Using a customer engagement framework
Designing products that meet customer needs at every stage throughout their lifecycle.
Adopting a framework that maps customers’ needs across their entire journey with a product provides strategic direction and empowers design teams to deliver better experiences. For each product feature or service offering, potential customers will go through the following engagement phases; Awareness — Consideration — Commitment — First Use — Ongoing Use — Evolution — Discontinue. Meeting a customer’s needs at each stage of this lifecycle is vital to building ongoing advocacy and loyalty.
The number of stages within the framework depends on the nature of the product or service. It might include the customer’s purchase process and usage through to discontinuing use. The stages may vary, and different methods have created different stages (see Fig 1.). Method’s version of a framework differs slightly from the one I’ve outlined above but follows similar principles by highlighting the need to engage with customers differently across the journey. You can use either method to start your framework by redeveloping or adding stages to create a customised version for a specific product type.
I am sharing some observations that have strongly influenced my approach to adopt a Customer Engagement Journey framework. The first observation is that the framework must be relevant for both the business and the customer to be an effective tool. The fundamental aspect of business intent and meaning for a brand arising from real-world user experience is the foundation on which any framework rests.
We agree that businesses need to constantly react and plan to create and deliver value in an always-changing environment. This experience design approach helps ensure that the strategy, expression, and general categories of value are understood and available to the project teams who need to define, design, develop and deliver value to their customers. It’s easier to manage a portfolio of related efforts across the user experience than to make individual bets.
Experience design uses the brand’s core concept to identify and define real value for its customers. This should be the business’s sole purpose: to deliver products, services and experiences that provide the value that the brand represents and reinforces the unique brand proposition. But it also means measuring this value from the customers’ perspective and continually investigating new areas of value that are natural extensions for both the brand and the product.
Stages of a Simple Customer Engagement Model:
Awareness: Customers become aware they have a particular need for a product or service and begin seeking brands to help them resolve this need.
Consideration: The process of customers formalising their exact needs and weighing up alternative options for service. This includes acting on needs and deciding not to do anything just yet.
Commitment: The decision to purchase or select a product or service. This is the final stage of the customer acting on their needs, and it usually covers the transaction process up to their first use.
First Use: The customer’s first use of the product or service (sometimes called the out-of-the-box experience), where customers’ expectations meet reality.
Ongoing Use: This happens through regular ongoing use and the emergence of new needs (discovering features or finding gaps in value provided); customers then formalise these needs into actions. Problems may arise that prevent realising expected customer value (product defects or lack of knowledge on how to use the product or service correctly). Customers may seek to share their experiences with others through actions or words (either directly or indirectly).
Evolve: The process of users disposing of a product and re-engaging with a more convenient service that provides the new value they seek, perhaps through an entirely new product.
Discontinue: The end of a customer’s relationship with a product or service because of obsolescence, business failure, lack of interest or perceived value, or changes in their circumstances.
In summary
Businesses using an engagement framework are more likely to cater to customers’ needs as they shift and change within the journey. This allows product designers to discuss objectives and options with their cross-functional counterparts. It creates a way for businesses to invite design into the equation much earlier and to use strategic design to solve problems. It also helps companies rethink how they engage design partners in ways more likely to produce success with less risk.
