When this iconic beverage corporation first approached ExperiencePoint, they brought what seemed to be an impossible mission: growing the business of an already globally celebrated brand. 

Unlike other clients, this ‘soda-giant’ wasn’t reacting to a problem or challenge. Rather, they sought to proactively grow their business by streamlining their processes and providing the right products to the right markets—ensuring niche customers were satisfied with their experience. 

This client case study breaks down the steps behind the cultural transformation process and shows how scaling customer-centricity helps better meet customer needs and grow your business. 

The Client

The Challenge

Intending to drive company-wide innovation, the corporation's CEO envisioned a modern future for their brand. After successfully selling products across America and then worldwide, the CPG wanted to be more sensitive to their customer needs—especially now that their consumers were all very different people in different geographies. To better serve their markets and provide more relevant customer experiences, they had to embrace new behaviors and mindsets.  

While employees in the company’s European business units were particularly excited by this new direction, corporate needed to understand how to integrate new behaviors into their daily work to realize this vision. 

The brand focused on their European business unit and tried to roll out what they had coined as ‘growth-behaviors’ to no avail. While employees and leaders could recall and recite the growth mindsets taught to them, they had no clue how to embed these new behaviors into their daily work. After a false start, the brand was determined to turn words into action.

The Solution 

ExperiencePoint was contacted to help scale new behaviors in a way that would put customer needs at the center of all decisions. We trained all 600 employees and leaders in the European business unit, kickstarting ExperiencePoint’s unique approach to cultural transformation and developing a community of learners. Design thinking was the primary toolkit used to help cultivate relevant customer experiences and streamline infrastructure. In addition to finding cost-saving opportunities and stronger connections to more rewarding work, the soda brand embedded new value in its offerings. 

With a combination of ExperienceInnovation™ products, we instituted executive alignment among the120 members of the extended leadership team. They went through a design sprint focused on creating the conditions for user-centricity to thrive while simultaneously developing their capabilities as leaders. A core team then established key performance indicators (KPIs) and devised a communication and sustainment plan. 

Our approach propelled new mindsets and behaviors through a community of change catalysts that helped accelerate business impact. The brand’s new behaviors and mindsets revolved around curiosity and agility; design enabled those behaviors by giving teams the tools to make curiosity feel like second nature. The European business unit put these new mindsets and behaviors into action within a few months and immediately saw results. 

The Result 

The European business unit radically streamlined several internal processes that led to substantial savings. In one key instance, a campaign briefing process went from a cumbersome multi-week operation to an energizing 90-minute design-driven collaboration. The result was $250,000 saved within the first three months, with that savings expected to repeat every quarter in perpetuity. 

Workers learned how to approach the product and marketing development process with a more customer-centered perspective, which helped them filter ideas and reach solutions faster. The brand developed an agile work culture that could make more customer-centered decisions and innovate regularly. Today, the CPG still works with ExperiencePoint to continually amplify ideas so that worldwide ‘cola-guzzlers’ always have a refreshing customer experience.