Enabling a customer approach to design and delivery

Challenge

Methods were engaged to identify the barriers Defra currently faced around customer-centric design when delivering Defra group projects and programmes, so that customer satisfaction and loyalty could be realised and improved upon.

Second to this, Methods were to produce a toolkit to promote customer centricity, so that Defra could embed this methodology as best practice. 

The key requirements were:

• to identify and realise where there are already good examples of customer centricity in Project and Programme delivery - learn from what they already do and repeat the approach in future deliveries
• to identify why Defra’s project delivery was not always customer centric and where improvements could be made to ensure they are consistently providing a great experience and adding value.

Solution

We immersed ourselves into the client environment, working in partnership with Defra colleagues. We didn’t just deliver and handover, but we spent time with the team sharing knowledge on how to run these types of business analysis, and we ran it collaboratively using demo and practice style sessions.

We then collated the data and analysed it together to co-create the outputs. The outcome of the above allowed Defra to:

• understand the barriers to customer centricity. Interviews were carried out by both parties; the Defra team would shadow and then repeat what they had learnt by leading the remaining interviews
• improve knowledge on how to do a deep dive research project
• grasp how to conduct business analysis and how to identify suitable next steps. 

Impact

Methods used a multi-disciplinary team, from Project and Programme management, Service Improvement, User Research, as well as User-Centred Design. These multiple lenses meant we had a wealth of knowledge and experience to share with the client.

To engage our client in an interactive way, we used a Mural board to playback feedback gathered from interviews. This got everyone talking as they had not seen information relayed to them in this way before. This was then co-delivered with two members of their team – so a big win here was to see clear knowledge transfer and ownership coming from the client themselves.

By the time Methods handed over, the client was confident in the methodology and the required approach to obtain what they were trying to achieve, and left feeling proficient in the process and not dependent on Methods.