Customer-Centric Innovation Methods

☂️ Designing For Edge Cases and Exceptions. Practical design guidelines to prevent dead-ends, lock-outs and other UX failures ↓ 🚫 People are never edge cases; “average” users don’t exist. ✅ Exceptions will occur eventually, it’s just a matter of time. ✅ To prevent failure, we need to explore unhappy paths early. ✅ Design full UI stack: blank, loading, partial, error, ideal states. ✅ Design defaults deliberately to prevent slips and mistakes. ✅ Start by designing the core flow, then scrutinize every part of it. ✅ Allow users to override validators, or add an option manually. ✅ Design for incompatibility: contradicting filters, prefs, settings. 🚫 Avoid generic error messages: they are often main blockers. ✅ Suggest presets, templates, starter kits for quick recovery. ✅ Design extreme scales: extra long/short, wide/tall, offline/slow. ✅ Design irreversible actions, e.g. Delete, Forget, Cancel, Exit. ✅ Allow users to undo critical actions for some period of time. ✅ Design a recovery UX due to delays, lock-outs, missing data. ✅ Accessibility is a reliable way to ensure design resilience. Good design paves happy paths for everyone, but also casts a wide safety net when things go sideways. I love to explore unhappy paths by setting up a dedicated design review to discover exceptions proactively. It can be helpful to also ask AI tooling to come up with alternate scenarios. Once we start discussing exceptions, we start thinking outside of the box. We have to actively challenge generic expectations, stereotypes and assumptions that we as designers typically embed in our work, often unconsciously. And to me, that’s one of the most valuable assets of such discussions. And: whenever possible, flag any mentions of average users in your design discussions. Such people don’t exist, and often it’s merely an aggregated average of assumptions and hunches. Nothing stress tests your UX better then testing it in realistic conditions with realistic data sets with real people. Useful resources: How To Fix A Bad User Interface, by Scott Hurff https://lnkd.in/ecj6PGPU How To Design Edge Cases, by Tanner Christensen https://lnkd.in/ecs3kr8z How To Find Edge Cases In UX, by Edward Chechique https://lnkd.in/e2pfqqen Just About Everyone Is an Edge Case, by Kevin Ferris https://lnkd.in/eDdUVHyj Edge Cases In UX, by Krisztina Szerovay https://lnkd.in/eM2Xynba Recommended books: – Design For Real Life, by Sara Wachter-Boettcher, Eric Meyer – The End of Average, by Todd Rose – Think Like a UX Researcher, by David Travis, Philip Hodgson – Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design, by Kat Holmes #ux #design

Tactic 2 for influencing stakeholders from Jules Walter: Frame your message from their POV (not yours) It’s more effective to speak their language and demonstrate how your proposal will help them reach their goals, not yours. Stakeholders are focused on their own problems and are more receptive to proposals that address what’s already top of mind for them. A few years ago, when I was leading Monetization at Slack, we began to encounter diminishing returns in our product iterations, and we needed to take a bigger swing to re-ignite revenue growth. To do that, I spearheaded a controversial project to experiment with a new approach to free-to-paid conversion. The CEO, Stewart Butterfield, had strong reservations about the project. I knew from his previous statements that he didn’t want the company to be thinking about ways to extract value from users, but rather ways to create value for them. We had scheduled a review with the CEO and a few of his VPs to discuss the proposal. Since he was intensely user-driven, I framed the entire proposal around the benefits it would have for users (the CEO’s POV) rather than emphasizing the revenue impact of the project (our team’s goal). I started the meeting by anchoring the proposal on user-centric insights that we shared in a deck: - “About 10% of purchases of Slack’s paid version happen from users in their first day on Slack.” - “Paid users find more value and retain better. Yet we make it hard for people to discover that Slack has a paid version that’s more helpful.” - “How do we help new teams experience the full version of Slack from the start?” Once we framed the issue with this user-centric lens, the CEO was more open to our proposal and let us try a couple of experiments in this new direction. This user-centric framing also got the cross-functional team more excited and set an aspirational North Star with clear guardrails, which then enabled various teammates to contribute productively to the project. After we tested two iterations of our monetization experiment, we landed on a version that resulted in a significant increase in revenue for Slack (a 20% increase in teams paying for Slack) and we used what we learned to shift Slack’s monetization strategy into a new, more successful direction. Full set of tactics here: https://lnkd.in/gezP2EDw

