Metrics that Matter: Turning Feedback into UX Gold

Simon Baumgärtner at UXDX Community: From Data to Design: UX That Works. Video: https://youtu.be/dZ_d0B4cgiU

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Introduction: EnBW and corporate real estate management

[00:00:07] Thank you very much, Rory, and thank you for having me. Good evening, everyone. My name is Simon, I'm a customer experience manager at EnBW. I'm working there since like seven years. I used to work in innovation management, and a few years ago I changed to the corporate real estate management, where I developed, or am still developing, metrics about UX and try to turn feedback into UX gold. So today I want to briefly tell you what corporate real estate management and UX have got to do with each other.

[00:00:51] First of all, a quick overview about our company. EnBW, or briefly EnBW, is Energie Baden-Württemberg. We are Germany's second largest energy provider with a total installed power of roughly 11,000 megawatt, thereof more than 50% renewable energy. And we also provide electricity grids, so the total length of grids or cables is about 150,000 kilometers. We supply 5.5 million B2C customers, not only with electricity. There are also other services we provide, like gas of course, like everything around energy, but also charging grid infrastructure for electric vehicles, and stuff like this with mobility as well. In total EnBW employs 30,400 people, and that's still increasing.

[00:02:00] Briefly about our department, the corporate real estate management. We are 250 employees. We manage about 150 estates of EnBW, in total 13,000 workspaces[?]. But we also provide other services, such as our booking portal for business travel, and also meeting rooms and the software for that. More to that a little bit later, but last year it was 19,000 booked hotels through our portal and about 9,500 hours of meetings in our conference rooms.

The value streams in our department

[00:02:46] So what do we do exactly? Our department is now, I would say, divided into several so-called value streams, where the first one is workplace design. They take care of concepts, realization of workplaces, event management, also like furnishing the workplaces of course, and also some strategic projects like Best Work, where the company figured out, or tried to develop, different concepts for offices after the Covid pandemic. So like, how is it best to work together, like hybrid, what happens if too many people come back to the office and so on.

[00:03:33] Our second value stream is the customer oriented value added services. That's like services which are provided around the building for all the employees, like the core services, print center, digitization or scanning of documents, the ID card offices for the employees, also stuff like mails and goods logistics and the archive, plus, as I mentioned, the business travel management and also the pool vehicles for our company.

[00:04:07] The third one, real estate operations. It's probably the one you mostly associate with corporate real estate management. They take care of stuff like the facility management, keeping the buildings in shape, also the technical property management, and also stuff like damage reports, like everything around the buildings. Also topics like sustainability, so that we don't use too much energy and keep on track with the CO2 print. The security, as it says, it takes care of every security matter around the buildings, and also events, they plan this, and they also do the risk prevention.

[00:04:52] The last two value streams[?], project development and portfolio and asset management, they take care about the actual buildings and building them. So like as I said, we don't have real customers outside the company, so our customers are either the employees or other departments or daughter companies. So if one of them, like the net provider for example, has the demand for a new workshop for the apprentices, they come to us. The portfolio management checks, okay, do we have either a building or a premise in our portfolio where you can either use it already or build one, and if you have to build one, you go to project development. They identify the exact needs, come up with a solution design up to the final building, briefly.

[00:05:55] So all of this can be put into a value chain, as there are the value streams. So we take care of everything, from procuring the property basically until the utilization of the property, which can be demolition or sale, with a lot of steps in between, like the furnishing, the building operation and so on. And as you can see, there are already some customers involved.

Why UX matters in corporate real estate

[00:06:28] Which leads of course to the question, why does UX in the corporate real estate management actually play a role, how is it connected, why is it important? So yeah, as I told you, we have many employees, 31,000, which is almost like a small town, and therefore we also have many contact points, since we have a variety of different services. Also the company strategy, as many companies I guess, is towards a more digitalized and more flexible company, and therefore of course UX is a big part. And all in all, good UX leads of course to process optimization, more employee satisfaction, and therefore efficiency and time savings. That's why we want to be a customer centric organization.

