Shurgard Europe

Shurgard is the largest owner and operator of self-storage facilities in Europe, with 229 self-storage centres across the Netherlands, France, Sweden, the UK, Germany, Denmark and Belgium. Having revisited its brand positioning and strategy, Shurgard partnered with us to design its future customer experience — and the employee experience underneath it — so the brand's intended positioning would show up in practice, and to surface future growth opportunities.

The engagement, at a glance:

• Diagnose — analyse product and channel performance, and map the as-is customer experience
• Design — the to-be customer and employee experiences and their journeys
• Sequence — identify the enablers and build the roadmap from as-is to to-be

The challenge: make a new brand positioning real, across Europe

Shurgard had revisited its brand positioning and strategy. The task was to turn that intention into an experience customers and employees would actually feel — clearly demonstrating and standing for the new positioning across a 229-centre, seven-country footprint — while identifying future growth opportunities in practices, products and services.

What we did: from as-is diagnostic to a to-be experience, customer and employee

We designed the full experience end to end, grounding it in performance data and real customer insight, and — crucially — treating the employee experience as the engine of the customer one:

• Performance analysis — Shurgard's product and channel performance and business plans
• Customer field study — direct insight into how customers actually experience self-storage
• As-is experience & diagnostic — mapping the current customer experience and where it breaks
• Strategic orientations — across sales, processes and servicing
• To-be customer experience — the target strategy and its underlying journeys
• To-be employee experience — the employee journeys that make the customer experience deliverable
• Enablers & roadmap — what needs to be in place, sequenced from as-is to to-be

Why it worked: a holistic strategy that became their transformation

Designing the customer and employee experiences together — backed by performance analysis and field insight — gave Shurgard a holistic omnichannel strategy, a clear roadmap, detailed use cases and clear KPIs, not just a vision. The whole engagement ran in three months, and the output became a full part of Shurgard's next transformation journey.

"Belly & Brain's expertise in customer experience design made it easy for Shurgard to identify and prioritise solutions to take our brand to the next level. They also had a very good understanding of how digital can help self-storage companies, their prospects and customers. We ended up with a holistic omnichannel strategy, a clear roadmap, detailed use cases and clear KPIs — all of which became a full part of Shurgard's next transformation journey." — John G. Turner, Head of Marketing, Shurgard Self-Storage Europe