China just reminded us what real innovation often looks like. 📍Not louder. 📍Not more complex. 📍Just smarter. “Drunk driving” has been a problem for decades. Many countries still fight it with rules, fines, and campaigns. In China, someone asked a different question: What if we designed around how people actually behave, by creating a complementary service that could be included in car insurance? The result is a simple service: 1️⃣ You go out. You drink. 2️⃣ A driver arrives on a folding scooter, 3️⃣ Drives your own car home, 4️⃣ Folds the scooter, puts it in the trunk and leaves…🛴🌬️ 🔴 No new habits to learn. 🟠 No friction. 🟡 No moral speeches. That’s innovation: Not a breakthrough technology, but a breakthrough in thinking. Most innovation fails because it tries to change people. The best innovation works because it accepts reality and improves it: ☑️ It removes friction instead of adding rules. ☑️ It fits naturally into existing behavior. ☑️ It feels obvious only after you see it. This is a good reminder for any industry. Innovation is not about doing more. It’s about doing what actually works. Sometimes, the smartest ideas don’t scale through code, but through common sense. 🚗🛴 #Innovation #ProductThinking #DesignThinking #CustomerExperience #UrbanMobility #RealWorldSolutions

After nearly 30 years in the customer experience space, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is the critical importance of partnership. You can have the most innovative CX strategy, cutting-edge technology, and even the most comprehensive data insights, but if you don’t have buy-in from the right stakeholders, and have business leaders willing to work with you, your efforts will always fall flat. Sounds obvious, but so many miss this. Managing stakeholder expectations and ensuring alignment across departments isn’t just about communication, it’s about trust and influence. Whether it’s C-suite executives, frontline employees, or even external partners, each stakeholder plays a vital role in shaping and delivering the customer experience. The best CX initiatives are those that have everyone on board, with a shared vision and a clear understanding of the impact on both the business and the customer. Being an effective partner means listening to stakeholder concerns, aligning your objectives with theirs, and continuously showing the value that customer experience brings. It’s about understanding their priorities and communicating how CX initiatives help meet those goals. When stakeholders see CX as an enabler of business outcomes rather than just a customer-focused initiative, execution becomes far more effective. The bottom line? CX success isn’t just about customers. It’s about aligning the internal team, building trust, and ensuring that everyone is invested in the same outcome. #customerexperience #stakeholdermanagement #leadership #strategy #digitaltransformation #collaboration #technology

I have made the mistake of seeing myself as a typical user of my product too many times. Why is it bad? How to avoid it? As the hilarious picture shows, the product creators may understand their market, but still not capture the real needs of the users. You, the Product Manager, are to be the user and business ambassador, not the actual user. Why is your perspective likely wrong? • Lack of diverse point of view: single perspective • You can't possibly know all your users' challenges • Being in tech gives you instincts no tech users miss • You will miss innovation that only users can uncover • You carry inherent biases and assumptions, as any individual • Being a product expert makes you blind to beginner challenges    ...and likely more. "Ok, smart guy, - you may say - but how do you ensure you design the right product for your users?" Way ahead of you! Here are a few actions a typical Product Manager can invest in, to ensure it's the users's perspective driving product development, not the limited PM ones: 1) KYC (Know Your Customer) client research With the work done by a dedicated company, you will deeply understand your users' needs, behaviors, and motivations. 2) Building user personas Create detailed profiles representing different user types to guide design and development decisions. Use data to identify usage patterns that can be labeled as specific types of users and polish them in a dedicated workshop. Speaking of which: 3) "Jobs to be Done" workshop With this you will identify the tasks users aim to accomplish, focusing on their goals rather than features. This is the ultimate way for PMs to identify the right problems to solve! 4) Dealing with data, not opinions Goes without saying, base decisions on analytics and user data instead of personal hunches. Especially your own. 5) Quantitative discovery (polls and surveys) Use surveys to gather measurable user insights. If you ask the right questions, you will get a representable number. You can also look for those in your reporting suite. 6) Introducing MVP quickly to understand users' reactions You can always launch a Minimum Viable Product early to collect feedback and iterate. Even embed some polls with it to gather live feedback! 7) Qualitative discovery (user interviews and observations) Engage directly with users to gain an in-depth understanding of their experiences. They will tell you whether your prototype resonates with them and they can complete assigned tasks easily. There you have it, many ways to keep your opinion away from good Product decisions. So, have you ever assumed you knew what your users wanted, only to be surprised by their actual needs? How do you get to understand your users? Sound off in the comments! #productmanagement #productmanager #userexperience P.S. To become a Product Manager who truly understands and serves your users, be sure to check out my courses on www.drbartpm.com :)

