Have you ever wondered what it’s like for both your prospective and existing customers to do business with you? What if you grew your sales by improving on your customers’ experience of engaging with and buying from you along all stages of the marketing and sales funnel?

Thinkergy walked managers of the polycarbonates division of Covestro Southeast Asia through the five stages of X-IDEA. Initially, the project was intended to focus on how to  improve Covestro’s sales process in Asean.

During Xploration, Thinkergy helped a smaller project team to get an outside in-perspective on their business by investigating the customer journey of a new prospect interested in polycarbonates. The team mapped the customer experience of a prospect going through the various steps (such as discovery and first contact) of Covestro’s sales process with its two main phases customer acquisition and customer). Thereby, the team listed what’s happening at each step, what’s good and bad about it, and what touchpoints are involved. The fresh insights gained during Xploration led the team to reframe their final challenge (“How to improve the customer journey of a new client of Covestro?”) . Moreover, we adopted the customer journey map as framework to structure the subsequent ideation and concept development.

A few weeks later, three Covestro innovation teams with managers from across Southeast Asia came together in Bangkok for an intense 1-day IDEA workshop. Thanks to tailored I Tools (like Four Actions and What If), the teams produced more than two thousand raw ideas in a playful morning of Ideation. In the afternoon, the teams designed the most intriguing raw ideas into several dozen of idea concepts. After evaluating each of these for value potential and feasibility, each team finally presented their 5 top ideas.

One top idea suggested to develop a new mobile app to guide customers along the Covestro journey. This standout idea was later selected to be pitched at an internal global innovation event at Covestro’s head office in Shanghai.

Thinkergy worked with the team behind this top idea to design a winning idea pitch; thereby, we showed and demonstrated in a role play how the app allows prospects and customers to take specific action related to common needs and emotional states. We also coached the team how to rebut tough questions in a Q&A. Then, the team went to Shanghai, pitched and fought for the their top idea, and secured top management approval for its global activation.

When would now be a good time for you to make it easier, more enjoyable and frictionless for your customers to do business with you? Get in touch to tell us more about your situation.