[00:07:24] Now you heard the why and who we are. Well, of course the biggest question is, okay, how do we do it, or how do I at least try to do it? So I developed this, or put this together, I call it something like the four pillars of UX in our department.

Pillar one: education and enabling

[00:07:46] The first one, as also the speaker before me told, is a cultural topic, like education and enabling. Because I think, of course I already know this, but I cannot carry the whole department on my own. So it's definitely important to enable the people and to educate them, that they get the point of UX, that it's important to work with the customer in the center, and also maybe get an idea of which methods there exist.

[00:08:21] How do I do this? Two years back I developed this regular lecture format. It's called in English UX on Wednesdays, in German UX am Mittwoch. There used to be this TV show which was called Rap am Mittwoch, which was about hip-hop, so I thought this might be a funny name. Maybe someone from the German audience knows it. Anyways, so every two months, I think, or every one month, it depends, I take some topic of this whole world of UX and try to put together like half an hour to 45 minutes talks, not only like a deep dive but also just to make people understand, like, okay, what it is, how does it work, and most important thing, how can we actually apply it to our daily work and what is the benefit for us.

[00:09:19] So far, this is a couple of them, there's a little bit more, but I started really basic with, okay, what is UX? What might be the differences between UX and UI, or what do they have in common? Because I think there is always a lot of buzzwords flying around, and this was also kind of a task, to clear that up, so there is a common definition of what is what. The next step, I tried to put it up kind of logically, was the topic of jobs to be done, so people can make desired outcome statements if they want to start a new project, especially on the interfaces to our customers. And also because of that, the topic of customer journeys, like the view of a process out of a perspective from our customers.

[00:10:25] Later I also talked about usability, and this whole thing, what is design thinking, more than a buzzword, just to get an idea of what it is, the process as a designer, like how do you actually get from the problem to the solution with its different iterations. Also I try to make the connection between our value stream organization and a customer centered organization, or customer journeys in this case, and also more hands-on topics like how to do user testings.

[00:11:08] So yeah, we're still working on that format, and now we also got together with some other departments and try to make a bigger format for also other employees, not only my department, to connect and to find common ground there.

Pillar two: KPI measurement

[00:11:34] My next pillar of the four, which is also in the title, is the KPI measurement. We worked quite a lot on that, or quite a long time, until we found the perfect, which might not be the perfect, KPI for our department. So in the beginning there was one questionnaire and we started with doing the NPS, like the net promoter score, so to see, okay, how plausible is it that you recommend our services to a friend or colleague? You probably know this. But we got the idea, okay, since we are the only real estate management in our company, this might not be the right value, since you cannot recommend us to anyone.

[00:12:20] So we came up with the customer satisfaction score, which is the sum of all ratings divided by the number of all ratings, as our KPI, and also not only the average one but also the percentage one, to see, like, okay, in this case 76% voted us higher than three at least.

[00:12:51] Also we do a questionnaire for every value stream, to see, okay, how do they perform, how many people answered there. We thought about just taking the average of all of them, but as you can see there are different amounts of people answering, since not everyone gets to deal with the portfolio management on a daily base, so it would not be fair if you just take the average.

[00:13:20] On the right hand side as an example you can see this questionnaire, for real estate operations in this case. But what we try to achieve with this questionnaire is not only the quantitative data but also qualitative data. So we added this question, which is, okay, after every value stream, how could we improve our services so you would give us a better grade? And this is basically our main source of qualitative feedback from the whole company, besides customer interviews with single persons. And there, unfortunately I had to blur some stuff, but we also started now running it with AI, to see, okay, how many people are not happy with, I don't know, broken light bulbs for example. And there we can actually see which next action steps we have to take as a department to increase the customer satisfaction.

