This thesis represents the result of a graduation project for the Master Strategic Product Design at the Delft University of Technology carried out in collaboration with citizenM. citizenM is a Netherlands based hotel chain and offers an affordable luxury lifestyle in the big cities of the world. The aim of citizenM is to become the leading transformational hotel inspiring a new generation. To achieve this ambition, citizenM needs to innovate the customer experience.
Nowadays, we live in a world that gets more and more connected through customer innovations. Customers are transforming their behaviour from just consuming services and goods into being part of an experience. Customers prefer to feel that they belong to a company instead of being simply treated as customers. To become more customer-centric citizenM wanted to create a board of customers.
The customer need and the citizenM ambition led to the project aim to find out if implementing a customer board for repeat customers will create a next level of engagement and a sense of belonging to the citizenM brand. The intended result is fulfilling the customer need, a sense of belonging, by a next level of engagement. The challenge that followed was to design a unique platform, a customer board, where customers can give their opinions and advice, and to demonstrate how customer feedback is shaping company decisions.
The process consists of three phases; research, conceptualization and validation. The research phase included a literature review regarding customer co-creation, attitudinal loyalty and customer engagement. Next, an analysis of the competitors, customers, company and future trends was conducted. The research insights were the basis for the conceptualization. The presented solution, offering a sense of belonging to the guests by a next level of engagement, is called the citizen board. The citizen board is a digital co-creation platform integrated in the citizenM app called citizenship and will be an extension of the digital passport concept.
The final design proposition, a visualisation of the app user flows, illustrates an innovative process for citizenM guests to interact with citizenM. The citizen board is focussing on creating micro moments and a feedback loop for repeat customers who are interested and willing to share their suggestions. Besides creating a next level of engagement and a sense of belonging, the customer board is also there for customers to create enjoyment & fun, a social community and a feeling of being valuable and recognized. With a personalised experience citizenM is willing to invest in becoming an even more customer-centric organization. citizenM will differentiate themselves from their competitors and with the help of the citizen board citizenM will maintain a steady loyal customer base.
During the validation phase the citizen board proposition was presented to twenty five citizenM guests and hotel ambassadors. The qualitative research method resulted in a validation moment of the design criteria. The thesis is concluded with recommendations for further developing the citizen board proposition.