Create with Your Customers
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Create a case for change for your customer.
- Present your customer strategy through storyboarding.
Create a Case for Change
You know your customer’s challenges, and you want to help them achieve their goals. Now you get to work with your customer to create a vision for their future.
In this last step of customer-centric discovery, Create with your customer, you:
- Review the challenges you confirmed with your customer.
- Storyboard your customer’s vision for the future.
- Draft a plan with detailed recommendations for next steps.
The goal is to develop a stronger relationship with your customer and create a great vision for your future together.
Re-Create Your Customer’s Story
Picture this: You’re in the boardroom with your customer, you’ve brainstormed around their current challenges and recorded the results. After taking a photo of your work, wipe the whiteboard clean and focus on the key challenges, one at a time. Review the:
- Problem—start with their top priority.
- Business impact—recognize how this challenge affects their employees, customers, and the bottom line.
- Problem levels—factor in whether this is a tactical, business, or personal challenge.
- Metrics—determine how they want to measure the results of what you do together.
Make sure everyone is on the same page by asking things like:
- “Do you agree that this is the right challenge to work on now?”
- “Are we aligned on the key performance indicators (KPIs) this problem is impacting?”
- “Is this the overall goal you have in mind?”
What you uncover will help you and your customer move on to strategies and solutions. Remember to capture the outcome of your discussion with a photo or a screenshot.
Create a Scene with Storyboarding
Take a good look at each challenge your customer faces. Then look at what they want to achieve. Take everything you’ve learned and brainstorm some detailed recommendations.
Go back to a clean whiteboard, mind map, or blank wall. On one end, write down or draw the challenge. On the other end, write or draw your customer’s goal. Now connect the two with ideas and solutions.
This is storyboarding—a process for mapping out the connection between your customer’s current challenges and goals for the future with realistic next steps. Here are some storyboard approaches you and your customer can do together, and how you can do each one.
| Storyboard Approach | How You Do This |
|---|---|
|
Persona-based or day-in-the-life |
Focus on a character who is an employee or customer. Show the problem and map out a solution that is unique to either the employee or the customer. |
|
Process-based |
Compare a current, inefficient process to a new, improved process you recommend. |
|
Role-playing or skits |
Demonstrate life before and after your recommendation through skits and role-playing, especially if you want to get a good laugh. |
|
Wild card |
Use props, videos, or play a numbers game to show your customer what they can achieve with your recommendation. |
As you and your customer storyboard together, focus on realistic ways to get from the challenge to the goal. This is how you develop a mutual action plan to achieve your customer’s new vision.
Co-Create a Plan
When you prepared for this meeting you made a list of possible solutions for your customer’s challenges. Go back to that list and:
- Share your original next step ideas.
- Brainstorm additional next steps based on what you’ve learned during the meeting.
- Agree on next steps and deadlines.
And with that, you have a plan!