Growth-Driven Design: A Smarter Way to Deliver Moments That Matter

by Kim Garmon Hummel

This is for all you business leaders out there. What are people saying about the user experience that goes with your organization? Notice I didn’t say “what are your customers saying” because, although Customer Experience is usually our first thought, growth-driven leaders understand that building intentional experiences for customers and employees is the foundation of meaningful growth and success.

Here’s the thing: we all recognize signs that people have had a lousy experience with an organization—usually when it’s obvious and, unfortunately, public—like customer complaints, negative reviews online (and not just Yelp, Google, and social media—also GlassDoor, and other employee platforms).

Customer complaints and negative reviews aren’t symptoms of a crummy customer experience—it’s a symptom of organizational experience in crisis.

Do you recognize these symptoms of a crumbling customer experience?

High volume of customer complaints
Decreased customer retention rates
Increased staff stress, burnout, and turnover
Difficulty in accomplishing company initiatives
Decline in customer satisfaction scores
Longer resolution times for support tickets
Consistent escalation of issues to higher management
Frequent communication breakdowns and high organizational friction
Difficulty in meeting service level agreements (SLAs)

By the time an experience is so bad it drives customers and employees to go public and get vocal, your organization has serious remedial work to do. This isn’t the time for a shiny new HR initiative, an employee pizza party, or a client discount offer. It’s time to get intentional and devote serious critical thought to:

The experience your prospects and customers want to do business with
The experience your employees and ideal candidates want to work in and remain loyal to

Every organization wants raving fans for customers, and loyal employees who continue to add value through dedication and innovation.

But not every business leader understands that in order to build a devoted customer base and thriving employees, you need to create Moments That Matter.

Creating Moments That Matter: A Smarter Way To Business Growth

Delightful experiences for your employees and customers are made of a thousand Moments That Matter. It takes a suite of solutions designed to create significant and impactful Moments That Matter for both your customers and employees within your organization.

Here at Team Sauce, we’ve broken down these moments into:

We take a holistic approach to crafting these Moments That Matter, and each aspect contributes to the experience your company creates. Each of these solutions works together to attract, engage, and delight your ideal customers and employees, enabling your business to Grow Smarter and Scale Faster.

A Shift In Thinking About Business Growth

For too long, we’ve subscribed to “The Customer is King” or “The Customer is Always Right” philosophies that put top line revenue above all else. Many businesses have viewed customers as indispensable and employees as a commodity. This approach has led to impersonal customer experiences without nuance or unique touchpoints, and work environments where employees feel like they’re a cog in a machine, lacking value or importance–or worse yet, as punching bags where customers take advantage of those outdated philosophies.

Moments That Matter reflect the human side of business. It focuses on building a company culture where customers feel like their problems are understood and your business’s solutions are bespoke—nothing cookie-cutter or “out of the box.”

Moments That Matter create a framework of value, collaboration, and security for your employees to thrive in—and they stick around longer, care more, and contribute to the growth of your business.

If you’re thinking this sounds like a huge expenditure of effort, you’re right. But there is a big payoff in retaining customers, decreasing turnover and hiring costs, and creating a stronger brand reputation. Creating a company culture that reflects your values, mission, and vision internally and externally is a challenge that most organizations don’t want to take on. That’s why, in order to reap the benefits of a robust, magnetic customer and employee experience, you need a strategy. A plan that will help you chart, implement, and develop Moments That Matter to your customers and your employees alike.

Building Moments That Matter With Growth-Driven Design

If you’ve been around the Sauce block, you’ve definitely heard of Growth-Driven Design (GDD). GDD is an iterative and data-driven methodology usually associated with website design that focuses on continuous improvement based on real-time analytics and user feedback. Web design is one use for GDD, but here at Sauce we think a data-backed, iterative improvement approach is valuable in almost any business growth initiative.

Why is Growth-Driven Design such an effective framework? Because it eliminates the guesswork from business growth, providing you with real-user data. It’s an approach that starts with a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) or launch pad, that is consistently improved based on data and feedback from your actual users. It’s an agile framework that helps businesses scale faster, grow smarter, and provide outstanding user experiences—for employees and customers alike.

