Bose is one of the world’s leading consumer audio electronics brands. With a deep heritage and history rooted in research and engineering, their products have stood the test of time. As customer expectations and needs for audio experiences change, Bose must adapt their product and customer experience capabilities, and reorient themselves as an organization to deliver and evolve their offering over time.

Our goal was to achieve a definition and experiential vision for an iconic future-state Bose customer experience (CX), focused on the personalized, connected experiences over the lifetime of engagement with Bose. This vision will evoke the timeless brand, stoke a deep emotional bond with the customer and build a visceral awareness of and desire for Bose product experiences throughout the customer lifecycle.

Note: this case study is in-progress. Please reach out for additional information.

Project objectives | Establish a future-facing customer experience strategy, identify and enable new customer experiences, and embed new ways of working across the Bose organization.

Experience ambition | Create opportunities for customers to get the most out of their experiences enabled by Bose products.

Project components | Qualitative research, product strategy & innovation, marketing experience strategy, experience strategy, operations strategy, capability building, establishment of “lab” environment

Role | Co-Lead

Duration | 24 weeks (multiple engagements)

An initial engagement with Bose re-imagined how their products could extend to support single-user single-device to multi-user multi-device experiences. As these product-oriented features were being rolled-out to market, we worked to craft the customer experience vision and strategy, rooted in the brand heritage set by its founder Amar Bose — to bring the holistic customer experience to life.

Bose customer research

Our first objective was to understand not just customer behaviors, but the mindsets (the set of values that inform what I do and how I do it), intents (what I want to do), and modes (how I want to do it) that drive behavior. To do this, we conducted customer research across four markets and conducted both comparative and competitive market analyses.

Nearly 50 customer interviews were conducted in four locations: Berlin, London, New York City, and Oak Brook Il. The interviews were conducted in two parts. First we spoke with subjects about their attitudes and behaviors when researching and shoppi… — Nearly 50 customer interviews were conducted in four locations: Berlin, London, New York City, and Oak Brook Il. The interviews were conducted in two parts. First we spoke with subjects about their attitudes and behaviors when researching and shopping for audio products Then, we observed their browsing behavior and engagement with store associates within a Bose-owned or wholesale retail location. Once we had an understanding of customer mindsets, intents, and values, we used them to identify and evaluate potential experiences.

Find the full research report and appendix here and here, respectively.

Co-creating the future experience

From our research we created a behavior model that guided all of our collaborative work moving forward. Together with our Bose partners, we built off our initial set of experiences and crafted stories and narratives to communicate and test our thinking.

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Find the full documentation of experience opportunities here.

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Communicating the vision & strategy

We created a microsite to communicate the vision and strategy, along with presentation materials. The site was used to communicate the vision internally at Bose, as well as a reference for the tools we had created along the way. These tools allow Bose to continue building the customer experience vision over time.

Find the CX Strategy summary here.
Find the Touchpoint Recommendations summary here.
Find the concept maturity model here.

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Following the customer experience service & strategy work, the team began an initiative that embedded a multi-disciplinary and Agile team within the Bose organization to bring the strategy to life. Key experiences were selected to test and bring to market first beginning in 2019.

Supporting a collaborative team

A highly strategic project can be challenging for a team. Ensuring that opportunities to make the strategy tangible, testable, and concrete was essential. Opportunities to “body-storm” scenarios, create mini prototypes, and take our sample products out into the world helped make our thinking concrete.

A focus on mentorship was also an important part of our work. Multidisciplinary pairs worked together to help build both concrete skills in other craft areas and skills in strategic thinking, writing, research planning and presentation.