In the bitterly contested marketplace of mobile communications, providing high levels of customer delight is proving to be one of the keys to keeping users on a network and to growing market share. And, for Clive Grinyer of European mobile behemoth Orange, design methodology is the tool of choice for consistently making the right call on what works best for customers. 

 

While not represented directly in New Zealand, Orange has over 88 million mobile customers and the world�s largest seamless voice and data network. Its European customers include 50% of Fortune 100 companies in Europe and the company offers local support in 166 countries and territories. Launched in 1994 the company was acquired by France Telecom in 2000 for �39.7 billion (NZ$75.61 bn).

 

The director of design at Orange France Telecom, Grinyer and his team play a central role in the company�s research and development strategy, and are responsible for ensuring Orange invents �the new services of tomorrow� and accelerates �the introduction of new products� � both of which are foundation planks of the group�s three-year transformational programme.

 

Dubbed NExT (New Experience in Telecom services), the programme aims to take the group further up the success ladder by making France Telecom the operator of reference for new telecom services in Europe � �Europe�s telecom service provider of reference, the reference for innovation, the reference for service quality, and the reference for economic performance� � real and measurable business goals which are being made possible by design, Grinyer says.

 

�France Telecom have converted all their brands into the name of Orange and we now have quite a big stable of products and services� (My role includes) co-ordinating design, making sure that users can actually understand and use our equipment and that they actually want to � the emotional side to innovation,� he says.

 

As the fourth entrant into �a crowded and colourless UK mobile phone market� Orange recognised the importance of emotional appeal early in the game, building its nascent identity on a foundation made of strong rational and emotional messages that promised more than the standard inflexible and confusing products of the day, and which eschewed technical jargon in favour of layman�s terms.

 

Testimony to the success of this strategy is the instant brand awareness it achieved, rocketing to 45% within two weeks of its launch and shooting 20% ahead of established competitors Vodafone and Cellnet to 70% within two years. 

 

Grinyer concedes that initially the company had quite a shallow notion of design, perceiving it to be merely the delivery of the visual brand, adding that Orange quickly came to realise that being blessed with a strong brand and high brand awareness was just one side of the coin � converting its personality and brand values into a reliable and consistently superior customer experience was the other.

 

�They realised they had to create a real experience of the brand; that people had to use technology in a way that was the same as the promise of the advertised brand.�

 

Customers see a brand � anything � in a horizontal way, learning about it through multiple interactions and experiences, Grinyer says. Customers expect consistency and coherence from a brand but often discover that delivery falls short of the usual lofty claims and catch-phrase promises.

 

�Any customer experience is connected to an awful lot of different things. Companies are really, really bad at understanding that different parts of the experience are built in different places; that you have to see them as the customer does.

 

�The Orange definition of design is being customer focused and seeing the world as the customer sees it. We design all the bits that make up the whole customer experience, making sure that it works not just technologically but on other levels too and that the experience is emotionally satisfying.�

 

When Grinyer and his team decide what works they look beyond the binary yes or no of the technology itself and at issues like usability and conformity to the company�s brand values.

 

�In the mobile phone industry, working is not a straight-forward concept... It might work technologically but if it is not easy to use and people struggle with it then for me it is not working.�

 

The design team is tasked with creating critical points of differentiation for commodity services, differences that create real obstacles to inducements from competitors to Orange customers to switch service providers and which represent incentives for customers of other networks to go Orange. In this they are guided by several objectives:

 

1. Is it emotionally satisfying?

2. Does it represent all the brand values � straightforward, honest, dynamic, refreshing and friendly?

3. Does it work with character and personality?

 

Grinyer: �Design has two big roles of helping deliver services often very heavy with technology in a way that people can use them and then making that use delightful and an experience you could not get with our competitors. So it is a big point of differentiation for us.�

 

A common mistake is for companies to apply design at the end of a process of decision making, resulting in products and services that do not necessarily offer ample gains and address the correct pains; products and services that are doomed from the start to rank among the 70% to 90% of new products that disappear off shelves within 12 months of being launched (Gourville John T., �Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers�, Harvard Business Review, June 2006).

 

�If you apply design at the end, it is too late to create something that people actually want. The people who make decisions along the way are usually the wrong people because they are not tuned to understand how people do things and how they are driven emotionally and that can ruin huge investment, it can ruin very clever technology and it can ruin business strategy,� Grinyer says.

 

�The world is full of examples of what were apparently great ideas that went wrong: genetically modified food, the Segway people mover � lots of clever ideas that nobody wants for often reasons that were completely obscure to the people who had the original idea.�

 

Describing design as a powerful tool for marketing, Grinyer says it should ideally be very closely combined with the marketing function, among other things verifying market research findings, which are often fatally flawed.

 

Citing the Sony Walkman as one great innovation that almost never happened because standard market research outputs indicated the public did not want it, he says design is both a bridge that connects marketing and technology and marketing and manufacturing and a process that converts ideas into the small percentage of products and services that offer compelling reasons for customers to upgrade, adopt something new or switch brands.

 

�Design helps companies get much closer to their customers. It is a methodology with lots of techniques in its toolkit that help companies achieve competitive advantage. It helps companies convert ideas into something tangible and can do it relatively cheaply and quickly early on in the process before you spend lots of money and lots of investment.�

 

Design should also be recognised as a risk management tool as it can stop companies from making �terrible mistakes� and thereby protect the interests of shareholders, Grinyer says.

 

�Design is a key tool in helping you get the right strategy, helping you ensure that strategy works and then delivering it.�

 

 

 

Michael Herman is the principal of Knowledge Resources Limited, a Christchurch company working in the areas of custom research, technical writing and knowledge management. A former technology editor at The Press, Michael specialises in turn-key documentation consulting to assist organisations improve productivity and to maximise future sales value. He can be contacted at michael@knowresources.com