Session notes: Not Your Ordinary Re-Brand: Design’s Path to Driving Customer Obsession at Best Buy

Sara Asche Anderson, Senior Director of Customer Experience Design & Research and Jamie Kaspszak, Sr. Manager of Experience Strategy & Capability Development from Best Buy, concluded Day 4’s regular presentations with a case study titled “Not Your Ordinary Rebrand.” In 2018, Best Buy launched a new external identity featuring a revamped logo, color palettes, and font. The intent was to move the focus away from transactions (the price tag) into building relationships.

A meaningful, impactful rebrand

Sara opened the presentation by sharing the team’s purpose, core values, and capabilities. The Best Buy Experience Team falls within the Customer Office, which sits at the same level as Technology, Marketing, and Finance. Their goal is to lead a relentless focus on creating incredible experiences for customers and employees, from the storefront to c-suite.

Customer experience research revealed a “nerdy” and “reliable” sentiment towards Best Buy, but the team wanted more. They strived to “be an inspiring friend” with whom customers can talk about “what’s possible” with. Here’s more inspiration from their Manifesto.
  • Be human: put people before all else
  • Make it real: bring the extraordinary into the everyday
  • Thinking about tomorrow: account for what comes next, it makes all the difference.

This philosophy resonated company-wide, all the way up to Best Buy’s CEO, Corie Barry, who stated…”we’ve gotten very cleary on our purpose…to enrich’s people’s lives with technology…it is about what our customers really need and want in order to make their lives better.”

Driving cultural transformation

Jamie then delved into how this rebrand around customer obsession translated into cultural transformation. The organization went from Transaction-Focused to Customer Aware to Customer Obsessed. What did this entail? A change in mindset and behavior.

The Customer Experience AND Employee Experience

Cultural transformation also entails revamping employee experience. Many aspects make up a User Experience Culture – the Best Buy Experience team began by focusing on Vision and Enablement.

Vision

  • A “Why” for Change
  • Leaders of Change
  • Setting the Vision

Enablement 

  • Education, Skills, and Tools
  • Reinforce Behaviors
  • Measure and Track Metrics

Making it real

Saying yes to change is easy. Actually changing behavior and making decisions is tough. You can’t set it and forget it. It doesn’t happen overnight. On average, it takes five years to accomplish transformations. But it’s worth it–for your customers, team, and company.