During its largest-ever transformation, LocalTapiola realised that achieving growth required more than just replacing legacy systems. This led them to establish a private customer lab and adopt customer-centric development models to fundamentally change their ways of working. Before implementing Leanlab, LocalTapiola struggled with a slow and cumbersome process for gathering customer feedback. For example, to send out a questionnaire, the team had to place an order for a manually compiled customer list, followed by another order for sending the questionnaire. This process often took 6-8 weeks, making teams reluctant to engage in customer research.
To transform their approach to customer research, LocalTapiola established a dedicated customer lab using Leanlab's platform. This provided them with:
The recruitment process was carefully planned, initially targeting the company's B2C private customers, later expanding to include B2B customers. Instead of offering cash incentives for participation, LocalTapiola invited customers to become advisors in their development process, emphasising the exclusive opportunity to influence the company's products and services. This game changer treated customers as equals rather than just asking them to be passive survey takers.
"When setting up the community, we were pleasantly surprised to see people signing up from the very beginning, and we reached our target community size by the end of the week."
Jenni Reijonen, Head of CX Renewal and Design Tools, LocalTapiola
Getting people to engage and give input in the community has not been an issue for LocalTapiola. The community is very active, and most members participate in activities and give their input within one day of receiving the invitation.
"Our customers have said that the activities in our customer lab are nice and short, and they find participation easy and interesting. Community members have also expressed their satisfaction with the fact that we are genuinely interested in their opinions."
Jenni Reijonen, Head of CX Renewal and Design Tools, LocalTapiola
LocalTapiola has a vibrant community with 1000 active members (image: illustration)
One of the critical success factors for LocalTapiola's customer lab has been their approach and commitment to becoming customer-centric. Recognising that the lab would quickly become ineffective without proper management, they created a dedicated community management team with approximately 10 members from different parts of the organisation.
This cross-functional team includes service designers, product owners, marketing specialists, and digital service designers who share a common interest in, and are committed to, customer-centric development. The team meets bi-weekly to ensure that all the projects have a chance of receiving customer feedback at different stages and that there is a steady stream of activity for the customers to participate in.
"Thanks to Leanlab, our teams are now involving customers effortlessly across different journey development initiatives. We have also grown to understand that it is always worth asking for the customer's point of view. Leanlab has allowed us to change from a “we know best” mentality to a true customer-first approach."
Jenni Reijonen, Head of CX Renewal and Design Tools, LocalTapiola
In just over two years, LocalTapiola has conducted over 100 mini research projects through their customer lab, covering everything from investment experiences to mobile usability, and from life insurance stories to website optimisation. That averages to a whopping four research waves per month, meaning teams are learning rapidly and continuously from customers.
Different teams utilise the lab in different parts of the double diamond development journey:
Product and Business Development have used the customer lab to study, for example:
UX and Digital teams use the community for digital service development and they have, for example, optimised:
Marketing and Communications teams have examined, for instance:
"Research is fast and easy. If you want to know something, big or small, you can publish the activity today and get the results within a day or two. That is a dramatic change with turnaround times from 6-8 weeks down to just 1-2 days. This supercharges our teams to be constantly learning, testing and iterating our journeys with customers."
Jenni Reijonen, Head of CX Renewal and Design Tools, LocalTapiola
LocalTapiola's customer lab has delivered significant benefits for the organisation, transforming how they develop customer experiences
"Until now, we have been doing over 100 mini research projects. That’s something we would never have been able to do without the direct access to customers and easy-to-use activities that Leanlab provides. It really allows us to connect with our customers faster and deliver the right solutions."
Jenni Reijonen, Head of CX Renewal and Design Tools, LocalTapiola