What do you do when the product is premium but the customer experience doesn't keep up? At pur natur, a manufacturer of high-quality floorboards from the Black Forest, I set out to find invisible points of friction in the production and logistics process. Using a mix of UX methods, workshops and digital solutions, I transformed internal silos into transparent processes - and brought the customer experience up to the same quality level as the product itself. The result: less frustration, faster processes and significantly better communication. In other words: UX that takes root.
Premium floorboards with invisible flaws
pur natur stands for sustainable wooden floorboards of the highest quality from the Black Forest. Customers of pur natur don't just buy a floor, they invest in the foundation of their own personal living dreams and the excitement of the experience from regional tree to floor as a customer. But it was precisely along this path that things got bumpy.
While the physical product quality was excellent, the customer experience suffered from internal communication problems, inefficient processes and a lack of digital structures. This led to frustration among customers (and employees), problems with delivery and negative customer reviews; in short, a customer experience that was not in line with the brand promise of ‘floorboards that inspire’.
From the customer's perspective
Customers experienced non-transparent communication and unexpected delays in delivery - after an intensive, personal consultation up until the purchase was finalised, the service suddenly felt unreliable during the production and delivery phase.
Take customer Annette, for example, who organised her own renovation of an old building and fell in love with the floorboards after receiving excellent advice and opted for a floor from pur natur. In eager anticipation of the delivery, she has already ordered a crane to unload the planks. Now, shortly before the planned delivery, however, she has not yet received any confirmation from pur natur and has tried several times by telephone to obtain confirmation of the delivery. Each time she was put off on the phone because nobody could tell her whether her order had even been produced and the delivery organised. Annette's mood fluctuates between disappointment, anger and worry about the crane she had already paid for. After such good advice in the beginning, she is deeply disappointed by this unprofessional behavior.
To identify frustrations and pain points and to find solutions, I took use of various UX methods in several steps along the process, involving all relevant stakeholders.
The analysis of the stakeholder interviews indicated five main problems
Siloed thinking
Leads to departments working in isolation and prioritising only for themselves.
Poor communication
Unstructured communication via different channels leads to misunderstandings and confusion.
Inadequate maintenance of the ERP system
Leads to important information being missing in the dispatch process or having to be procured at great expense.
Missing real-time transparency
Is the main reason for queries and misunderstandings during dispatch.
Inefficient logistics planning
Planning using Excel and notepads causes avoidable errors.
Conducting a workshop to raise awareness of customer needs and internal responsibilities within the customer journey.
Methods: Minimalist proto-persona, customer journey mapping, empathy maps and service blueprint.
Result: Understanding of customers and their points of frustration in the team, better understanding of responsibilities and the need to optimise communication.
Uncomplicated equipping of production with iPads, introduction of a Slack channel for communicating completed orders, including anchoring in the process.
Result: Transparent communication of completed orders is integrated into the production process and provides real-time status updates for everyone involved.
Hands-on development of a digital control tool for logistics, based on identified ‘jobs-to-be-done’ in the shipping process.
Result: Complete digitalisation of logistics management (traceability, documentation, data collection) and breaking down silos through transparent information available to the team.
Immediately after implementation, logistics and sales were notified of the completion of an order and were able to inform customers directly or arrange delivery. Enquiries about expected completed orders have been reduced by 90% and the response time of logistics after completion of an order has been reduced from an average of 4 days to 1 day.
The digital control tool accelerated the work process by a factor of 3 (statement by logistics employees) and significantly increased pur natur's service quality thanks to better planning and traceability.
Although data maintenance in the ERP has been prioritised by all those involved, implementation still suffers considerably, which continues to lead to problems in the delivery process.
UX as a strategic lever!
As expected, UX can also be profitably applied to non-digital areas. Targeted UX methods were able to reveal hidden problems and help solve them – with measurable improvements for the customer journey and internal efficiency.
Contrary to the assumption, digitalisation is not the only solution – the human factor (data maintenance, sense of responsibility) must be taken into account. In order to clarify why relevant order information is not recorded transparently, employee behaviour and workflows should be analysed in the next step and corresponding UX interventions developed.
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