Client Experience

Service Design
The Project
Whilst studying my UX course I accepted a mutually beneficial role with Inlight, a digital services business. The role was to look after the day to day operations of the business whilst simultaneously taking a look into how their client experience may be improved.
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Inlight is a little different in how they do things. They don't like to be called an agency as that would imply a thin layer of expertise over a wide skill set. They are masters of their trade and so want to be recognised for it. At the core of their business is providing the best client experience possible, and this is why I was brought on to investigate how they can be the best. They had positive client feedback surveys coming back but there was something niggling that these surveys weren't showing. I decided to take the focus to the team itself and see where they could improve internally.
Defining the problem
So that we may get the most out of this research it was important to define a problem statement. The challenge here was to frame the research in a way so as to not pigeon hole questions but to allow for enough openness to gain rich insights.

The problem statement:
How might our team be empowered so that we can provide a world class client experience.
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Immediately I could see a hint at some of the insights I would gain. It was incredibly hard to lock in a time with some of the team members. The senior team members were particularly hard to lock down. And finding a space in the office to investigate my results, forget it. Despite these challenges I ensured that my biases were excluded from the challenge.

I decided to go digital on this one and use the collaborative software Miro to synthesise my results. This in itself was a challenge as I could feel the restriction of space to work was impeding on my lateral thinking. Despite this I think I gained some very valuable insights.
After synthesising the results from my interviews I was able to identify some objectives which I then refined by creating user stories. Predictably, some clear pain points came in to focus for the team.

Pain points:
The team needs more effective scheduling
The client needs access to the right person at the right time.
The team needs greater focus on solving problems rather than creating product.
The team needs better access to meeting rooms and wall space.

I felt these insights were not entirely surprising, but having them confirmed through the research has given  weight to addressing the challenges and supporting the team in providing the best client experience possible.
Inlight
Studio Experience Manager
Jan 2020 — Now
From these pain points I was able to identify some key opportunities and recommendations for supporting these findings.

Opportunity 1: Allow more time for internal projects and staff up-skilling
Recommendation: Work harder to protect flow times so that we can be more efficient in our day to day and therefore have more time for other projects.○ Schedule internal projects and up-skilling like you would a client project. Assign a producer or project manager to oversee the project and introduce accountability.“Internal tasks are the first to fall to the bottom of the list”.

Opportunity 2: Maintain open lines of communication between client and team to build trust. Make sure client can access the right person at the right time.
Recommendation: Encourage open communication with clients but set expectations about when communication is appropriate. Set the expectation that the afternoon is for flow-time and that if it’s not urgent, it may be tomorrow that we get back to them. Make this part of our introduction and early relationship with clients and try and encourage it as much as possible.

Opportunity 3: Focus on solving problems more so than creating a product based on assumptions.
Recommendation: Make time to truly understand the clients problem before jumping straight to a brilliant technical strategy. The problem that you need to solve for may turn out to be different then you assumed.

Opportunity 4: Improve access to physical space such as meeting rooms and wall space to increase efficiency.
While we are out of the office and therefore don’t have access to the physical space,this may be a good time to review how and when the physical space can be used andhow technology can ease the burden on the meeting rooms. Increasing the wallspace for brainstorming will be hugely beneficial too.

At this time the company has been presented with the insights I gained from my research. We are in discussions about how the change in working culture due to the pandemic will be able to assist us in solving some of these troubles. I'm excited to see how we can use technology to solve for these pain points. This will be an ongoing project that I will be excited to update along the way.
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