Written by: Annette Densham, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
We live in an age in business where the focus on the customer’s and client’s needs and wants is more important than ever to stay competitive. Inundated with thousands of bits of information every day, consumers are spoilt for choice. If they don’t like something, they’ll vocally shout exactly how they feel from the rooftops on social media platforms. This means the push and pull for market share is highly competitive and companies who want to thrive are searching for strategies to give them an edge.
The edge they are looking for lies within their organisation and the approach they take to decision making, product creation, customer service, and how they deliver what they do. What they are looking for is a proven and repeatable design and problem-solving methodology any business can use to achieve big results and expand their market share. This methodology is called design thinking. Design thinking is a human-centric approach to innovation, cemented in a deep understanding of consumers’ needs.
Rebecca Fuchs has an impressive success record of achieving transformational change for her clients globally and across industries. She is the founder and director of the coaching and consulting business ‘Tomorrow Is Now’ and the Client Experience Officer at Hugo Alexander Property Group, and recently won gold globally as Innovator of the Year in Industries at the prestigious Stevie Awards. She embraces design thinking in her work with organisations who believe close enough is never good enough. She wants businesses to know that design thinking is for everyone, rather than just for big businesses.
“Big companies like Google and Apple use design thinking in their day-to-day operations, and many small businesses then think it is too complicated for them. However, design thinking can be used for any people-centric problem or opportunity, and any sized company--especially those who wish to innovate and improve their customers’ experience,” she said. “It is a learnable process and one you must commit to for you to benefit from the potential outcomes. When genuinely applied, design thinking helps build an enthusiastic fan base that comes back to buy from you time and time again and becomes the most influential and unpaid group of brand promoters. And an emotionally engaged customer base leads to greater bottom-line results.”
Rebecca outlined key steps that a business needs to undertake when employing design thinking in their venture, for a clearer roadmap for the future.
“Creating anything new from a new process or higher performing team to a new product or service has to start with empathy. If you fail to understand the opportunity or problem you are trying to solve for your customer, then how can you find the solution?” Rebecca said.
This means assumptions and preconceived perceptions must be cast aside. By handing onto old beliefs hinders growth and expansion. Rebecca said it is important for businesses, organisations, and leaders to get to know their customers/ clients to better connect with them. “Take the time to engage and understand their motivations, their current disappointments and desired experience with you, as a foundation for everything else. And to learn from the best, do some mystery online and offline shopping with leading brands whom you admire - regardless of their industry,” she said. “The knowledge and ideas you gain can then inform a systemic way of improving and innovating what you do, when you do it, who does it, where and how you do it.”
The heart of any product and service should be client-centricity. According to Rebecca this is the be all and end all for design thinking. “Using design thinking, organisations can reverse engineer how they attract, engage and retain clients. This means laying out client-centric values as roots to identify client’s needs and wants and clearly articulating the client promise, and then developing organisational capabilities that meet and exceed them,” she said. “This methodology can be applied to exceeding employee, customer, client, and referral partner experiences alike.”
The insights accumulated through this process can be used to innovate. Innovation doesn’t have to be a ground-breaking new app or platform; it just needs to solve a client or customer’s problem and stand out from the crowd. “Find a way to add value to your clients and customers that makes them feel valued and shows you are going above and beyond for them,” Rebecca said. This is how Hugo Alexander Property Group has received state, national and international recognition for many ‘best in industry’ awards.
When design thinking entered the business vernacular, it was primarily used to develop physical product designs. Rebecca advocates also applying it to service-based businesses and says understanding the pain points and problems to solve is key. Rebecca coaches and consults businesses in how to identify these and then innovate solutions. “In the real estate industry, for instance, it was the common stereotype of property managers being too transactional, reactive, and slack. We set out to tackle this head-on and developed a strategic, proactive, and value-added service that would blow our clients away, because they couldn’t help but know how deeply we understand and care for them,” she said.
“Using design thinking puts businesses and organisations ahead of competitors. It helps build a reputation for putting customers first. And when customers become vocal advocates and do the PR for you, that is good business.
“The solutions you build, based on your deep understanding of your customers, their goals, behaviours and motivations are the special sauce for businesses who want to thrive and grow.”
Annette Densham, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Multi-award-winning PR specialist Annette Densham is considered the go-to for all things business storytelling, award submission writing, and assisting business leaders in establishing themselves as authorities in their field. She has shared her insights into storytelling, media, and business across Australia, UK, and the US speaking for Professional Speakers Association, Stevie Awards, Queensland Government, and many more. Three times winner of the Grand Stevie Award for Women in Business, gold Stevie International Business Award, and a finalist in Australian Small Business Champion awards, Annette audaciously challenges anyone in small business to cast aside modesty, embrace their genius and share their stories.
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