Insights to Fuel Business Ambition
How do you evolve a successful approach that has worked for your largest customers and build something just as compelling for smaller, high-potential segments? You get to know them properly. You understand their needs. And then you create a sales and service strategy that is as sustainable as it is memorable.
We helped Coates Hire develop a customer experience strategy to double revenue in its mid-tier and trade customer segments.
Why Coates Came to Proto
Coates is already Australia’s largest equipment solutions provider, with a strong foothold across construction, mining, infrastructure, and events. They weren’t looking for a basic brand refresh. They were ready to go further.
What they wanted was clarity. Clarity on what customers really needed. Clarity on where their value propositions were falling short. And clarity on how to align their brand promise with the day-to-day service experience.
They engaged Proto for customer experience consulting in Australia, with a clear goal: unlock growth by improving how they serve and scale for their mid-tier and trade customers.
Coates knew there was a gap. Their traditional model worked brilliantly for top-tier accounts, but when it came to smaller segments, the same approach didn’t land.
There were inconsistencies across channels, friction in the customer journey, and a lack of insight into what trade and mid-tier customers actually needed.
We saw an opportunity to close the gap with a customer insight-led service design process that would translate directly into business growth.
Getting Closer to the Customer
We started by getting as close as possible to the customer. That meant spending time on-site, in yards, and in depots. Talking to people. Listening to what mattered.
Over 100 customers across industries were engaged through interviews, observations, and workshops. Our aim wasn’t just to collect feedback—it was to find the behavioural triggers, emotional needs, and value drivers that shape the equipment hire experience.
This level of immersion gave us the insight we needed to reframe the brief and focus the strategy on where the real opportunities lay.
Building Smarter Value Propositions
From here, we used our CX consulting approach to shape a clear set of value propositions tailored to each key customer segment.
We focused on moments that mattered:
Making equipment easier to find and book
Offering more flexible and predictable delivery options
Reframing pricing for perceived value and fairness
One major insight? Coates' one-size-fits-all model was optimised for big accounts—but it didn’t scale well to smaller trade customers. Servicing costs, responsiveness, and expectations needed to be rebalanced.
Fixing the Weakest Links
Even with the right intent, a few broken moments in the customer journey can undo a lot of good.
We helped Coates map out the customer experience journey across both digital and physical channels. Where brand promises weren’t matching delivery, we called it out. Where the customer was left in the dark, we designed new clarity.
What emerged was a clear picture of what customers valued most: reliability, proactive communication, and service flexibility.
We turned those themes into specific design principles that the organisation could rally behind.
A Strategy That Works Today… and Grows Tomorrow
Using our full customer experience consulting toolkit, we co-designed a set of practical initiatives with Coates that gave their teams a clear plan for mid-tier growth.
We focused on enabling front-line staff, clarifying processes, and bringing service standards closer to what customers actually expected.
The result was a redesigned customer experience—grounded in real needs, built for scale, and tested in the real world.
Outcomes
Clear and actionable mid-tier customer value propositions
A redesigned journey that reduces friction and builds trust
Practical tools to realign delivery with the brand promise
A roadmap to double revenue from targeted segments
By embedding empathy, research, and strategic clarity into the business, we helped Coates Hire move confidently toward its next wave of growth.