How Design Thinking Helps You To Understand Your Client

What is ‘Design Thinking’? Find out how design thinking helps you market to you customers more effectively.

Photo by Valentin Salja on Unsplash

In recent years, customer experience has been one of the most discussed topics for businesses all over the world. This is both the cause and the result of the hyper-focused approach to customers that many companies display nowadays. One of the best things about this is that such attention to customer experience has developed new approaches to it.

One of such techniques is design thinking which can help you make your marketing more effective and your customer experience more enjoyable. Here’s everything you need to know about what design thinking is and how you can use it to understand your clients better.

What Is Design Thinking?

To put it simply, design thinking is a method or process of thinking that aims to understand and predict custom demands and needs. By using design thinking, you will be able to provide your customer with (the right) innovative solutions to their problems before they even think about these problems.

Design thinking is one of the best ways to improve your strategy and deliver an enhanced customer experience to every client. It’s probably the most effective way to understand your client by putting yourself in their shoes. When you use design thinking, you are not only improving customer experience but also altering customer journeys.

Key Elements of Design Thinking

There are different ways in which design thinking is envisioned or presented, but it is usually said to deal with the questions of Who? What? How? and Why? These questions are explored through the different stages of Empathy, Definition, Ideation, Prototyping, and Sequence Testing.

For example, your customer may be thinking, “How can I pay someone to do my assignment?” With the help of design thinking, you will understand how to appeal to this particular customer and how to make them come to you for help. The key elements of design thinking are fundamental for understanding this customer and guiding them. Here’s what design thinking looks like in practice:

#1 More Effective Use of Empathy

One of the key reasons why design thinking works so well is that it allows you to use empathy more effectively. Design thinking is used for problem-solving by considering what your customers want, need, and like. However, the crucial aspect of design thinking is empathy which sets it apart from other similar problem-solving techniques.

By prioritizing empathy while using design thinking, businesses can frame or reframe a problem from the perspective of the customer. As a result of approaching the problem this way, many companies find unusual solutions and have unexpected breakthroughs in different areas of their business.

Moreover, empathy is what helps marketers and business owners to better connect with their audience. It’s easy to start prioritizing sales over customers, but design thinking reminds its users to put customers above all else because that is the only way to truly understand your client. Without empathy, there can be no connection and no understanding from either side.

To use empathy actively, focus on the human senses. Use words like said, did, thought, and felt to appeal to your customers and to understand their point of view. You can do this with virtually any type of business process that involves decision-making in some capacity.

#2 Innovative Prototyping

Prototyping is another incredibly useful aspect of design thinking. Prototyping on its own can already be very effective, but design thinking can take it to a whole new level. At its core, prototyping is about experimentation which can ultimately help you make all of your CX-related matters and actions more efficient.

Brennan Clements, an expert from a respectable college paper writing service, explains it this way, “There’s a fair share of testing involved in design thinking. But to make this testing possible, you should first have something to test. That’s why prototyping is so important for design thinking. You create one version of your product, test it, and improve it. And then you do it all over again until you find the best solution to offer to your audience.”

Indeed, prototyping can be invaluable for everything related to your customer experience. While design thinking already gives you a lot of insight into who your clients are and what they want and need, you can’t get the perfect product instantly. That’s why you need prototyping as a means to create something your clients will fall in love with.

#3 Doing Things, Not Just Saying Them

When companies define their mission, vision, and values, customers are usually placed as the top priority. These mission, vision, and values are then displayed to potential and current customers as proof that the company truly wants to do everything in its power to solve all of its customers’ problems. Yet, the reality is often different.

Many products and services offered by companies that claim to be customer-oriented are, in fact, designed from the perspective of the companies’ goals. So, instead of getting a product that benefits the customer, buyers get a product that benefits the company. Design thinking solves this problem completely as long as you implement it correctly.

Once you start using design thinking, you will not only be saying that you make customer-centric products but also doing things to support such claims. This goes way back to the decision-making process and how design thinking impacts it in your clients’ favor.

#4 Useful and Helpful Interactions

Speaking of focusing on your customers, design thinking can also be perfect for creating useful and helpful customer interactions. By applying design thinking in the different departments of your company, you will be gradually improving the customer experience you deliver. This will, in turn, improve the interactions your customers have with your business.

Vanessa Kearney, an expert from a well-known dissertation help service, puts it this way, “When someone opens a live chat on your website, they want to get helpful information in return. If your customer support department uses design thinking, your customer support agencies will almost instantly know what the customer needs and will be able to provide the most relevant information to them. The same is true for other departments in your company.”

#5 Understanding Every Customer

Last but not least, design thinking is all about understanding every single customer you have. To deliver better user experience, you need to be able to accommodate the needs of every client you have – and that’s why design thinking is so useful. You can get into the mindset of any target audience segment you have and then work on the needs of that specific group.

In other words, design thinking will help you work on a big scale with your general audience, but it will also provide you with the tools to be more focused on a specific group or type of client. It’s the best way to take into account the needs and preferences of nearly every customer you have while working with a variety of different types of clients.

Conclusion

To sum up, design thinking is a powerful tool that can be used to enhance your marketing and customer experience. By understanding the logic behind design thinking, you will be able to successfully implement it in your own strategy. So, use the tips in this article to help you get started with design thinking and begin understanding your clients better.