How we work

What the work actually looks like, before you have to ask.

What happens in each phase, and what you have in hand at the end of it.

Scope

Built for the question, not for the template.

Engagements are scoped to the question and to the budget that is really available. That has meant one facilitated workshop for a small team. It has also meant multiple years of embedded work and a framework built to carry across a global market network.

The work itself is journey mapping, voice-of-customer research, segmentation, loyalty strategy, brand positioning, workshop facilitation, and the measurement that keeps any of it alive.

The four phases below are how we think. Some engagements run all four. Some are one phase done properly. A facilitated journey workshop runs across the first two and is described further down. Working out which version yours needs is what a first conversation is for.

The four phases

Phase 01

Understand

Current state, as it really is

We go to the people who own each touchpoint, the ones who can change it. How we reach them is scoped to the engagement: one-to-one interviews, a cross-functional journey workshop, a survey where the group is too large to talk to one at a time. On a large engagement that has meant around thirty conversations across departments, functions and vendors, plus executives.

Your existing research gets read rather than repeated. There is almost always more of it than anyone remembers.

Then the unglamorous inventory: every channel, every system, every piece of customer communication, and who owns it.

What you get

A synthesis of what the organization believes about its customers, including where it disagrees with itself
A first draft of the current state journey, ready to be argued with
A list of quick wins already in motion, because some things do not need to wait for a roadmap

Phase 02

Diagnose

Gaps named at the touchpoint

The difference between a useful diagnosis and a decorative one is specificity. "The experience feels disconnected" is not actionable. The number of steps in your checkout is.

Every gap is written so that a single named person could act on it without another round of discovery first. Strengths are recorded with the same care, because a diagnosis that only finds problems does not get believed.

What you get

Gaps and strengths, by phase, at touchpoint level
Quick wins separated from structural work
The enablers underneath: the data, the systems, the org design and the incentives that decide whether anything can change

Phase 03

Design

A future state you could actually build

Future state is drawn as the same map with different layers switched on, so the distance between now and next is something you can see rather than something we assert.

It is built on what the systems and the org chart will allow. Aspiration that ignores either one produces a document people admire and then ignore.

Where it helps, the future state is told as a storyboard from a single customer's point of view, so that the people who have to build it can picture it.

What you get

The future state journey
Segment or persona variants where the experience genuinely diverges
An orientation document that teaches your team how to read and use the journey, so it survives without us in the room

Phase 04

Activate

From recommendation to schedule

A roadmap with an owner against every initiative, a quarter, and a cost range. Elements separated from enablers, so nobody schedules a customer-facing feature before the data work that makes it possible.

Then the measures. Which numbers move, who watches them, and what a quarterly review looks like once we are gone.

What you get

A phased roadmap with owners, timing and cost ranges
Initiative detail: objective, near-term actions, impact on the journey
The measures, and a governance rhythm to keep the journey alive

What the work answers

Findings you can act on, not findings you can file.

These are the questions the work is built to answer. A full program answers all of them. A single phase answers one or two, and answers them completely.

Where the experience is breaking, at which touchpoint, and who owns it
Which fixes are worth doing first, and which are structural
What the experience should become, and whether your current systems and organization can get there
Who is accountable for each initiative, by when, and at roughly what cost
Which measures tell you whether it is working

Journey workshops

Cross-functional mapping.

A journey workshop is often how the understand and diagnose phases actually happen. A cross-functional group is given a persona and asked to map that customer's experience across the journey as it stands today: what she encounters at each stage, what she is told, where she waits, where she gives up.

The functions that each own a piece of the experience map it together, and the gaps surface on their own. Nobody has to be told that a handoff is broken. They watch it break.

The group then sorts what it has found into two lists: what could be fixed now, and the bigger ideas worth building toward.

It runs in person or virtually. On paper, the day produces the raw material for the current state map, drawn by the people who own the touchpoints. In the room, it does what no document can: it puts the whole organization inside its customer's experience for a day.

Let's talk

Let's work out the right scope.

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