Engage

Customer experience is defined by every encounter a customer has with you—from seeing your logo on a sign to walking in your front door, from talking with a customer service representative to navigating through your website. If any one component, interaction point, or opportunity to serve the customer isn’t working to meet their needs and expectations, you lose. No one likes to lose.

In working with Peak Seven Consulting, you gain access to customer experience experts who also have extensive experience in business leadership (we teach it) and marketing communications (we live it). This means that, through one partner and one process, you benefit from customer insights and corresponding solutions that weave together business objectives and strategy, branding and messaging, and sales opportunities with what your customers will most positively respond to. The outcome? Happy customers. More revenue. Win-win.

Voice of the Customer

Ah, the voice of the customer . . .  can you hear it? We hope so! Your customers all have unique voices. And we want you to hear them. To really hear them. To acknowledge them. To learn from them. To respond to them. And to create products, services, and communications that are centered around them.

We like to think that what we do around the voice of the customer is a wee bit like the Copernican Shift. Not up on your history? Okay then, we’ll fill you in. A long, long time ago, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543) announced his theory that the earth rotated around the sun. Before this, it was believed that the Earth – not the Sun – was the center of the universe. This epiphany has come to be called the Copernican Shift. And it was a shift that had a profound impact on people’s beliefs at the time. We believe that the voice of the customer can have a similarly profound shift in the way you do business. It shifts minds from company-centered, where we are at the center to customer-centered, where our customers at the center.

Our expertise in program design couples uniquely well with our usability work to bring a unique perspective to Voice of the Customer experiences such as these:

• Created team-based customer visits to various customer sites, including interactive “assignments” to get to know the client better, such as recorded interviews, data collection, and observational customer research.
• Identified and coordinated customer panels, identifying questions for and prepping moderators.
• Coordinated a customer keynote for an international pharmaceutical company to kick off a customer experience session.
• Created a cross-industry market research project with client-based “secret investigators” to uncover innovative ideas from companies whose Voice of the Customer is strong.
• Collaboratively architected an “upstream” and “downstream” voice of the customer program to build leadership awareness via a Farm to Table tour for a food industry giant.

We create compelling “a-ha” moments. We create mind shifts. We create opportunities for peak performance by listening to the voice of your customer. Now, are you ready to listen? Because we are ready to help you hear.

Customer Experience Research

There are numerous opportunities for gathering insights into the customer experience. At Peak Seven Consulting, we pride ourselves on a successful track record of knowing and developing the right kind of research methodology to tap into both small and large opportunities to create the kind of experience your customers are clamoring for.

Here is a snapshot of some market research we have done:

• Created customer surveys, conducted live phone interviews during the customer buying process, and provided customer experience analysis for a call center.
• Conducted competitive website analyses in high-tech, healthcare, resort, and higher education industries, just to name a few.
• Created comprehensive discussion guides and surveys for facilitated focus groups and one-on-one customer interviews.
• Compiled and analyzed client-provided market research data, creating recommendations, reports, and presentations for various audiences.
• Recruited shoppers as part of a mystery shopping experience to gather qualitative customer feedback for a check printing company.

And, because the Peak Seven Consulting team has extensive experience in marketing communications, we are uniquely equipped to translate any research into recommendations, reports, executive summaries, and presentations that deliver the right information in the right way. Plus, they will be packaged professionally in a stunning design that supports your brand.

Usability Testing

When it comes to usability testing and uncovering opportunities to further your peak performance, we go beyond the web. We also have expertise in conducting usability testing for email marketing/campaigns, user interfaces/applications, print materials, and call center scripts/messaging.

We conduct usability testing anywhere in the world – on location or remotely – whichever you prefer. The key is to involve engaging participants who bring a critical eye to the usability process. We typically recommend testing with six to eight participants at a minimum. That tends to uncover about 80 percent of the issues. Going to 15 to 20 participants can further validate results and uncover more areas for improvement at a deeper level – the real nuances for improvement.

Take a look at just a few of our usability testing experiences:

• Conducted variable-based usability testing for an online checking company website, providing details, and short and long-term recommendations, as well as web design wireframes and mock-ups.
• Tested and conducted a thorough usability analysis of a time and project accounting application.
• Conducted user testing on a new website design for a major credit card company.
• Recruited and conducted usability testing for a college website, working with students and parents to identify opportunities for improvement in the college evaluation and application process.
• Analyzed user data and usability session recordings and wrote recommendations reports for companies in the resort industry.

We believe that usability testing pays for itself. It uncovers the gap between what customers expect and what they experience. And we provide solid recommendations to close that gap, resulting in increased conversions, click-through rates, usage rates, purchasing, and revenue. If our recommendations aren’t making money for you, we aren’t doing our job.

User Experience Design

Design can pull people in – or turn them away. You’ve all experienced it. That app with the 36-step tutorial? You deleted it. That oh-so-sleek-Danish-designed trivet you couldn’t figure out how to open? You gave it to your sister. That paperwork at the doctor’s office where you have to fill out the same thing again and again on different forms? Whoops. Lost a page (or two). Sorry. Or that website where you can’t find the shopping cart or the phone number to call someone where the heck the cart is? You bailed.

Design underscores these customer experiences. The Peak Seven Consulting team pairs together its customer experience and marketing communications expertise to ensure that your design engages your customer, makes it easy for them to be and stay your customer, and creates an experience that people talk about – in a good way. And we’ve done a few things that have worked:

• Created customer personas, user experience designs, wireframes, and user interface design elements based on sound user experience research for a new healthcare app.
• Developed wireframes to simplify the user experience navigating an e-commerce site, improving customer satisfaction and revenue numbers.
• Designed and architected an easy-to-use learning portal taking into account multiple user touchpoints and needs throughout a lengthy on-boarding process for a talent management company.
• Analyzed and provided recommendations to improve the user (learner) experience for online learning pathways at a global training and development company.
• Provided overall online user experience research, consulting, testing, and design for a hospital website, including site navigation, wireframes, and design mock-ups.

Our user experience design looks at the whole customer – not just the usability and the functionality, but also the engagement. What will the customer think and feel when he or she interacts with your company? We want them to feel great (so great they tell all their friends about you).

User Adoption

Whether you are trying to get your internal or external customers on board with new technology, new business strategy, or new products, we can help. We’ve got experience as technology therapists, integration bridge builders, and new direction hand-holders. We empathize with the pain of change that people experience. So we work tirelessly to create the plans, the leadership, the communication, and the know-how to ease that pain. We’ve done a few things you can leverage to engage your customers or employees and help them move forward:

• Created change management plan for enterprise-wide user adoption of Oracle technology for a data storage company.
• Developed a Project Team Jumpstart to kick-off a cross-functional team for a teaching hospital initiative.
• Wrote communications plans and associated materials (executive emails, talking points, newsletters, updates, presentations, etc.) for technology implementations for various Fortune 500 companies.
• Worked with various business units in a newly integrated consulting company to create executive training and job aids that enabled senior partners to sell all services of the new combined company.
• Coordinated training logistics and event planning for global enterprise-wide SAP training for x learners in x countries.
• Developed online training modules to support user adoption of a new procurement system for a government organization.
• Coached executive sponsors on their roles during major change initiatives.

It’s time to create great change experiences. Please. Stop the pain!