Syngenta Lead Generation CX Blueprint
Developing a CX blueprint to provide a complete view of end to end lead generation, including both front stage and back stage actors and technology. Analyze blueprint to identify opportunities for simplification/automation, enhancements and net new recommendations.
Project Overview
Syngenta recognized that their current lead generation had gaps in process and was not fully understood across teams. They brought in our team to map out all of the activities their user experiences as well as all the internal teams and operations supporting behind the scenes.
Timeline | 3 months duration
February - May 2024
AGENCY PROJECT
Tools
My Role
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This project I was the primary UX strategist, focused on being able to lend my expertise in both UX/UI and experience with digital marketing strategy to identify opportunities and ensure we were covering all marketing automation processes in our blueprint
KEY ACTIVITIES
01.
INTERVIEWS
02.
MAPPING THE BLUEPRINT
03.
STRATEGIC APPROACH
OUR USERS + MY RESPONSIBILITIES
USERS AND AUDIENCE
This project was focused on two key brands for Syngenta seed, GHX and Enogen. The main difference between these two is that GHX is a more general seed brand that farmers can plant, while Enogen is specific for dairy farmers, it's specialty seed that is supposed to be more digestible for their cows. Due to these differences we had to consider a separate track for Enogen farmers in our blueprint since they do experience some unique steps in the process. Additionally these brands have two distinct external users for their GHX and Enogen brands that we had to consider when building out this blueprint. The farmers, who are our end users that are going to be the ones purchasing our seed and becoming customers, are our primary. Secondary is the specialists and special advisors, or in other terms our Resellers. Typically located in and familiar with a geological area, they are the ones primarily establishing relationships with the farmers and doing the on the ground selling. While supported by Syngenta's sales team, resellers have their own way of operating and building new relationships (typically by referral or association).
MY ROLE + RESPONSIBILITIES
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Lead out on building stakeholder questionnaire and hosting interviews
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Analysis of Stakeholder and User interviews
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Collaborating on building out current state blueprint across both front and back stage
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Uncovering opportunities for simplification/optimization, enhancements, or net new suggestions
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Designing visual treatments for the blueprint to indicate various paths and notations
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Identify key KPIs to track success and improvement of lead generation
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Conduct and support in various workshop with client team to help identify key KPIs and prioritization of initiatives
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Support deck build and how to best tell the story of our activities and recommended initiatives
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Visualize the importance of executing all intiatives and not stopping after just a handful to reach a completely successful lead generation process and ecosystem
CHALLENGES
POOR DATA QUALITY + INTEGRITY
On the IT Simplification engagement this was a major issue that seems to effect all facets of their business. Data governance and standardization is missing, as well as many overlapping technology that causes disconnects with data availability and quality
From previous work with Syngenta, I knew of some specific complexities that they face as an organization coming into this engagement. A lot of these needed to be considered for it was likely impacting this area of their business as well and we were hoping to draw the thread of these considerations in our final read out.
SILOED TEAMS + PROCESSES
This was something referenced not only during this project but others. A lot of times teams are operating without transparency on each others processes. Roles and responsibilities can sometimes be unspecified, leading to rework or even lack of trust between teams.
RESISTENCE TO CHANGE
Syngenta is a large and long running company that has unique customers that require a balance of old school approach and digital innovation. There is an element of "stuck in the old ways" happening in the culture that makes it harder to take on big changes that will effect their whole process.
01.
Stakeholder + User Interviews
STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS
One of the first activities we executed was 8 stakeholder interviews, which I lead out on building the questionnaire and hosting the conversations. We spoke to stakeholders from 3 different teams; marketing, sales and business operations. This gave us various perspectives on what the lead generation process currently is, enabling us to begin outlining the current state of their lead generation with each key team and their responsibilities. These interviews also provided an opportunity for Syngenta to voice any other frustrations with the operations and their desires for the future state of lead management for their team and business. All of these factors were ones that would later take into account as we identified opportunities and raised key pain points that may be effecting elements beyond lead management.
While speaking with our stakeholders. we quickly noticed inconsistencies across teams when it came to terminology and details of current lead management. The biggest discovery revealed that two segments of leads existed in their ecosystem, each going through different types of experiences. This became a key factor when building out our blueprint and highlighting the discrepancy between the two experiences. Our next step was to speak to some of the other external key players in the lead generation process for Syngenta: resellers and farmers/customers.
Syngenta has some very specific roles and differences in their customers based on the types of seeds that they seller or are being sold by their resellers. After our stakeholder interviews we conducted a variety of user interviews which included not only the farmer themselves but also the sellers that Syngenta contracts to sell their seeds. The relationship between these two external players was vital to get insight into to better understand the activities that are happening as a lead/farmer goes through the process of deciding which brand and what seed to purchase.
ANALYSIS
After completing our interviews I conducted an analysis to pull out key actions, roles and technologies involved in the end to end lead generation and customer experience, as well as identifying key themes that were raised. These themes ultimately aligned with our initiatives we recommended to solution for gaps and other opportunities. Syngenta faces a decent amount of organizational complexities, these were important to make clear to our stakeholders how these themes tend to appear in many different areas in the business and previous engagements my team had been involved in.
