Helping Canary Wharf Group make customer insights integral to decision-making

Canary Wharf Group (CWG) is the developer of the largest urban regeneration project in Europe, with a vision to transform 128 acres of once-derelict dockland in East London into the very definition of what a city can be – a sustainable, connected, 24/7 environment where people can live, work and thrive.

The CWG Insights team is key to this mission, gathering, analysing and disseminating customer insights throughout CWG. However, the team wants to go further. Its ambition is to deliver customer insights that will underpin the group’s business strategy, develop a deeper understanding of the customer community and the changes and challenges it faces, and ensure it becomes common practice across CWG to use insight as a core source of competitive advantage and growth.

The CWG Insights team contacted CGA and asked them to assess their customer insights capabilities and provide them with recommendations for their future strategy. This process included multiple working sessions with the team and other stakeholders, and a review of CWG’s existing insight tools, channels and activities.  This culminated in the creation of a bespoke customer insights strategy.

A structured strategy

At the heart of the strategy, CGA created an Insights Framework which would bring robustness and credibility to the insights programme. The framework was divided into six areas:

• Strategy

The overarching objective was to enable CWG to improve its insights maturity at a pace the business could handle. It can be counterproductive to ask customers about their needs and expectations if you’re not in a position to respond in a timely manner.

• Insight Sources

CWG were already gathering data from multiple sources, but we recommended they added several new ones. To hear the complete Voice of the Customer, it’s necessary to gather quantitative and qualitative feedback from all customer types across multiple layers (e.g. market and competitor, location, customer relationships and interactions).

• Processes

As CWG’s insights capabilities matured, they would need to develop their processes. However, it was vital that some critical processes, such as insights sharing and socialisation, were clearly defined and embedded across CWG from the outset.

• People

This area included defining the role of the Insights team and how they should engage with customers, partners and stakeholders throughout CWG.

• Enabling Technology

From gathering data from multiple sources to analysis and reporting, it was vital that CWG had the technology and applications it needed to put insights at the heart of its decision-making. We established what was already in place and what would be needed in both the short and long term.

• Leadership Endorsement

By securing strong executive sponsorship, the Insights Team could send a clear signal to the rest of the organisation – customer insights are an essential part of our decision-making.

Priorities first

In addition to the Insights Framework, CGA provided CWG with a four-phase Insights Roadmap, designed to help them prioritise their activities.

Phase 1 included clearly defining the role of the Insights Team and the establishment of an Insights Working Group to bring people together from across the business. This phase also included creating account plans for CWG’s most important office customers; securing these businesses as tenants at Canary Wharf is absolutely critical to CWG’s success, so it’s vital their voice is not only heard, but acted on.

Initiatives in subsequent phases included: identifying 2-3 “halo” projects to demonstrate the value of insight-led decision-making; developing the most important office accounts and forming strategic relationships with the members of the Decision-Making Unit within each; mapping the journeys of key customer types; and introducing new sources of data such as customer referrals, campaign tracking, and exit interviews.

One particularly important task was to build a balanced scorecard to ensure the Voice of the Customer received equal exposure and attention as other metrics such as financial and operational performance.

The CWG Insights Team developed a strong working relationship with CGA during the process and are actioning many of the recommended steps. On-going check-ins are planned to monitor progress and results.