Innovating products and services from customer insights

Using the knowledge obtained through customer research, products and/or services can be significantly improved or entirely re-imagined. This creates new opportunities to design precisely what your customers need, now and into the future. Pressure testing your products and services regularly will keep you ahead of the curve, and your competition.

This is also known as customer-led innovation. It's not a leap of faith; it's a calculated step in the right direction. Customer-led innovation draws on previously gathered customer insights and uses them to inspire and generate ideas for new products or services.

Proto experience designer creating digital storyboard for an ideal service experience

Customers today have higher expectations than ever before

Organisations who realise this will know that any new products or services will have to be thoroughly researched and designed to meet ever increasing customer needs. Customers expect seamless, intuitive and responsive service. They expect the organisations they deal with to have fully integrated systems. This means no matter who they speak to, via phone, email or in person, they are quickly recognised, acknowledged and have their needs catered for. Organisations must continually improve their service experience to meet these expectations.

Proto insights and ideas cards for Hoyts Solution ideation wall in the office

Creating products and services that work for you and your customers

Businesses on the path to customer-centricity use various methods to frequently test products and services via customer feedback loops. This enables them to continually improve their products in alignment with what customers value the most.

FIND OUT HOW
Proto experience designer sketching new search function idea via mobile

Innovate your products and services

Use growth-driven design methods to understand what products or services your customer value most and how to improve them

GET IN TOUCH

Innovating product and services to reach new heights

Human-Centred Design revolves around having a deep understanding of the people you seek to serve. It allows people working in organisations to increase their empathy and extend their knowledge of the problems or challenges customers are facing. This means organisations can be better equipped to create products or services tailored to their customer requirements.

Keeping the ideal customer at the forefront of the design process is crucial. This can be done by using customer validated research results to develop several common customer personas with particular needs. Teams can then centre their work around meeting the needs of these customer personas/segments.

Portfolio of Proto customer personas for Optus

Prototyping lets design meet the real world in a safe environment

Through rigorous research and design, an ideal suite of products and services can be developed for the customer. It's a process that works best when the solution goes through several iterations before the final product (prototyping). The product is questioned, checked, and assumptions are challenged. Then it's refined, improved and tested by potential users. Done right, some incredible ideas can become reality and the results can be transformative for a business.

FIND OUT HOW
Proto presenting Immi forum prototypes to customers and staff during validation workshop Proto prototyping new idea cards for virgin mobile

Westpac credit card innovation successes

Having already undertaken customer understanding research with Proto, Westpac sought to go further with Proto. They wanted to uncover deeper customer insight into why customers chose to hold multiple credit cards and why they chose one card over another. The aim of developing the "One Card" was to create an ideal product and service experience that would meet customers' critical needs and wants.

Westpac credit card - the one card

"Proto's in-depth customer research helped us to uncover underlying customer needs that wouldn't have been possible without an 'outside-in' approach. The team identified the core customer problems and provided actionable insights that enabled us to remove key areas of customer friction and frustration and redesign a credit card experience like no other."

Christian Johansson, Head of Marketing, Customer Finance at Westpac

Innovate your products and services

Use growth-driven design methods to understand what products or services your customer value most and how to improve them

GET IN TOUCH

Delivering phenomenal outcomes


“Working with Proto was a leap of faith, but they have become a major strategic partner in our CX evolution. The work they've developed and the way we've been able to embed it in the organisation has been absolutely phenomenal, and we're getting the outcomes we want.”

Felicity Clark
Felicity Clark Customer Experience Manager

Creating empathy to deliver outstanding results


“Proto were a pleasure to work with. They were adaptive and responsive, and developed a deep empathy for both the client and their customers. The quality of their products and services was outstanding.”

Michael Storey
Michael Storey Manager of Customer Research and Strategy at Sydney Water

Halving your customer churn


“Without the customer experience insights from the research program, we would not have been able to identify the acquisition issues that we had. Changes to the customer interactions that led up to financial protection have reduced the outflow rates by 50%.”

Felicity Rowcliff Dean
Felicity Rowcliff Dean Customer Centred Design Manager

Take your NPS score to the next level


“From an NPS perspective, I have gone Spinal Tap on you guys and gone to 11. I still think the work you did with us, the way you went about it and the deliverables amounted to one of the best pieces of consulting advice I've ever commissioned.”

