Case Study | Customer Experience

(1) Startups need to be product-centric in their attempt to differentiate their offerings from competitor products — perhaps even to create blue oceans.

At the very beginning, most startups simply don’t have the resources to think about the entire customer experience, yet alone a complete product. They often start to cobble together the very basics, a minimal viable product that addresses only the most pressing customer needs. If they are smart and disciplined, they strive to do one thing, and only one thing, really, really well. Studio in Transit LLC’s first client, Taza Ayurveda, was founded by my aunt and my mom and it’s been fun to watch them persevere through iterations of the initial product. At the moment, they sell three core Ayurvedic products in the United States, manufactured using 2000-year-old ancient Indian processes and natural Indian ingredients. Taza Ayurveda is a luxury brand, catering to the most recent wellness trends in Western cities like New York City. The company’s key differentiator is authenticity — they are competing against ‘Ayurvedic’ products that are not even really Ayurvedic products at all, but watered-down, Westernized versions— misrepresentations of our culture.

Since the authentic, Indian Ayurvedic remedies take time to manufacture and ship to the United States, Taza Ayurveda charges between $70 and $90 per product. My aunt and mom went through iterations of the product packaging and branding to ensure that the product was positioned as fashionable, chic, and addressing the needs of thirty-something, urban women who are interested in natural beauty products that are actually good for their skin. They are currently selling the product online and via select, luxury distributors. My mom directly mails the product out of her garage office, as this is still such a small venture— but hopefully a successful one! Taza Ayurveda is one of the few brands out there that remains authentic to the ancient Indian recipes and ways of making the products.

(2) After a new venture has acquired its early adopter customer base and ‘crossed the chasm’, customer segmentation becomes even more important to make more money, fast.

I helped a New York based startup called DIEMlife with refreshing their platform entirely. The platform helps individuals, groups and organizations achieve their goals by creating and completing quests. We worked in sprints to re-design a small part of the platform each week after validating concept ideas with 12 users during hybrid user feedback sessions, where we asked users general questions about how they achieve their goals (contextual inquiry, first 30 minutes) and then had them walk through the existing platform, as well as new platform concepts (user testing, last 30 minutes).

So far, DIEMlife has attracted a diverse range of users, from groups planning marathons and fundraisers, to individuals looking for backing on their next solo project, or individuals completing lifestyle challenges, like a “Chopped Challenge”, or achieving life goals, like learning Italian or doing more yoga. It has been an interesting challenge to segment current and prospective customers, especially since the team is still coming up with pricing strategies for different bundles of features, bundles that will ideally be promoted to different customer segments. My sprints focus on the core functionality that differentiates DIEMlife from other collaboration platforms and that is crucial to all customer segments. At the moment the design and content refresh focuses on universality, trying to make this platform accessible and intuitive to all of these segments. Check out some UI designs here.

As DIEMlife scales up, it will be even more crucial for the startup to offer specialized packages of functionality to different user segments.

(3) Targeting the right customer segments involves calculating each segments customer lifetime value (CLV). It’s crucial to target customer segments with the highest CLV.

Sometimes platforms can be universally used by both businesses and individuals alike. As a lead UX Strategist, I worked for an e-commerce platform whose customers included small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) , sports teams, non profits, groups, and even individuals. It was a mid-sized business that was transitioning from being product-centric and (I believe) on its way towards becoming customer-centric. Here I believe marketing analytics, particularly calculating each customer segment’s customer lifetime value (CLV), will be crucial towards positioning the platform well for different customer segments (e.g., targeted emails, SEO strategy, landing pages) and focusing on the highest value customer segments in order to grow the business. It is also important to have cleanly tagged customer data to successfully calculate CLVs. If this is not yet possible for a business, then it is also possible to estimate the value of different customer segments by using net promoter scores (NPS).

I am currently in the process of reading Professor Fader’s Customer Centricity books on this subject and hope to take his course to learn to build such CLV models. Professor Fader advises that companies should always be on the lookout for better types of customers, more valuable customers, than the ones they currently have. He also talks about measuring transaction recency, frequency, and monetary value to build CLV models and evaluate changes in customer segments or changes in CLV for a segment.

Large companies have well-defined customer segments and sets of characteristics used to describe each segment. They rely on the data gathered about each segment to inform marketing and design campaigns, and typically communicate any relevant information on customer segments to consultants like me. I especially enjoyed working with NCR to validate existing assumptions they had about their customers in the finance sector for their omni-channel solutions— typically small and large banks in the United States. Myself and a team of consultants were tasked with interviewing the VPs of both small and large banks to determine how they evaluate RFPs and make decisions on external products or solutions to purchase, adopt and integrate with. We also did a quick competitive analysis on banking best practices in Europe to inform our research.

(4) If a company becomes big enough, it has to stop being product-centric and start being customer-centric.

For example, Netflix is no longer just a content distributor (i.e., sending us DVDs). They transitioned to becoming a content curator (i.e., categorizing and streaming movies online) and then a content creator (i.e., creating Netflix original movies and TV shows). They use both qualitative and quantitative research methods to improve upon the entire customer entertainment experience. This involves developing multiple product features or service capabilities.

(5) While making money is important, modern companies should remain principled, following best practices that respect customer privacy and run businesses in an eco-friendly, sustainable manner.

My graduate student group project working with AFS is a great example of this- the organization coordinates year-long study abroad experiences for high school students. As a team of students, we were tasked with understanding the customer journey and creating experiences that inspire students towards social impact initiatives while abroad.

Customer Experience Projects

01. AFS Study Abroad

Journey Map + Prototypes

02. Automotive Company

Competitive Analysis

03. Healthcare Professional Platform

User Testing Sprints

04. DIEMlife

Platform UI Refresh

05. Customer Experience Portfolio

View all projects