8 Validated programs of work that all teams can believe in

Doing the right thing for
the right reasons

As a general rule, customer experience innovations tend to be focussed outwards, which is perfectly understandable. After all, we’re the first to expound on how the customer should be at the heart of your organisation’s decision-making processes.

However, internal innovation can be just as significant, realigning your company around doing the right thing for the right reason and allowing you to do more with less.

Innovation has been part of our Client’s Real Estate Agents DNA since they were founded in 1988 and helped to revolutionise the Australian real estate market.

They came to us so we could work together to continue that history of innovation by developing a systemised approach to make it easier for Real Estate Agents to prospect, list and sell by creating a consistent, collaborative process that is efficient, supportive and fosters a positive team culture.

Real estate reception Systemised approached phone mock up

Working from the Inside Out

Our ethos is to connect with our customers as deeply as possible, working hand in hand with them thought the design process. We work with you, not on you.

We build trust by making sure you are at the centre of every decision we make and validate our design-led services within your environment to make sure they work for you.

To really understand what made our Client tick, we combined shareholder interviews that helped us define the problem and understand the current experience from their perspective with in-depth agent interviews and workshops to create alignment on project outcomes.

Residential property for sale

Turning Customer Understanding Into Insights and Innovation

Alongside connecting with stakeholders and agents, we conducted online client surveys with over 500 clients, followed by in-depth interviews. The verbatims we uncovered from these interviews were translated into four need states that were directly connected to pain points in the customer journey.

Our research highlighted that, while sellers were exceptionally happy with their service, there was an opportunity to innovate how Agents interacted with their buyers and deliver new and unrealised value across the end-to-end journey.

Insight stack mock up Boardroom meeting

By knowing more, you have the
ability to be more

In order to create an innovative new value proposition that would shift agent behaviours towards a more customer-centric culture, we first needed to understand their needs.

Our research provided the insights we required to create four need states for agents which would inform the content and functionality of the future vision.

These need states provided the clarity and transparency on what was working and what wasn’t, providing our Client with an investment path based on data, allowing them to maximise their ROI.

By understanding which areas agents required additional support, alignment, and empowerment, we built the basis of adaptive programs of work that fulfil multiple employee and client needs.

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The Product is the Service
is the Marketing

Synergising with our Client allowed us to uncover the areas in which innovation would lead to growth and let their agents express their own moment of truth that we translate into their needs states.

We worked with the company-owned sales leadership along with the key Franchisees to achieve an overwhelming agreement for the key challenges and the critical programs of work to solve them.

Using our deep understanding of their agent’s needs and requirements, we co-created eight programs of work to we could use to address them. Since we know our Clients work in complex environments, we validated these programmes of work with some of their premier agents.

Building this level of internal alignment allowed us to prioritise those actions that agents and clients valued most and downgrade activities that don’t drive satisfaction. This reduced overall wastage and established new ways to engage agents to improve satisfaction, drive retention and create additional revenue streams.

We focused on delivering a world-class experience to their 1500 agents to make them more productive, loyal, efficient, effective and empowering them to deliver a consistently excellent client experience.

We keep it Meaningfully Simple,
so you can stay Flexible

Our solutions to the business challenges are based on complex data derived from in-depth customer feedback. We don’t shy away from complicated.

However, creating meaningful internal alignment around new customer experience designs means making them approachable and easy to understand and get excited about.

Our CX programs are inspirational but actionable, and we were able to align the organisation around a compelling future vision by creating simple, but effective, prioritised programs of work that highlighted the buyer experience as a key driver of growth.

Looking into the future, we also incepted a set of shared KPI’s that measured both agent and client experience that would serve a benchmark to improve organisational efficiencies.

Meaningful simple jobs to be done mock up

Understand your Customers and Grow your business.

Let us help you identify the most important thing about your customers that will unlock your company’s growth.

TALK WITH A CX EXPERT

Delivering phenomenal outcomes


“Working with Proto was a leap of faith, but they have become a major strategic partner in our CX evolution. The work they've developed and the way we've been able to embed it in the organisation has been absolutely phenomenal, and we're getting the outcomes we want.”

Felicity Clark
Felicity Clark Customer Experience Manager

Creating empathy to deliver outstanding results


“Proto were a pleasure to work with. They were adaptive and responsive, and developed a deep empathy for both the client and their customers. The quality of their products and services was outstanding.”

Michael Storey
Michael Storey Manager of Customer Research and Strategy at Sydney Water

Halving your customer churn


“Without the customer experience insights from the research program, we would not have been able to identify the acquisition issues that we had. Changes to the customer interactions that led up to financial protection have reduced the outflow rates by 50%.”

