Industry Insights with Deloitte Digital Reviewed

On a sunny Thursday evening, Marketing Society Scotland Members were welcomed to Deliotte Digital’s sleek offices in central Edinburgh to listen to a series of case studies about how they are helping organisations succeed by putting humans at the centre of their plans.

After a healthy kale and cucumber shot and some rather tasty canapés we were ready to hear from Gareth Edwards and Debbie McLean, joint Principals and Ilicco Elia, Head of Mobile. First piece of useful info was that Deloitte Digital have nothing to do with accountancy… I know it was news to me too! Second thing to note is hearing about some of the practices within other organisations makes me feel better about some of the quirks within my own.

The first case study took us through a customer sprint for Stagecoach to explore how they could encourage more people to take their buses. The Deloitte Digital team walked through the experience of being and passenger and interviewed the drivers and staff at the frontline of serving passengers. Through this process they identified tools to enable drivers to give better customer service and recognised that they needed to design items to make potential passengers lives easier such as creating a more visual timetable, ensuring the Stagecoach app was signposted and making bus stop names much bigger so customers on the bus could easily see their stop. The Deloitte Digital Team improved Stagecoach’s performance and their suggestions have been rolled out more widely across the network.

With Transport of London, the team looked at Victoria Bus Station and explored the customer and staff journeys. There were a host of changes that were suggested but one in particular resonated with me - changing customer expectations meant that apps had been created for customers to provide more real-time information but staff were still using paper based methods. This meant that customers were often more up-to-date than staff about what was going on in the station. Deloitte Digital introduced tablets that enabled instant messaging between staff to ensure they were more efficient in their role and improve communication between the different TFL teams. 

The Deloitte Digital team took us through a methodology they use to design solutions in conjunction with users helping empower employees to deliver results and combine different capabilities from across organisations. They also discussed using intuitive tools that people already know, for example Apple iOS formats, which reduces the need for training and helps new tools be adopted. They emphasised that solutions are not always digital but they can look at where digital solutions can support.

There were several key insights which came out of the case studies discussed, which I think we can all put at the heart of our projects:

1.    Create the staff experience so they can deliver the customer experience

2.    Create the culture first - ensure buy in from the top

3.    Technology should enhance the human touch and be at the centre of any planning and design

Laura Cheyne is Head of Marketing at National Trust Scotland

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