Designing Customer Moments That Matter

Let’s walk a mile in your customers’ shoes. Look at your existing buyer’s journey—what’s frustrating, confusing, or just outright boring to them? Where are they stagnating in your sales pipeline, what questions do your sales team have to answer every single day?

These don’t all have to be costly or require huge initiatives to implement. They do have to be intentional, documented, and repeatable. Note - that doesn’t mean impersonal or uncreative. This is a great place to get your employees involved, asking them to step into those customer shoes and put on their empathy hats to understand what would be helpful, kind, caring, and considerate for customers at every interaction point.

This is where you start building a minimal viable product—aka your baseline customer experience.

Enhancing User Experiences through Growth-Driven Design

With Growth-Driven Design, organizations can use data-driven, personalized User Experiences (UX) to create tailored interactions based on user behavior and preferences. These experiences continue to evolve as your sales, marketing, and service teams get a deeper understanding of your ideal customer and their unique needs.

Get To Know Your Customers

In order to make data-backed iterative improvements to your customer experience, you first need data—data that speaks to the needs, wants, and expectations of your customers.

Using a Customer Relationship Platform (CRM) like HubSpot can help you build an infrastructure of understanding around your customers and their journeys. As you analyze points of friction, hesitation, or places users drop off, you can take corrective action to smooth the path in the future.

Note: In order to create a dynamic and engaging user journey that delivers unique touch points and personal interactions, you need the data and technological support of Systems that Scale. You see, Growth-Driven Design works best when used holistically within an organization, encouraging balanced growth between all areas of your business. By the way, that’s the essence of Revenue Operations, which is why RevOps and Growth-Driven Design are a perfect pair.

Designing Employee Moments That Matter

What kind of experience are you creating for your employees? Does your company culture foster loyalty, innovation, and determination? Or does it create a defeated attitude where your teams can’t share their perspective and opinions? With Growth-Driven Design, you can build a company culture that makes your best employees want to stick around and grow with your company—and attracts your ideal candidates.

Employee experiences need just as much intentionality, documentation, and repeatability as the customer experience to scale with your growth. eUX is becoming more critical as younger generations enter the workforce and have grown up in the digital and experience economy. Personalized experiences at scale are incredibly attractive to prospective employees who are being recruited to bring their talents to an organization.

Fostering Company Culture with Growth-Driven Design

Most organizations have a mission statement, but seeing it implemented in a meaningful way to employees is a rarity.

Aligning company values and integrating them into your team’s culture is the first step in building your minimal viable product (MVP). From there, you can incorporate employee feedback and data analytics to make iterative improvements that develop as your company grows.

A critical part of improving your employee user experience (eUX) is eliminating friction. Friction slows your team’s productivity, creates frustration, and makes accountability almost impossible. Take a look at your internal processes—where do you see missed opportunities, communication breakdowns, or departmental information silos? This is your starting point for iterative improvements to your employee experience.

Build Relationships That Last With Your Customers and Employees: Create Moments That Matter With Team Sauce

Relationships are hard work—inside and outside of business. It takes care, attentiveness, and understanding to develop a lasting bond that inspires trust, loyalty, and dedication. But the benefits of investing in your customer and employee relationships last beyond a single purchase or single hire. It creates an environment for humans to thrive—and now more than ever customers and employees want to feel human, valued, and appreciated.

Implementing a successful Growth-Driven Design methodology for your company culture doesn’t happen overnight. Many organizations have blind spots that can take years to surface, or don’t have the time to dedicate to meaningful change. That’s where Team Sauce comes in.

We’ve helped businesses in a variety of industries implement Growth-Driven Design and Revenue Operations in their business so they can #GrowSmarter and #ScaleFaster. If you’re curious about creating Moments That Matter to transform your customer and employee experiences in your organization, schedule a call with one of our Certified Growth Guides today!