Challenge
Unifying an Evolving Client Experience
REDW, a prominent accounting firm, was navigating the complexities of rapid expansion. Years of successful growth, achieved both through the development of new service lines and strategic acquisitions of smaller accounting firms, had led to a significant realization: their client experience (CX) was inconsistent.
As a result of the expansion, clients engaging with different service lines, or even different team members, were receiving varied and sometimes uneven experiences. While the firm excelled at traditional business practices—focusing heavily on product services—it lacked a deep, shared familiarity with formal Customer Experience (CX) design as a differentiator.
REDW recognized the need to elevate the client experience to a level that would serve as a clear differentiator in the market.
Approach
Human-Centered Research and Co-Creation
Cast & Hue deployed a structured, human-centered design approach. This process was divided into two major phases: deep qualitative research to uncover needs, and collaborative design to build the future state. We integrated a dozen key stakeholders from REDW into the process from the start; this special cohort learned the basics of experience design and actively participated, ensuring accountability for sustained change.
Phase 1: Research and Discovery
The strategy was built on intensive qualitative research with both internal and external focus.
- In-Depth Interviews: We conducted 30 in-depth interviews with both clients and employees. This provided crucial insights into both internal operational realities and external client expectations regarding the service interaction.
- Audience Prioritization: REDW prioritized three key client segments representing the largest opportunity for growth.
- Demand Profiles: Based on the interviews, we developed four key demand profiles. Inspired by the Jobs-to-be-Done Framework, these personas explored the decision-making drivers and underlying motivations that fuel each client group's behavior.
- Universal Journey Summary: We created high-level journey summaries for the prioritized client segments. This mapping process encompassed client emotions and identified operational gaps and opportunities that would guide the experience transformation.
Phase 2: Experience Design and Roadmap
This phase focused on co-creation, collaboration, and rapid prototyping to formalize the strategy from the current state to the desired future state.
- Design Sprints: We ran design sprints, focusing on specific challenges informed by the research phase. Clients participated in these co-creation sessions alongside the internal team.
- Prototyping & Testing: These sessions resulted in 24 prototypes and eight refined ideas. We tested these concepts with clients and then prioritized them with REDW's key stakeholders, ensuring cross-departmental collaboration and leadership buy-in.
- The Experience Blueprint: The final output was a strategic roadmap, or Experience Blueprint, which formalized the future-state client experience.
Outcome
An Elevated "One Firm" Experience
The strategic roadmap and co-creation process resulted in actionable, prioritized outcomes focused on implementing the elevated "One Firm" client experience.
The Experience Blueprint defined three specific Customer Experience (CX) themes designed to be felt consistently across every client interaction. Key ideas were selected for immediate rollout, specifically addressing the onboarding experience, the development of new relationship training, and a reimagining of client meetings to provide a human touch and help grow accounts.
To ensure sustained change, we maintained regular check-ins with the core internal team for four months post-project, providing accountability and ensuring the pilots were implemented properly. This process also uncovered an opportunity to refresh the firm's brand identity, which was noted as a potential follow-on project.
.png)