Creating an integrated customer experience vision
Aesop life has been a series of templates, built and rebuilt over time, applied to fine tune first the salon, then the products, and finally the stores. As the experience and design lead, I was involved with leading a stream of work to bring Aesop's omni-channel vision to life. I worked with cross-functional teams to unpack, explore and ideate Aesops future state customer experience vision.
Due to a Non Disclosure Agreement I can’t show the project in detail. The following is a helicopter view of the process and sample artefacts.
Service design
Workshop facilitation
Service blueprint
Prototyping
Web design & development
The challenge
For many customers, Aesop's store experience will be the most tangible expression of the brand and its promise. With the emphasis on digital due to the pandemic and with high expectations in place, the challenge was to capture the spirit of ‘intelligent interactions’ beyond our stores and across all touchpoints.
A flag in the sand
To bring the strategy to life, I facilitated and series of workshops to gather domain knowledge from leaders and products teams across the world. At the heart of our process was a transparent, iterative and collaborative approach to set the stage for a successful cross functional partnership.
With an intimate knowledge of the customer and ambitions of the company as inspiration, we crafted several short stories to articulate a vision of our customer's journey in the future.
These were communicated through short films and a micro-site. The experience visions helped to align and drive our teams to deliver better-designed products, services and memorable experiences. We crafted the speculation by asking—if we did a good job, how might we improve our customer's lives?
Taking a global view
To ensure the customer was at the centre of the experience vision, I lead a research study to interview Signature Store Mangers from across the world. This helped to ensure an omni-channel experience that would be localised and relevant.
Clarifying concepts through rapid prototyping
To stress test our ideas and bring stakeholders along on the journey, I created native prototypes to demonstrate the quality of the experience for certain value propositions. These prototypes effectively showcased the potential of our ideas in a tangible, interactive format and enabled me to:
- Clarifying concepts: By translating abstract ideas into concrete visuals, it became easier for stakeholders to grasp the proposed value propositions.
- Facilitate feedback: presenting working models allowed for specific feedback, leading to informed iterations and refinements that aligned with user needs and business goals.
- Demonstrate Feasibility: Native prototypes illustrated technical feasibility, addressing concerns about implementation and resources.
- Enhance Persuasiveness: The interactive nature of prototypes made the value propositions more compelling, securing C-Suite buy-in by clearly showing the benefits.
- Drive Innovation: Prototyping encouraged experimentation and exploration, fostering a culture of innovation and proactive problem-solving.
Mapping the future
Collaborating with stakeholders, we developed a multi-year service blueprint detailing the ideal customer journey across channels and the necessary technology and operational enablers to achieve our ambitions. We ensured that our value propositions were informed by both qualitative and quantitative data, and was comprehensive enough to supporting strategic planning and decision-making.
The visioning process significantly propelled key conversations around our multi-year omni-channel program. It ignited greater ambition and helped transition Aesop from seeing itself as purely retail-focused to a dynamic omni-channel brand. This strategic shift not only broadened our regional roadmaps but also enhanced our focus to deliver a cohesive and seamless customer experience across all touch-points.