[00:14:29] There you can also see, because as I told you, we don't have only one building or one office but we have quite a lot of them, where Karlsruhe and Stuttgart are the biggest ones. So we also try to figure out about which topic in which office the people answered how, to see, okay, we have to improve. And as you can see already, there is a big difference already between Stuttgart and Karlsruhe, so there are different actions to take for different offices.

[00:15:08] Also another KPI, which is more about the UX zone itself, which we are now trying to implement, maybe you heard about it, the UX maturity assessment, where there are like eight different categories by which you can rate how mature, in regards to UX, your company or department already is. Stuff like, okay, how advanced is your journey management? How are the skills? How is the culture, with people and capabilities? Are there roles and processes which are working? How do you work with customer insights? Is there a steering mechanism? Do you take KPIs, do you steer your department with customer KPIs? Which tools do you use, and so on.

[00:16:02] So yeah, if you do this in a questionnaire or in workshops, you can actually get this letter and this rating. This is just an example, I hope we are a little bit further than just emerging. Where your department is at, and where you have to maybe increase some topics to get one step further in the ladder.

Pillar three: customer journeys and service blueprints

[00:16:32] The third pillar we are working with, or which plays a big role, are customer journeys. So yeah, I told you that we have this value stream, but we also of course have different smaller customer journeys, and it's always quite challenging to see, okay, where do people actually have the first touchpoint with us? Is it like the internet page, or is it the booking portal for pool cars and so on? And through which of our value streams do they actually go? And of course the emotional component, like how do they feel and where can we improve that? We started a couple of years ago, like two years ago, to do this in different workshops, on the one end with the experts but also with the customers.

[00:17:29] While our next challenge is the customer service blueprint. You might also have seen it, which is kind of an advanced version of the customer journey, less about the emotional components but also the technical ones, since we have quite an already advanced process management. We try maybe through this perspective to get together these two layers of customer journey and the processes, since basically, in my opinion, the customer journey is just another perspective of a process. So it's like the visible perspective, the front stage, where the customer actually interacts, while the processes kind of take care of the invisible activity, or the support activities.

[00:18:28] Also, as I mentioned, the value streams and the customer journeys in my opinion work pretty well together, since value streams are a part of lean management, which is somehow also connected to customer journeys. So value streams are a central element of it and they show the end to end process across the whole value chain, while customer journeys really help to understand the customer needs. Also it's a great tool for analyzing the experience along this value chain. So the one can contribute to improving processes that impact customer experience, while the other one provides valuable insights for this process optimization. And of course all three are interconnected and definitely can contribute to optimizing processes and also enhance customer satisfaction.

Pillar four: implementation

[00:19:27] Our fourth pillar, last but not least, is the implementation. So the first three ones were a lot about transparency, finding out user needs, understanding our company, understanding the processes, the value chain, the customer journeys. But we also have, through this transparency, a great backlog of actions to actually improve it, which can be simple stuff or small stuff like changing lights, or maybe for example repairing or fixing the heaters, but also of course more difficult stuff which is about actual software development, or bigger actions definitely.

[00:20:11] So therefore we use the continuous improvement process, which is this PDCA, the plan-do-check-act circle, where you plan different actions, then the doing part already includes this implementation, then you check it, for example by our customer service, while there can be also a continuous act. And with this you definitely can improve your company step by step.

[00:20:45] It looks a little bit abstract, so I have this as our example. This is our central tool. We built it, I think, with Microsoft Lists or Power Apps, where we have all the different actions, also a state, and also the goal. So we don't only use it for customer satisfaction but also for our other topics, such as sustainability, digitalization, process optimization, efficiency and so on and so on. So we have one central tool for all our improvements. Also we work there with a prioritization, so we can see, okay, this is new, this is directly applicable. So we can actually work with a roadmap, and on the right hand side you see the different owners, so who is responsible for working on this improvement.

Next steps

[00:21:48] We already have quite a good base for further steps, or I think we are on a pretty good way to a more customer centered organization, but we still have some stuff ahead of course. So still we're working on a pretty good, solid customer journey management system, so that everyone can see all the time, okay, where are the problems of the customers, and this needs to be really well connected with the processes.

