ROLE

UX Director

company

Bounteous

Industry

Agribusiness

Overview

J.R. Simplot, a privately held agribusiness firm based in Boise, Idaho, operates across a diverse range of industries, including phosphate mining, food processing, agriculture, and ranching. With operations in North America, Australia, South America, and China, Simplot's business spans several markets and product categories, including Simplot Grower Solutions, Simplot Agribusiness, Simplot Food Group, and others.

The goal of this engagement was to establish foundational enterprise-wide personas and customer journey maps to unify Simplot’s varied business lines under the vision of One Simplot. This project aimed to provide a comprehensive understanding of Simplot’s customer base and optimize the customer experience across its diverse operations.

Challenges

What I Did

Simplot’s business is complex, with multiple lines of business that serve very different customer needs—from agribusiness customers to food production and distribution. The challenge was to consolidate insights from a broad customer base, identify shared experiences, and address the specific pain points and needs unique to each division.

Key challenges included:

• Understanding Diverse Customer Needs: Identifying commonalities and differences across Simplot's wide range of customers.

• Establishing Consistent Personas: Creating a set of enterprise-wide personas that could be applied across different business lines while also accounting for unique customer needs.

• Mapping Complex Journeys: Crafting journey maps that capture the entire customer experience across multiple industries and customer segments, with the goal of identifying friction points and opportunities for improvement.

Over a span of three months, I led a team of five designers and strategists through a comprehensive Discovery phase to gain a deep understanding of Simplot’s customer experience. The process was broken down into four main phases, each designed to answer essential questions and guide us toward the final deliverables.

Customer Interviews

We conducted 49+ hour-long interview sessions with 26 internal Simplot employees and 23 external customers across 8 lines of business. These interviews were designed to capture a holistic view of the customer journey, from initial research to post-purchase feedback. We organized our discussion guides based on our understanding of the customer journey and adjusted them based on new insights during the interviews.

Key topics included:

• How customers communicate with Simplot

• How they research, evaluate, and purchase products

• How they provide feedback and engage with customer service

This in-depth exploration helped us uncover both shared experiences and specific pain points unique to each customer segment.

affinity mapping

To organize and synthesize the vast amount of data collected from the interviews, we used affinity mapping. This allowed us to cluster pain points, identify patterns, and pinpoint opportunities for improvement across all lines of business. Through this exercise, we identified several recurring key themes, including:

• Self-Service Needs: A growing demand for more self-service options, especially among smaller customers.

• Marketing Gaps: Opportunities for improved targeting, distribution, and accessibility of marketing materials (both digital and physical).

• Lack of Accessible Expertise: Customers expressed frustration over the difficulty of accessing Simplot’s expertise and research.

• Desire for Transparency: Customers wanted more proactive communication and transparency regarding product changes and order status.

PERSONA development & REFINEMENT

With the themes identified, we began developing the enterprise-level customer personas. This was a highly collaborative process, involving multiple work sessions with Simplot stakeholders to validate and refine the personas. We created 10 personas in total, which represented Simplot’s diverse customer segments, from small-scale buyers to large corporate customers.

We used Miro to facilitate the persona creation process, enabling real-time collaboration and quick iteration on the personas. These personas became the foundation for the next phase: the customer journey maps.

JOURNEY MAP WORKSHOPS

Once the personas were solidified, we shifted focus to creating customer journey maps. We held two workshops with Simplot’s teams—one for the Food Group and another for Agribusiness—where we validated our understanding of the customer journey and identified touchpoints where Simplot could improve the customer experience.

The workshops helped us visualize common pathways across all customer types, while also highlighting opportunities for personalized interventions in key areas of the journey.

Results

final deliverables

After synthesizing insights from the journey workshops, we refined our initial journey maps and created the final deliverables. These included:

• 10 Enterprise Personas: Detailed profiles of key customer types, including shared behaviors and unique characteristics.

• 5 Customer Journey Maps: Clear visualizations of the customer experience, identifying pain points and opportunities for improvement at each stage of the journey.

The final deliverables were presented to the Simplot team, including a comprehensive overview of the personas, their associated journeys, and actionable insights for enhancing customer experience across the business.

KEY INSIGHTS UNCOVERED:

• Need for More Self-Service Options: Smaller customers, in particular, desired more autonomy in their interactions with Simplot, including self-service portals for ordering, support, and information retrieval.

• Marketing Improvements: Marketing materials, both digital and physical, needed to be better targeted and distributed. This included offering more personalized content based on customer profiles and needs.

• Proactive Communication: Customers wanted more transparency and proactive communication about changes in products, orders, and services.

• Unlocking Expertise: Simplot’s wealth of industry knowledge and research needed to be more accessible to customers, empowering them to make informed decisions.

By the end of the engagement, Simplot had a clearer understanding of their customer base, with actionable insights to improve the overall customer experience. The enterprise-wide personas and journey maps provided a foundation for:

• Improved Customer Segmentation: Enabling Simplot to better target their customers with more relevant products and marketing.

• Personalized Customer Interactions: Identifying key areas where Simplot could provide more tailored, self-service, and proactive experiences.

• Future Strategy Alignment: Laying the groundwork for further digital transformation and customer-centric initiatives across the company.

This project for J.R. Simplot was a critical step in their effort to unify their various lines of business under the vision of One Simplot. By providing a comprehensive view of the customer experience through personas and journey maps, we equipped Simplot with the tools they needed to make informed, customer-centric decisions and optimize their operations across all business units.

Through a detailed and collaborative process, we not only improved Simplot’s understanding of their customers but also helped them shape a more streamlined and customer-friendly future.