Most CX investment fails to deliver growth because it starts in the wrong place. Organisations map journeys, measure satisfaction, and fix friction. The work is competent. It just isn't aimed at what causes customers to choose, which is why so many well-run CX programmes produce better experiences that don't shift to dial.
We start differently. Before any journey map or improvement roadmap, we diagnose the causal drivers of customer choice. That diagnosis is grounded in Christensen's Jobs to Be Done , the most rigorous framework for understanding why customers hire, fire, or never consider a business in the first place. It surfaces the functional, emotional, and social dimensions of the progress your customers are trying to make, and the forces that determine whether you're in or out of the running.
From that foundation, we design experiences that target the dimensions that actually move behaviour, and build the measurement frameworks to prove they're working. Classic CX practice sits inside this approach: journey mapping, service blueprinting, qualitative research, and satisfaction measurement all do real work, but only when aimed at the choices that drive growth.
We meet clients where they need us. Some need the full diagnostic because they suspect their programme is making the wrong things better. Others have the strategy set and need rigorous experience design to deliver against it. Others have a specific service or touchpoint that isn't performing and need help working out why. The frameworks are consistent. The shape of the engagement flexes to fit what the work actually needs.
Our process
The process below describes the full arc of how we work, from diagnosing the causal drivers of customer choice through to delivering and measuring experiences that move behaviour. Each step builds on the last. Clients can enter the process at the point that fits where they are, whether that means starting with a full diagnostic, picking up from an existing strategy, or focusing on a specific part of the experience that isn't performing.
The frameworks behind the work
Our approach is grounded in a small set of established academic and strategic frameworks. Jobs to Be Done, developed by Clayton Christensen, is our primary lens for understanding customer choice: why customers hire, stay with, or fire a business. The Four Forces of Progress, developed by Bob Moesta alongside Christensen, explains the competing forces that determine whether customers switch. Good Strategy, as articulated by Richard Rumelt, shapes how we structure recommendations and roadmaps. And Lean Startup informs how we prototype and test new initiatives before committing investment at scale.
These are not references we drop into proposals. They are the thinking that sits underneath every diagnosis, every experience design decision, and every prioritisation call we make.
Our tools
Purple Shirt has developed two purpose-built tools that support the work. Our Customer Journey Mapping application is a web-based platform that enables clients to map, manage, and maintain their customer journeys in one place, keeping the work live rather than locked in a document.
The Performance Framework is a structured scoring tool that makes improvement prioritisation explicit and defensible. It works by defining the performance dimensions that matter to a programme, assigning weights that reflect what different customer cohorts actually care about, and scoring how much any given improvement moves the dial. The result is a ranked view of where effort creates the most value, and a clear rationale for every decision made.
FAQs
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