Matthew Liebmann
Matthew Liebmann Former Chief Operating Officer

Enabling customer-centric design


“Over the last 18 months, we've constantly referred to the work Proto did for us when designing and developing all the improvements to the app we're making. We've found their work to be highly valuable and has resulted in significant improvements to the MyOptus App that, without their insight wouldn't have been possible.”

Lucy Turner
Lucy Turner CX Design Launch Manager

Exceptional prototyping


“The outcome of the prototyping has been exceptional and we continue to use the knowledge and expertise that Proto shared with us during their engagement. The icing on the cake for me was that Proto captured all of the insights from the customer workshops into an organisational asset that we now use as an integral part of our toolkit for training and briefing new team members.”

Sharon Nanetti
Sharon Nanetti Optimal Care Program Director

Prioritising what matters


“Proto's in-depth customer research helped us to uncover underlying customer needs that wouldn't have been possible without an 'outside-in' approach. The team identified the core customer problems and provided actionable insights that enabled us to remove key areas of customer friction and frustration and redesign a credit card experience like no other.”

Christian Johansson
Christian Johansson Head of Marketing, Customer Finance

Achieving a 20 point increase in NPS


“I have worked with Damian and the team at Proto for several years. In this time, they have worked collaboratively with us to build a roadmap of strategic 'outside-in' initiatives that ultimately resulted in a 20 point increase in NPS. They imparted a great deal of CX knowledge, approaches and tools that have been invaluable to the team and the business.”

Amanda O'Donnell
Amanda O'Donnell Head of Customer Experience

Insight driven, customer centric ideas


“Proto revealed and captured a ton of insights, putting Gumtree in a position where we can take our experience from good to great!”

Coen Horrevoets
Coen Horrevoets Head of Product

Award-winning customer experiences


“We won the AFR Smart Investor SMILES award for Best Online Broker. This award is based on customer voting and I believe this was as a result of a clearer focus on our existing clients which you helped us to understand.”

Arni Selvarajah
Arnie Selvarajah Chief Executive Officer

Design that reduces cost to serve


“The Proto team demonstrated flexibility in their approach which made such a refreshing change. They took the time to coach and mentor each of us in a highly creative and energetic environment. Furthernore, they helped us exceed our customer satisfaction targets, all whilst stripping out in excess of 20% of our service costs in under 12 months. Proto helped us to stay focussed on the customer which enabled us to win in the market.”

Matthew Anderson
Matthew Anderson Chief Operating Officer

Service innovation at scale


“We worked with Proto on an exciting & unprecedented challenge at Optus, to design the customer experience of the future. Damian & the team had high energy & together we operated as 'one team'. Proto worked hand in hand with us to bring the internal team up to speed, & also brought in global experts to work with us to take our deliverables to another level of quality & innovation.”

Dan Sunderland
Dan Sunderland Director of Customer Experience Strategy and Planning

Actionable Customer Strategies


“Proto developed a membership strategy that addressed points of friction along our members journey, identified opportunities to improve and clarified the types of engagement that our members needed at the different stages in their career. We were impressed with the depth of insight that Proto were able to bring to the project - as well as the energy and ideas that they helped to generate.”

Sarah Thompson
Sarah Prescott-Thompson General Manager Shared Services

A partnership for CX


“Working with Proto was very much a partnership. We worked hand-in-hand to put CX on the map within the organisation. The team are flexible, trustworthy and do what it takes to achieve the best outcome. If you’re looking for a quality agency, providing quality data and insights – Proto are your guys. We received over 90 initiatives from the project of which 79% have now been implemented and we are seeing the benefits flow through!”

Customer Experience Specialist

Unique Product Innovation


“Proto integrated into multiple simultaneous projects to ensure we achieved the best outcome. They brought real clarity around customer needs, the fundamental elements of our value proposition and provided a clear roadmap of where we're trying to get to. This allowed us to differentiate beyond the traditional proposition. As a result, one customer-informed initiative we developed was loanScore™. This unique innovation helps customers see how good their home loan is and evaluate their options for a better deal.”

Anthony Justice
Anthony Jusitce CEO