To purposively achieve customer focus, it’s crucial to consistently adopt the customer perspective in everything we do. This is why we’ve developed the Customer Thinking Process. Its task is to examine and define - at each and every step - the customers' behavior and perspectives in a structured and systematic manner. The process is divided into two phases: The Behavioral Diagnostics phase and the Behavioral Solutions phase.
/ HOW WE DO IT
Customer Thinking Process & Model
Customer Thinking Process
Your unerring path for successful customer focus
Behavior Diagnostics
In this phase we extract the motives for the customers’ behavior, and identify decision architectures and established behavior patterns. Our analysis model, the Customer Thinking Model, enables us to deduce the underlying needs of the customer from the behavior and attitudes. When we know these, we can explain WHY your customer behaves in such a way, but also we know which strategies will be highly successful in positively influencing the goals set.
Behavior Solutions
After the analysis of the Diagnostics Phase has been realized, we know the motives and needs of the decision and the decisive behavior pattern. These establish which quality criteria a successful solution must fulfill for your customers and which “Nudges” (= behavioral economic success strategies for behavorial change) can be successfully implemented. In workshops with you, we’d develop MVPs (minimal viable products), which via experimental testing can be instantly improved. So at the end you don’t just get an optimized product, but you have valid data about what success you can expect from your customers – and you can make well-grounded decisions."You're suddenly exceeding in ways that logic would never have taken you to. How can that be bad?"
Rory Sutherland, VP Ogilvy
Customer Thinking Model
The analysis model for customer focus
We’ve developed the Customer Thinking Model for analyzing backgrounds. The model unifies different findings and models from behavioral science, neuroscience and psychology in one model, decrypting human behavior and the needs behind it.
But it also offers the possibility – based on the needs extracted – to forecast probable customer behavior. The model has three layers:
Why Customers do it - The WHY level.
All humans have four fundamental needs, which constitute the motives for their actions. Regardless of which behavior they show, they want to satisfy one of these needs - and are picking out the way themselves, by identifying the need which satisfies best. With research, we can find out which need we’re dealing with and know which objective among the customers needs to be met.
How Customers do it - The HOW level.
If we assume that all humans want the same needs fulfilled, then their behavior should be the same, too. But we know that this isn’t the case, and that people take very different paths to achieve the same goal.
To develop products and services that meet your customers' needs, it’s not enough to "just" know what needs your customer is trying to satisfy with your product, you need to know HOW they do it (or intend to do it). Answers for this are found in the HOW level; our experiences, attitudes and convictions determine HOW we do things. These influence the way - and therefore the means - in which your customer satisfies (wants to satisfy) his needs. When you know with which means and you know how, then you can design a product, where the benefit not only satisfies your customers’ needs, but is exactly what your customer has dreamed of.
What Customers do - THE WHAT level.
When we know your customers needs, beliefs and attitudes, then we can predict quite accurately how they will behave. But the whole thing works the other way, too: When we know the behavior patterns, beliefs and attitudes of your customers, we know what need lies behind this behavior. And when we know all three steps, we can implement targeted measures and design a strategy with behavioral-economic nudges that move your customer's behavior positively towards your goal.