UK East West Rail

The Problem

How do we embed a user-centred mindset into a large infrastructure organisation and ensure that early design decisions are driven by real customer needs—not just technical or operational requirements?
As a complex, multi-disciplinary rail programme, East West Rail Company needed a shared approach to understanding customers that could be applied consistently across strategy, design, delivery, and operations.

The Solution

Members of our team  worked closely with East West Rail Co.’s Customer team to develop a Customer Experience Toolkit that embeds human-centred design into everyday decision-making.

The toolkit was shaped through one-to-one interviews and workshops with senior stakeholders across Strategy, Requirements, Operations, Engineering, and External Relations. We audited existing qualitative and quantitative research to develop a clear customer segmentation model and created eight future-facing personas to help teams empathise with customer needs and challenge conventional thinking.

At the core of the toolkit is a CX Insight Framework—a structured process for generating, applying, and translating customer insight into clear requirements that can be carried through the organisation and into the supply chain. The result established a shared language, aligned departments around customer priorities, and ensured customer insight informed design from concept through to delivery and operations.

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