A Quest to Automate Success Stories Uncovers Amazing Customer Insights
A FAILURE TO LAUNCH
UNLOCKS AMAZING CUSTOMER INSIGHTS
A FAILURE TO LAUNCH
UNLOCKS AMAZING CUSTOMER INSIGHTS
LEADING TO A SUCCESSFUL VOICE OF CUSTOMER PROGRAM
Metabolic stands out in the health and wellness space with its tailored weight loss programs for women. As a $60M a year business, leveraging customer success stories is key to its acquisition strategy.
My mission was to design an automated system for capturing compelling success stories, reducing manual effort and enriching the ongoing marketing campaigns.
Instead, this journey uncovered incredible customer insights that led to a new Voice of Customer program and a 36% boost in AOV.
_PROJECT
Metabolic Voice of Customer Program (VOC)
UX Strategy
User Research
Prototyping
_MY ROLE
_DATE
Summer 2023
Our core audience is women aged 35-70, united by a goal of weight loss. The program's key message to target and balance hormones to achieve goals strikes a chord with them.
Initially, Metabolic's approach to collecting testimonials was labor-intensive, involving a lot of manual detective work and social sleuthing, along with a ton of customer hand-holding. Not only was the process time-consuming, the results often lacked the authenticity and inspiration.
LEARN _ESTABLISH THE BASELINE
THE AUDIENCE
CURRENT STATE
HOW CAN WE IDENTIFY IDEAL CANDIDATES FOR SUCCESS STORIES?
NOT ALL STORIES WILL INSPIRE.
SUCCESS CAN BE FLEETING.
NOT EVERYONE COMPLETES THE PROGRAM.
PRIVACY CONSIDERATIONS;
NOT EVERYONE WILL WANT TO SHARE.
KEY CONSIDERATIONS
LEARN
WHAT MAKES A SUCCESS STORY GENUINELY COMPELLING?
WHEN DO CUSTOMERS TYPICALLY EXPERIENCE THEIR BIGGEST WINS DURING THE PROGRAM?
ARE THERE SPECIFIC MILESTONES IN THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY THAT CORRELATE WITH SUCCESS?
HOW CAN WE ENCOURAGE CUSTOMERS TO SHARE THESE MOMENTS OPENLY AND AUTHENTICALLY?
WHAT MAKES A GOOD SUCCESS STORY?
To address these questions, we could introduce targeted conversational prompts at three significant stages in the customer's journey. These prompts would not only help us capture invaluable success stories but also offer customers added support and guidance.
Program Start: Leveraging initial enthusiasm, customers share their motivations, goals and potential concerns.
Bi-Weekly Check-Ins: Regular check-ins provide a level of accountability to the program, while capturing incremental victories and gathering product feedback.
Program End: While acknowledging that not everyone finishes the program, this milestone collects stories from those who have successes to share.
DESIGN
DESIGN _CRAFT THE SOLUTION
Now that I had the tool, I needed to determine the interview flow. I designed scripts aimed at eliciting deeply personal, motivating stories. These scripts tactfully accounted for the less successful customer experiences as well, providing dynamic question flows that would shift and change with the customers answers.
Rather than creating a custom solution from the ground up, I utilized a 3rd-party interactive, asynchronous video tool to enable two-way conversations that would feel truly authentic, but would allow for an automated and scalable solution.
DELIVER
DELIVER _PROTOTYPE & TEST
RECRUITING "THE INTERVIEWER"
Metabolic's friendly and engaging social community manager, Lora, was the perfect conduit for these conversations. Her natural tone and energy were perfect to help customers open up. Lora recorded herself reading the question flow scripts, capturing the essence of a friend-to-friend chat.
BETA TESTING
With Lora's help, we launched a beta test with actual customers and the results were nothing short of revelatory. Customers didn't just participate; they opened their hearts. The conversational tone allowed them to not only share their successes, but also reveal intimate details about their lives, aspirations, and challenges.
WE UNCOVERED AN
INSIGHT GENERATING POWERHOUSE
This beta test was more than a testimonial exercise; we uncovered an insight-generating gold mine. I was able to learn precisely who our customers were—their motivations, goals, pain points, and even their previous experiences with competitors.
BETA TESTING OUTCOMES
This beta test was more than a testimonial exercise; we uncovered an insight-generating powerhouse. I learned precisely who our customers were—their motivations, goals, pain points, and even their previous experiences with competitors. It was like striking gold in terms of customer intelligence, ready to be mined for future product design and marketing endeavors.
With this in mind, I developed a detailed, situation-specific service blueprint, along with email starter templates to standardize our process and client communication.
These tools ensured our team could offer targeted, compassionate interactions regardless of the customer's situation.
The beta phase proved that while we could find amazing customer insights, we were not necessarily finding the success stories we were after.
In addition, customers were sharing deeply personal experiences. I recognized an ethical responsibility we had as a company to handle this sensitive information carefully and engage meaningfully in return.
REFINE
REFINE _ITERATE & EVOLVE
This diagram is the situation-specific service blueprint. It shows both what the customer experiences (front stage), as well as the actions that happen behind the scenes (back stage) and who on the Metabolic team is responsible (actors).
Deployed in early spring 2023, the initial phase elicited thousands of responses from women at the starting line of their weight loss journey. Though these submissions didn't offer end-of-journey success stories we set out to find, they provided something perhaps even more valuable: an in-depth understanding of our customers' unique characteristics and needs.
While the initial objective was to automate the collection of success stories, an unexpected shift in company priorities led us to launch only the first phase of the program, titled "Starting Your Program and Defining Your 'Why.'"
And it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
RESULTS
This image shows the outcome of a persona sticky note exercise that pulls together all of the data discovered for one of the buyer groups, "The Pre-Menopausal Woman."
WHEN PAIRED WITH SURVEY DATA, UNIQUE PERSONAS STARTED TO COME TO THE SURFACE
THIS SIMPLE TEST UNCOVERED HUGE POTENTIAL FOR AMAZING USER RESEARCH
AND THESE INSIGHTS NEEDED
TO BE LEVERAGED COMPANY-WIDE
The granular insights from phase one served as the catalyst for me to spearhead a new Voice of the Customer (VOC) Program at Metabolic. This program aimed to ingrain a deep understanding of our customers across the entire company, transcending superficial assumptions.
By analyzing this data we were cultivating, I identified three distinct buyer personas. While united by the overarching goal of weight loss, each group had their own unique motivations, challenges, and obstacles. This analysis not only enriched our customer profiles, but also facilitated the creation of more targeted marketing strategies.
VOICE OF THE CUSTOMER PROGRAM (VOC)
The VOC insights were shared across the organization, enabling each business unit to tailor their strategies and output directly to the specific needs of the customers they serve.
For example, I was able to work directly with the Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) team to help optimize their UX with the customer in mind, leading to a 36% increase in average order value (AOV) over the course of 2023.
This project allowed us to gain invaluable insights, and because of that, we were able to pivot to focus on a Voice of Customer program, a part of the business that was previously underdeveloped. This research helped the company dial in our products, services, and user experiences as a whole.
REFLECT
AND THESE RICH CUSTOMER INSIGHTS
NEEDED TO BE LEVERAGED COMPANY-WIDE
INTRODUCING
THE VOICE OF CUSTOMER PROGRAM
I created the Metabolic VOC website as to centralize all customer insights, research and findings. This website was updated regularly with the latest details, and the information was then disseminated across the company.
