System

Sparklys is a beverage start-up from Eastern Switzerland that has been distributing and marketing alcoholic soft drinks since 2020. Their main product “Sparklys Hard Seltzer” is alcoholic sparkling water with the addition of natural fruit flavours.

Especially in saturated, highly competitive markets such as the beverage industry, it is important to stand out from the crowd. Customer experience is an important differentiating factor and it goes far beyond the product and its consumption.

Today’s customers care less about the «what» and more about the «how». Instead of product features, emotions and experiences are desired.

Therefore, a customer experience strategy is needed. However, this is not so easy and especially for start-ups like Sparklys, this is a big challenge because start-ups are often limited by time and financial hurdles as well as a lack of know-how. This ultimately leads Sparklys to use an intuitive approach to customer experience management, which is limited in its ability to ultimately create a stand-out customer experience.

Strategy

In the context of this work, the challenges and problems of Sparklys were analysed to finally create a toolbox that Sparklys can use to flexibly develop its Customer Experience Strategy.

The toolbox consists of various workshops, each of which deals with individual problem areas. The workshops are divided into 5 categories that tackle the different problem areas of Sparklys that were identified in the research of the project. Within these categories, proven workshop recipes provide solutions to the listed design criteria.

For example, the research showed that Sparklys needs to improve its brand to use it as a basis for other business decisions. The toolbox, therefore, includes a brand workshop in which the start-up develops the fundamental values of its brand.

However, this is only one example, because, after intensive research, several problem areas were identified that showed the general hurdles and missing elements for building a customer experience strategy for the start-up. These all focused on the internal process, set-up and structure of the company. Accordingly, the intervention was also designed to enable the start-up to change and build such a strategy internally. The final toolbox provides the start-up with a recipe book for orientation on their way to better CXM.

Emergence

Despite all the hurdles, the toolbox allows the start-up to develop a sustainable customer experience strategy. With short and intensive workshops & tools, a basis is created step by step that can serve as a foundation for sustainably better customer experience management. In this way, the implementation does not collide with the daily tasks of the start-up and the large overall intervention is easier to digest and implement. The toolbox gives the team a guideline and serves as an orientation aid.

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