← Intersection Conference Paris, April 16-17, 2014

Marzia Aricò

Business Designer, Livework

from Oslo / Norway

Marzia Aricò

Case Study

Extreme Customer Orientation: Gjensidige Insurance

Wednesday, April 16
14:45 – 15:30
Main Stage

This presentation proposal aims at describing the work that the service design studio Livework has developed with one of its long-term clients Gjensidige, the largest insurance company in Norway.

Back in 2007 Gjensidige was faced by a number of challenges, their market was undertaking a fundamental change, competition was becoming stronger, prize was the major factor influencing customers’ choice, and therefore the company realised the need to differentiate themselves in order to survive and grow. Instead of playing the battle of price, which is common in this industry, Gjensidige chose to invest in customer experience as key competitive advantage.

Within two years, Gjensidige managed to interlink customer orientation with the lean methodology, giving birth to 103 projects across all business units and all levels of the organisation, around four fundamental pillars: simplification, organisational culture, service experience, and efficiency. In this journey Livework has been a key partner to inform the work during some key stages of the process. Employees were owning the transformation and Livework supported them providing the tools and methodology to understand customers at different stages of their lifecycle, to design a superior customer experience, helping Gjensidige to shift their focus from products to services. The result was thirty ad hoc projects that Livework ran together with different Gjensidige's business units.

The results of this process, that started in 2007 and that is still ongoing, are outstanding. This case study sheds light on how design can become a medium to deliver meaningful transformation. Transformation owners within an organisation are best placed to understand how to make change happen, design here becomes a medium to deliver the vision. Understanding how to place it strategically becomes key.

About Marzia

Marzia is Business Designer at Livework where she researches the impact design can have over business, and develops solutions for business sustainable growth based on the service design approach.

She is Research Fellow of DESMA, a transdisciplinary network that brings academia and business together to rethink how design and management can drive innovation and competitiveness in Europe.

She has a multidisciplinary background between Industrial Design and Innovation Management. She has always been passionate about the effect of design thinking on innovation processes, working as "bilingual facilitator" between business practitioners and academia to help produce productive friction.