What if your biggest growth opportunity isn’t in your sales pipeline, but in your post-sale experience? While most revenue teams obsess over lead volume and top-of-funnel performance, high-performing organizations are reallocating resources toward the one area most overlooked (and most profitable): customer retention. You’re not losing revenue because you can’t acquire customers; it’s because you can’t keep them. Customer experience, loyalty, and client services are no longer “support” functions. They’re strategic growth levers. And the cost of ignoring them is compounding: - Customer acquisition costs (CAC) are rising 60–75% - Churn is erasing pipeline gains before they hit the forecast - Siloed orgs are failing to act on critical post-sale insights Here’s how growth leaders are operationalizing customer-centricity to outpace competitors: ✅ Shift GTM strategy from funnel-filling to journey stewardship. Map the full customer lifecycle, then build cross-functional ownership for every phase beyond the sale. ✅ Hardwire retention into revenue models. Redefine revenue metrics: CLV, NRR, and CSAT become as critical as quota attainment. ✅ Turn customer success into a revenue function. Enable CS teams to identify expansion triggers, churn signals, and feedback loops that inform both product and GTM. ✅ Engineer feedback into daily operations. Surface real-time insights from support, community, and product usage–not quarterly surveys or lagging indicators. The companies doing this right see up to a 25% lift in renewals, 35% higher LTV, and customer referrals that shorten sales cycles by 30–50%. Want to build a revenue engine that scales and sustains? Start by asking: How are we designing for the customer after the contract is signed? Read the full post: https://lnkd.in/dY3Rxsc9 __________ For more on growth and building trust, check out my previous posts. Christine Alemany Join me on my journey, and let's build a more trustworthy world together. #Fintech #Strategy #Growth

Sara Blakely is a model of customer-centric leadership. Her entire philosophy was built around customer needs. This is how she grew Spanx through customer centricity: 1. She obsessed over the customer problem: ↓ She understood what women were feeling; frustrated with uncomfortable clothes, pressured by unrealistic beauty standards, and overlooked by brands. She positioned Spanx as an ally, not just a product. 2. She stayed close to the customer’s reality:  ↓ She went into stores, watched how women shopped, and answered emails personally. Every piece of feedback was treated as insight for improvement. 3. She focused on customers, not rivals:  ↓ “I never paid any attention to my competitors. I paid attention to my customers” she said. Her strategy wasn’t about winning battles, it was about serving women better. 4. She prioritised customers over investors:  ↓ By bootstrapping Spanx, she freed herself from shareholder pressures. That independence let her act on what customers wanted, not what quarterly reports demanded. 5. She sold confidence, not products: ↓ Marketing wasn't about features or technical fabrics. It was about how women felt at a wedding, in a boardroom, or on a date. She told stories that mirrored customer realities, building identification and trust. 6. She created connection over transaction:  ↓ She made women feel heard and represented, whether through the inclusive product range, playful packaging, or brand voice that reflected their own humour and struggles. Customers felt Spanx understood them. 7. She made customer focus part of the culture: ↓ Her “oops meetings” gave employees permission to take risks, learn, and innovate, so customers could benefit from better ideas and bolder solutions. 8. She created advocacy born from love: ↓ Because customers felt the brand cared for them, they naturally became its promoters. Word-of-mouth and authentic advocacy grew Spanx faster than traditional advertising ever could. Spanx was valued at approximately $1.2 billion in 2021 when the Blackstone Group acquired a majority stake. Not a bad thing to put customers at the centre of everything, right? #cx #customerexperience #customerrelations

