

Find your bollplank
Ideas require diversity
Find the one person who is the most different from you to
validate and discuss your ideas. This person needs to have a
different education, gender and background than you do.

Tusen tack
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