What makes a Patch?
In a word, it’s our customers. But this doesn’t tell you about how we are making Patch.
So, we’d like to take you on a journey through the early days of how we built on some well meaning (but highly conceptual) values into the tangible Work Near Home product you’ll find in your local Patch.
We’ll do this through three short posts on the founding product principles we heard in our customer conversations, which are Form, Function and Belonging.
Throughout, we’ll be sharing some of these stories and quotes. This continuous listening process is one of the core principles we are building Patch around.
But, why did we start this way at all?
We are in part inspired by the lessons learned from the technology industry over the last twenty years, which have emphasised a constant and disruptive energy to act on feedback. It’s also the company our team wants to spend time building, and it’s the way they want to feel treated as customers themselves in their own lives.
The very first thing we did, well before Patch became a company, was talk to as many target customers as we could. We spoke to first time mums in Ruislip, business owners in Hertfordshire and frustrated commuters in Kent, Yorkshire, Scotland and Somerset.
At first, these exercises were hard to draw insights from, with hours of recordings and reams of written notes. But over time, some themes started emerging. These are the first principles we think about in everything we design, for now. But they will remain under constant scrutiny as we listen, learn and change based on what we hear.
We’ll elaborate on these in upcoming posts, but here’s a little teaser for what we mean, as expressed through the voice of real people we’ve spoken to.
Our initial product principles, as heard from customers
Form — Inspiring, design led spaces. Feel uplifted and valued.
“I’ve changed my work contract to spend fewer days in the office, the home working environment during Covid has been awful. I need a nice desk with space to focus… I want things to be light and airy.”
Function — High quality work infrastructure. Do your best work.
“There’s not enough space at home for us both, and the baby. I want to move to work from near home by default, coming to the office only when I need to, but all I have near me is Costa, which is terrible to work from.”
Belonging — A place to go and people to meet. An authentic community.
“During lockdown, I really needed the mental separation from home and work. I like interacting with people. I don’t like sitting at home in the same place every day. I want to feel part of something bigger, to have a sense of commonality with others.”
As Patch, we often say that ‘every customer is a gift’. This means two things. First, we are grateful to the people who choose to spend their time and money with us, and treat them with respect.
But it also has a more tangible meaning, that each customer brings insight, feedback and perspective that we have to constantly monitor, interpret, and understand.
This starts to bring us to our company values, but we’ll save that for another post.
