The Art of Transformative Thinking
Brand building through branch building—the reinvention of banking
An ATB Financial case study
Without any preconceived notions, how might we reinvent the banking experience for the customers and employees of a long-standing Alberta financial institution? It was a challenge that we, as designers who consider the full spectrum of customer experience, took seriously and with a lot of enthusiasm.
In this whitepaper, Anson Lee explores the leap of faith taken by ATB Financial to remain innovative and true to its brand. From the deep-dive research process that uncovered enlightening and unexpected findings, to the successful re-development of three distinct retail branches, this case study illustrates the power of transformative thinking in action.
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Get It Together
A model for collaboration when analyzing the customer experience
The payoff of aligning a brand’s touch points eludes far too many organizations. Often, the problem is that they haven’t developed a comprehensive, consistently branded customer experience – it can get messy trying to wrestle all the facets of a brand into one tidy solution. But without a framework for collaboration, siloed thinking and problem-solving prevail, ensuring that a brand’s bottom-line value will continue to be under-realized.
There’s a better way…
Successful branding is now a holistic exercise involving every single function in an organization. Whether you’re starting a new brand or analyzing a current one, you want to build a complete brand story, one that encompasses the full spectrum of customer experiences, that connects the tangible and intangible, that digs deep and spans the breadth of your company.
And we have a model to do it.
Using Starbucks and Threadless as examples, Anson Lee shows how Hugh Dubberly’s “A Model of Brand” illustrates a more cohesive customer experience, in the process facilitating communication across disciplines and helping organizations capitalize on their cumulative strength.
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Would You Like Service with That?
An exploration into service design strategy within automotive retailing
If price is no longer the ultimate differentiator between brands, how does a brand make an emotional connection with its customers, increase customer loyalty and differentiate itself by creating memorable experiences between the consumer and the brand?
Chris Bedford and Anson Lee discuss the relevance of Service Design as a critical discipline within the global Experience Economy. Using Karo's work with Open Road Auto Group as an example, the authors deconstruct the customer experience and demonstrate how businesses can thoughtfully apply service design to better align the promise of the experience with the needs of the consumer.
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