The 𝐏𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐑𝐨𝐨𝐦 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 (𝐏𝐑𝐨𝐅) teaching case shows how a large healthcare consortium and a small group of manufacturers collaborated to rethink innovation in a highly regulated sector. At its core, the case demonstrates how PRoF turned the interaction between two very different communities into its main innovation engine. The large consortium represents the healthcare user community: nurses, doctors, caregivers, patients, and hospital managers who express the lived reality of care. Their contribution is experiential and value-based. Through structured “brainwave sessions,” they surface latent needs and convert them into broad keywords such as comfort, privacy, dignity, or anti-loneliness. These keywords form a shared language that avoids technical jargon and allows hundreds of users with diverse perspectives to converge around common priorities. The small consortium consists of manufacturers, architects, and designers who have the capabilities to transform these user insights into concrete room concepts. Their commercial goals are kept strictly outside the creative process, allowing trust to grow between the groups. Once the user community defines the keywords, the producer community develops prototypes, after which the large consortium returns to evaluate and refine them. This modular sequencing keeps tensions low, ensures rapid progress, and prevents commercial logic from dominating user needs. The interaction between these two communities solves a longstanding problem in healthcare innovation: suppliers often misunderstand user needs, while users lack the means to innovate. PRoF bridges this gap by letting users drive ideation and letting producers translate that insight into solutions. What emerges is a genuinely user-oriented innovation ecosystem in which neither community could succeed alone, but together they generate concepts that reshape expectations of care design. You can find the case study at HBSP: https://lnkd.in/e6nxTFM7 #UserCentricInnovation #Collaboration #OpenInnovation #CrossCommunityCollaboration #HealthcareEcosystems #CoCreation #Ideation

Your growth is stalling - because customers feel forgotten. When I was an executive hiring agencies, the relationships often felt too transactional. It rarely went beyond deliverables. That’s something I wanted to change when I owned my agency. I remember a client once saying: “I trust your team more than my own.” That stuck with me. It wasn’t just about delivering great work - it was about showing up in ways they didn’t expect. My big takeaway: Customer-centric strategies go beyond the work itself. They’re about building trust and creating value. Here’s how to do it: 1. Map the customer journey - what’s working, what’s not? 2. Turn data into action - behavior reveals more than surveys. 3. Align your teams - sales, marketing, and CX should work as one. 4. Prioritize retention - it’s more profitable than constant acquisition. 5. Iterate constantly - customers evolve, so your strategy should too. Stay focused: Growth isn’t just about more - it’s about better. Better relationships, better strategies, better results. P.S.: What’s one way you’ve strengthened loyalty with your customers?

I recently had a chance to clock in for a 5-hour shift making coffee at one of Deputy's customers. Those hours provided a treasure trove of valuable information: which part of our product is most beloved by workers and why, what we could do better to enable worker productivity, and a wish list for new features that will help workers and managers be more connected and in sync. I also learned about how the baristas foster teamwork, what body movements and order of operations they do to maximize the amount of customers they can serve, and how they build real connection and loyalty with their buyers. It was one of the most memorable days of last year! When it comes to developing game changing innovation, "listening" to customers is no longer enough - leaders must go deeper! They actually have to step into their customers' shoes. I shared my thoughts with Forbes on the topic of human-centered design. My take? It’s about deep market research that comes with spending time with your users and building empathy through true understanding of their pain points. Translating data is something I’m passionate about, but understanding the HUMAN challenges behind the numbers is where the magic happens. Check out the 20 strategies shared by inspiring leaders, and tell me, what would you add to the list? Link here: https://lnkd.in/gH73y-nR #ForbesExpertPanel #TechnologyForGood #EmpathyInDesign #CustomerFeedback