the in-house ask
“we need an internal CX consultant with expertise to cover for maternity leave”
IKEA operates through a global franchise model with a consistent customer experience as a priority.
Initially, we were brought in to cover maternity leave within an internal program aimed at ensuring high-quality, uniform CX across all markets.
Our contribution showed our added value and expertise in journey management and service design, which led to our continued involvement in scaling up.
“Giulia was a fantastic addition to our team. She quickly immersed herself in the IKEA world and seamlessly integrated her outside-in expertise, thus enhancing the value we deliver within our CX Centre of Expertise, to the rest of the organisation.”
Masa Sretenovic
Customer Experience & Engagement @ Inter IKEA
what we provided
1. in-house consultant
The initial request was to provide in-house consultancy to support IKEA’s franchisees globally with customer journey mapping tools and guidelines to ensure a consistent customer experience.
By being embedded within the organisation, our consultant was able to:
- connect stakeholders
- provide support
- facilitate sessions and
- gain deeper insights into shared challenges.
and targeted support based on evolving insights
As a result, we developed a clear understanding of their needs, allowing us to execute additional targeted in-house and project support, including:
2. Journey management
3. Data & measurement
4. Voice of the Customer
5. CX strategy & ambition
6. Research
This approach ensures that we help the client move forward based on evolving insights rather than being confined to a predefined scope.
CX consultants
Our hands-on CX consultants are ready to support you with:
– Defining your CX ambition, strategy and roadmap
– Developing the maturity of CX management capabilities
– Facilitating stakeholder sessions and sprints for co-creation
– Coaching teams for a customer-centric way-of-working
service designers
Our service designers are ready to support you with:
– Researching customers to identify needs and expectations
– Co-creating journey maps and customer profiles
– Translating insights into validated service propositions
– Defining the service blueprint for efficient service delivery
journey managers
Our journey management consultants support you with:
– Customer journey research & analysis
– Rolling out journey management with tools like TheyDo
– Facilitating pilot projects for journey-based working
– Defining, scaling and coaching the journey way-of-working
UX designers
Our UX designers are ready to support you with:
– UX design sprints in user-centric agile development
– Design experiments and validate with users
– Building design systems for omni-channel
– Conversion optimisation in the channels
data consultants
Our CX data consultants are ready to support you with:
– Setting up a measurement framework for CX
– Identifying the right data sources and metrics for your goals
– Implementing a dashboard for monitoring CX performance
– Expertise with customer insight tools like Qualtrics & Expoints
UX researchers
Our UX researchers are ready to support you with:
– Identify (digital) user needs and opportunities
– Collect and analyse data as input for concept design
– Advise on accessibility and inclusive design
– Validate design experiments with users
the benefits for working with our in-house experts
having a cx specialist connecting the dots and ensuring continuity
Our professionals act as key figures in your company, connecting dots between different projects to ensure continuity, supported by inspiration sessions or quarterly meetings.
strategic insight and hands-on execution
We provide expertise across all levels of experience, from junior to senior, with both strategic insight and hands-on execution.
This proved to be important at Inter IKEA, as they had many senior professionals but lacked hands-on capacity.
implement targeted project work based on evolving insights
By truly being part of the team, and having direct contact with stakeholders, we gain a better understanding of the challenges faced by different teams, for which we offer targeted support.
combine in-house with existing programmes
Combining in-house work with existing programmes creates more impact by embedding expertise directly within teams.
This strengthens cross-department collaboration, connecting silos for a seamless customer experience.
delivering as we collaborate
Depending on the client’s ask, we tailor our deliverables for maximum impact.
For IKEA, this meant, among other things, providing market research, a CX framework, customer journey workshops, a CX maturity assessment, and omnichannel support.
Ginger Schipperus
Client Manager In-house