What do good outcomes for ice creams, and for financial services, have in common?
Defining good outcomes at a Scottish Financial Enterprise Vulnerability Workshop, starting with a simple question – what do good outcomes look like when you’re buying an ice cream?
How do you define good outcomes?
Imagine this. You’re on a Mediterranean beach, it’s 30 degrees, you can hear the gentle lapping of the waves. You decide it’s time for an ice cream; you pack up your beach bag and head to the nearest ice cream shop. What do good outcomes look like for you?
This is the task we set for attendees at the Scottish Financial Enterprise Vulnerability Workshop in April.
We know that organisations are struggling to define good outcomes for their customers – and this was a clear part of the FCA’s Vulnerability Review in March 2025.
A clearly defined outcome acts as a North Star. Once you know what you’re trying to achieve, everything else is easier. Our approach has Define before Design and Deliver for this reason – have the end goal in mind, and then design and deliver to achieve it (and then Detect, or monitor, how you’re performing against it).
So when you’re buying an ice cream on holiday, what good outcomes did our participants come up with?
Imagine this. You’re on a Mediterranean beach, it’s 30 degrees, you can hear the gentle lapping of the waves. You decide it’s time for an ice cream; you pack up your beach bag and head to the nearest ice cream shop. What do good outcomes look like for you?
This is the task we set for attendees at the Scottish Financial Enterprise Vulnerability Workshop in April.
We know that organisations are struggling to define good outcomes for their customers – and this was a clear part of the FCA’s Vulnerability Review in March 2025.
A clearly defined outcome acts as a North Star. Once you know what you’re trying to achieve, everything else is easier. Our approach has Define before Design and Deliver for this reason – have the end goal in mind, and then design and deliver to achieve it (and then Detect, or monitor, how you’re performing against it).
Are good outcomes for financial services the same?
While the products are more complex, a lot of the themes remain the same. People want a good experience, with clear information that they understand. If there’s an issue, they want to be able to speak to someone in a way that suits them.
For products, people want choice and quality, aligned with their expectations. The groups quickly clarified that this isn’t the same for every single customer – some people wanted 40 flavours of ice cream to choose from, some people just wanted their one single flavour to be available consistently. The same goes for good outcomes in financial services – different cohorts want different things, whether that’s the best return vs certainty of return, and easy access vs longer term returns.
How we can help
We’re helping firms define, and validate, good customer outcomes. Our approach combines three things
This allows firms to define and validate good outcomes and understand how they differ across different segments and groups. This makes everything else – from design and delivery to measurement – easier to do and built on real customer insight and validation.
It’s not quite as simple as buying an ice cream – but if you’re struggling to define good customer outcomes and map them to customer groups, we can help.