We began learning early on that for leads that arrived through online forms were not being followed up with. This, of course, was our first glaring gap as the initial interactions were laid out for our blueprint. As we began to have more conversations gaps continued to present themselves, not only in the user's experience but also between teams both front and back stage. I utilized Condens to rewatch all the interviews and tag all gaps and painpoints like these and then took those tags and grouped them into the key themes. We used these quotes and the count of specific tags to support our final recommendation, analyzing them in this way made it easy to quantify certain concerns heard throughout interviews. In a specific example, we had a Syngenta team member minimize one of our recommendations with the assumption it was a one off comment, we were able easily reference our tagged interviews to show it was mentioned more than 40 different times, legitimizing our direction.
KEY INTERVIEW THEMES
Strategy + Change Management
Marketing + Engagement
Data + Performance
Tools + Technology
BLUEPRINTING
As the analysis of interviews was wrapping up, the first attempt at laying out the activities began. Our initial focus was to nail down what the current state looks like, while making sure to note any opportunities, simplifications, automations or enhancements to be added on the second iteration. These first iterations of the CX blueprint were mainly informed by our conversations but also required a lot of other research and resources to get better context into internal operations. Any additional questions we made sure to connect with the team to confirm or adjust certain assumptions, and continued to layout the blueprint.
We tag teamed this process and met various times to make check with each other we agreed with the steps and the correlating activities happening at all depths of Syngenta teams. After various rounds of adjustments and clarifications we completed our first solid iteration of our CX blueprint.
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DEFINING OUR OPPORTUNITIES
After our initial pass, the team used sticky notes to pin point actions that needed clarification or confirmation with our stakeholders. This method enabled us all to be working in tandem without making any major changes to the flows without collaborating on them. This is how we continued to iterate on the blueprint every version. After the first couple rounds, myself and the other UX designer on the team focused on nailing down details and adjusting visual indicators to help tell a clearer story. The other team members began prepping for a workshop with Syngenta to help identify key KPIs that would help them effectively track the performance of their end to end lead generation efforts. This was a key component of this engagement as it was clear that there was very little insight into not only the process but the performance. Ultimately this was also something we would layer into our final blueprint to showcase what parts of the journey those identified metrics will support.
I focused on getting all of our questions answered on the current state CX blueprint, so that we could focus next on identifying all the connections from the user to the back stage. As I mentioned above, we identified early on that there were two distinct types of leads with different experiences. It was important to visually identify this and ensure that when we move into adding in arrows and connectors all actions included were easily understandable and the paths were clear.
Once we solidified the actions occurring for each team, I was tasked with the connections between actions, teams and technology. These will outline the main process flow to make it easier to understand the relationships between the front stage and back stage, enabling anyone reading the CX blueprint the ability to better follow. I was thinking through not only the foundational user journey that was being experienced but also considering any secondary and tertiary interactions or events that were happening at the same time of the user flow. This included auxiliary teams that may be supporting and especially the technology/platforms that are being utilized at each of those action points.
PRIORITIZED MVP + FUTURE INITIATIVES
After finalizing our CX blueprint and establishing all the intertwined connections that are involved on both front and back stage of this experience, we needed to start prioritizing the opportunities. The reality was there were too many new opportunities, enhancements and simplifications to tackle at once, so a prioritization exercise was necessary. Before bringing in our client to help us with identifying those that are most important to them, our team did dot voting to narrow down the opportunities that needed to take precedence in improving the experience.
FINAL RECOMMENDATION + PRESENTATION
Once we completed our prioritization workshops, our product team took a deeper look at the specific stories and epics, with the goal of building out an actionable roadmap to guide the Syngenta team. My focus, with the support of my other team member, was to develop the final readout. The focus was not only on a pristine presentation but a clear story and recommendation. When we got to this point in our project, there were certain items our team felt vital for enhancing the lead generation experience. At times we got push back from the client, mentioning that they already were doing certain elements of an epic so to not include it. This became a challenge as we had insight from our research that many of these key elements were not currently happening. We needed to be able to clearly communicate what our recommendation was, while highlighting the difference between what the client's choice was. Ultimately we wanted to highlight to them that we had an approach that may differ from what they wanted to pursue, and effect it will have for their North Star. I wanted the overall story of the deck to highlight what the team executed then how the findings from these activities ultimately support our differing recommendation. This took rounds of reorganizing slides, designing new elements to highlight the impact of the two different routes, and connect the dots from previous engagements that stress reasons for our recommendation.
OUTCOMES
This was my first experience with customer experience blueprinting in this way. Approaching a customer experience from not just a UX perspective but looking across front and back stages reminded me how vital it is to always consider friction points that are happening internally that could be affecting customers. My ability to have familiarity with marketing and certain automations helped approach the build of this blueprint with those consideration top of mind. Lead generation is not only a UX that needs to be addressed digitally, but also how are omni-channel processes supporting or hindering that engagement.