It is with great pleasure that I get to announce the runner-up of 2018's "Most Innovative CX Day Event" -- the Twin Cities Networking Team! The "Most Innovative CX Day Event" award is granted to CXPA Networks (volunteer local event planners) each year to recognize creative ways our volunteer leaders are choosing to celebrate the Customer Experience discipline every CX Day.
CXPA uses a unique point system to grade all 24 CX Day events planned by our Networking volunteers. Each event was evaluated by how outside-the-box they were on the venue, topic, and activities. The Twin Cities group ended the race as a close 2nd place and their hard work deserves to be recognized!
I spoke with Rob Jackson, one of the head event planners for CX Day to learn more about how they pulled off such an innovative experience for their attendees:
“Describe your CX Day event. What were the planned activities?” The CXPA Twin Cities CX Day event was designed to be a fun, informative and interactive session to introduce the attendees to the Design Thinking methodologies. We worked with a local non-profit, Bicycle Alliance of MN (BikeMN.org) to identify a real life customer problem which became the focus for the event: “How can BikeMN deeply engage with businesses that are striving to become bike friendly? “
We recruited local Design Thinking expert Laurie Englert, VP Customer Experience at Legrand AV division, to teach event attendees how to use Design Thinking methodologies to innovate. She encouraged us to ‘throw out what you think you know’ and start from scratch to creatively and effectively solve real-world problems.
After Laurie’s presentation, event attendees got to try out their newly learned skills. Given the limited amount of time available, we decided to focus on one Design Thinking methodology: Ideation. Participants broke into groups of 5-8 people and worked together to Ideate – brainstorm ideas – to help solve BikeMN’s customer challenge. Each team was given a flip chart and post-it notes to identify as many ideas as possible in a short 10-minute timeframe. At the end of the ideating session, the teams voted on their favorite idea and recorded a short video summarizing the top ideas for BikeMN.
“CXPA staff loved hearing about the CX collaboration with a local non-profit. Can you give us some more details about how you event gave back to a local organization?” Event participants created over 275 ideas for BikeMN to consider when engaging with their business customers. BikeMN will be taking these ideas into account as they conduct customer research in Q1 2019. Our Twin Cities CXPA Chapter will follow-up with BikeMN in 2019 as they design the new customer experience for business customers.
“What is your planning committee’s advice to other Networking teams to pull off such an empathetic and innovative event?” Start with a topic that has appeal to a wide CX audience. We knew that Design Thinking was being discussed in CX communities, and chose to focus our biggest event – CX Day – on Design Thinking. Then work to make the event interactive to engage event attendees. Remember to keep it simple, as we did by focusing on Ideation. Start planning early – a team of five people started meeting over six months ahead of the event to identify the non-profit to work with, the presenters needed, and to secure the best space to hold the event. The event was ultimately successful because we gave attendees a chance to make a difference and help solve a real life problem for a local non-profit.
