Making Águas de Cascais consumer-centric
Transparency. Simplicity. Customer focus.
Expertise
Service design
UX Strategy
Design and Interaction
Development
Platforms
Web and Mobile
Deliverables
Service blueprint
Business Model
UX/UI and Development
Details
Águas de Cascais is a public concession that provides the water supply and sanitation services in Cascais, a subregion of Lisbon, Portugal. As a public service, it had a bad stigma: poor service. But that is definitely not the case here.
Briefing
The client wanted to put their customers’ needs first, so they called us to help them better understand what they were, as well as their employees’ points of pain and hidden opportunities. We stepped up with a series of workshops aimed to diagnose problems and to propose solutions, in close collaboration with their teams. This is what we call business transformation.
Get to know the inside to better understand the outside
The challenge presented to us was to help them design (and to deliver) a leaner, better and faster service to the consumers. To get there we had to work closely with all their employees, from service members to department heads. Everyone is welcome and involved with the process – this is a very important step.
This had to be done through a series of four-day workshops, divided into company business model investigation, personal business model investigation and, lastly, the process of co-creation.
Each workshop had its own purpose: to get to know the company and its modus operandi, to map the process and identify the problems and, lastly, to generate ideas and reach a conclusion.
This roadmap helped us to get to Águas de Cascais’s current business model.
On the road to business transformation
Águas de Cascais is both a company and a public service. By understanding how they add value to their consumers, we were able to later understand what they would need in order to deliver it. First of all, companies are made by their staff, so everyone on the teams had to do introspective exercises to answer some questions. How do they add value to the company? What is the relationship like between departments?
When you understand your basis, you are ready to step up and examine the structure.
What are the six processes that need solving? How do the processes currently work, and how do they need to start working? What are the main problems associated with them? And here’s where the co-creation enters.
We transferred all of the problems mapped on the previous exercise sessions from a canvas to the wall, where everyone could see it. Then, we asked everyone on the team to start shooting ideas – no matter how big or small, how easy or how complex, every idea counts to solve each problem. And they did.
“We gave managers total control over reporting with a minimalistic design that helps numbers and relevant info to truly stand out.”
Michael Nunes
Creative Director at Monday
How we stood out from the competition
The lessons learned during this process revealed that the work of the experience design team should focus on turning the website into the single source of knowledge and truth on everything related to the company’s services so that customers could find any information they might need quickly, simply and thoroughly explained. From doubts regarding their invoice to cancelling their contracts.
Climber
Business consulting , Experience Design
Fado & Food
Experience Design