[00:22:24] So, the culture topic. We have this really great platform in our company where you can sign up for all different kinds of courses, for free of course, and there we are going to provide, together with another department, such a learning journey, which is like a several step course including some lectures like this one but also some more interactive parts like workshops.

[00:22:55] And also of course we need to buy in the leadership. Not that they are not already bought in, but I think they also need really to understand how our value streams, where they are responsible for, are connected with our customer journey management. So that's basically our three next steps, what we try to work on.

[00:23:23] That was it. I thank you very much for your attention and I hope you learned something new, maybe at least about the real estate and the connection to user experience, and now I'm looking forward to your questions.

Q&A

[00:23:42] Rory: Excellent, thank you very much, Simon. Yeah, it was a really nice kind of tour through all of the different processes that you're doing, and to be honest it seems like quite a lot.

[00:23:54] Simon: It is.

[00:23:55] Rory: That was my initial reaction. So yeah, actually I'll jump in with that as the first question, because you were talking about all of those, I can't remember the term you use, education sessions that you run.

[00:24:07] Simon: Yes, yeah, yeah.

[00:24:08] Rory: Education.

[00:24:10] Simon: Wednesdays UX.

[00:24:12] Rory: Wednesdays UX. So, it looks like to me a lot of effort has gone into producing those to make sure that they're high quality. So how do you balance, I guess, preparing for sessions like that versus doing the day job?

[00:24:30] Simon: I mean, of course I have some guys who help me out, like working students who do part of the work. But I also think, since I also hold this kind of lectures at universities, you always have, like, the next one always gets a step easier, since you already have a great base, or a great pool at least, where you can take some stuff from. But yeah, I mean, I try to do it really regularly. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's also like, okay, if I see there is a topic coming up which might be important, then I try to focus my time on that one before a new lecture.

[00:25:18] Rory: Yeah. Excellent. And the other burning question that I wanted to ask was the customer journeys and the customer blueprints. I love the fact that you're doing both of them, because they're kind of two different angles on the same problem. But what I've seen in my experience is often teams will put a huge amount of effort into building out a library, or building out a backlog, of all of these kind of journeys and blueprints, but they struggle to get them adopted in the day-to-day working of the organization. So how have you gone about, I guess it's the biggest fear of all researchers, that your research sits on a shelf and looks pretty?

[00:26:01] Simon: Yeah, yeah, it is. And that's basically, I think, the biggest question so far, since of course there are lots of different customer management tools, we also do use them, but the thing is the people who actually have to use them, I mean of course I use them, but the people who implement the actions in their daily work, they also have to understand them and to use them. So sometimes, I mean in our company I saw now that there are people working with Excel sheets, I think, but also because then it's machine readable so you actually can work with AI on that again. But yeah, that's definitely kind of challenging, that you have to get this somehow together. I work with something like Miro boards, or our comparable tool to Miro boards, so people can create them there on their own, or you can help them create them in different kinds of workshops. They know this tool, they're used to it and they use it on a daily base.

[00:27:15] Rory: Okay, excellent. And how do you, I guess the second half of it, so you're obviously trying to get it engaged by making it as easy as possible, how do you maintain them?

[00:27:26] Simon: I mean, I try now, basically I have a group of experts around me which are not technically UX designers but they are engaged with the customers and with their value streams. And so I try, on a regular base, to engage them, like, hey guys, please make sure that you and your team take care of those customer journeys. Yeah, that's how I try to do this.

[00:27:58] Rory: Excellent. Yeah, it's a tough one because people sometimes get so focused on the delivery they forget to go back and update all the reference documentation.

[00:28:07] Simon: Yes, they do.

[00:28:09] Rory: Excellent. Well, that actually brings us to time, so I just want to thank you once again, Simon, for sharing your experience.

[00:28:16] Simon: Yeah, thank you very much for having me.