Felicity Rowcliff Dean
Felicity Rowcliff Dean Customer Centred Design Manager

Take your NPS score to the next level


“From an NPS perspective, I have gone Spinal Tap on you guys and gone to 11. I still think the work you did with us, the way you went about it and the deliverables amounted to one of the best pieces of consulting advice I've ever commissioned.”

Matthew Liebmann
Matthew Liebmann Former Chief Operating Officer

Enabling customer-centric design


“Over the last 18 months, we've constantly referred to the work Proto did for us when designing and developing all the improvements to the app we're making. We've found their work to be highly valuable and has resulted in significant improvements to the MyOptus App that, without their insight wouldn't have been possible.”

Lucy Turner
Lucy Turner CX Design Launch Manager

Exceptional prototyping


“The outcome of the prototyping has been exceptional and we continue to use the knowledge and expertise that Proto shared with us during their engagement. The icing on the cake for me was that Proto captured all of the insights from the customer workshops into an organisational asset that we now use as an integral part of our toolkit for training and briefing new team members.”

Sharon Nanetti
Sharon Nanetti Optimal Care Program Director

Prioritising what matters


“Proto's in-depth customer research helped us to uncover underlying customer needs that wouldn't have been possible without an 'outside-in' approach. The team identified the core customer problems and provided actionable insights that enabled us to remove key areas of customer friction and frustration and redesign a credit card experience like no other.”

Christian Johansson
Christian Johansson Head of Marketing, Customer Finance

Achieving a 20 point increase in NPS


“I have worked with Damian and the team at Proto for several years. In this time, they have worked collaboratively with us to build a roadmap of strategic 'outside-in' initiatives that ultimately resulted in a 20 point increase in NPS. They imparted a great deal of CX knowledge, approaches and tools that have been invaluable to the team and the business.”

Amanda O'Donnell
Amanda O'Donnell Head of Customer Experience

Insight driven, customer centric ideas


“Proto revealed and captured a ton of insights, putting Gumtree in a position where we can take our experience from good to great!”

Coen Horrevoets
Coen Horrevoets Head of Product

Award-winning customer experiences


“We won the AFR Smart Investor SMILES award for Best Online Broker. This award is based on customer voting and I believe this was as a result of a clearer focus on our existing clients which you helped us to understand.”

Arni Selvarajah
Arnie Selvarajah Chief Executive Officer

Design that reduces cost to serve


“The Proto team demonstrated flexibility in their approach which made such a refreshing change. They took the time to coach and mentor each of us in a highly creative and energetic environment. Furthernore, they helped us exceed our customer satisfaction targets, all whilst stripping out in excess of 20% of our service costs in under 12 months. Proto helped us to stay focussed on the customer which enabled us to win in the market.”

Matthew Anderson
Matthew Anderson Chief Operating Officer

Service innovation at scale


“We worked with Proto on an exciting & unprecedented challenge at Optus, to design the customer experience of the future. Damian & the team had high energy & together we operated as 'one team'. Proto worked hand in hand with us to bring the internal team up to speed, & also brought in global experts to work with us to take our deliverables to another level of quality & innovation.”

Dan Sunderland
Dan Sunderland Director of Customer Experience Strategy and Planning

Actionable Customer Strategies


“Proto developed a membership strategy that addressed points of friction along our members journey, identified opportunities to improve and clarified the types of engagement that our members needed at the different stages in their career. We were impressed with the depth of insight that Proto were able to bring to the project - as well as the energy and ideas that they helped to generate.”

Sarah Thompson
Sarah Prescott-Thompson General Manager Shared Services

A partnership for CX


“Working with Proto was very much a partnership. We worked hand-in-hand to put CX on the map within the organisation. The team are flexible, trustworthy and do what it takes to achieve the best outcome. If you’re looking for a quality agency, providing quality data and insights – Proto are your guys. We received over 90 initiatives from the project of which 79% have now been implemented and we are seeing the benefits flow through!”

Customer Experience Specialist

Unique Product Innovation


“Proto integrated into multiple simultaneous projects to ensure we achieved the best outcome. They brought real clarity around customer needs, the fundamental elements of our value proposition and provided a clear roadmap of where we're trying to get to. This allowed us to differentiate beyond the traditional proposition. As a result, one customer-informed initiative we developed was loanScore™. This unique innovation helps customers see how good their home loan is and evaluate their options for a better deal.”

Anthony Justice
Anthony Jusitce CEO