Along with my day-to-day CX consulting I’m also a business mentor for Remarkable, an early stage accelerator that supports startups to create tech solutions for people with disabilities.
In my initial discussions with this year’s cohort there was one startup that stood out from the rest, AbleFinder. What’s remarkable about AbleFinder is their approach to problem solving the social challenge of community isolation for families with disabled children.
Before designing a solution, the founders talked with affected families and consulted with the community; not just a few random conversations, they undertook 200 interviews!
Their investigation uncovered data that delivered deep understanding of the systemic isolation problems that the disability community faces; their unmet needs and emotional state.
This is data that’s rich with insight and has informed four customer persona profiles that tell the customer story; their functional and emotional needs.
In our mentoring sessions we use these customer persona profiles to guide our discussions and our decision making.
These stories help connect us with, and design for, what’s important to customers, and what’s going to deliver value for both customers and AbleFinder.
Their approach is instinctive, with genuine intent to improve people’s lives. This is what customer centricity looks like. Genuine customer curiosity, empathy and a motivation to understand the world of the people they are designing for.
This is Being Customer Remarkable.
AbleFinder is creating a chatbot to connect the global disability community which is set to launch in June 2018 http://www.ablefinder.org.au/