The experience design firm African executives call when strategy needs to reach the customer.
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The strategy is sound. The deck is approved. Then it meets a real customer, a tired frontline team, and a system that was never built to deliver it. We work in that gap, where intent becomes experience.
Without a clear diagnosis, organisations copy competitors and miss what their own customers actually need. HELO™ shows you where your CX capability is strong and where it needs work, in a single working session, so you know where to act first and have something credible to take to your leadership.
The real lives of customers and the front-line staff who serve them. The motivations, frictions, and expectations a journey map rarely captures.
The journey as it is actually felt, across channels and hand-offs. Not the experience you built, the one that happens.
The quality and coherence of every place a customer touches you: brand, app, branch, call centre, agent. Some touchpoints shape loyalty and revenue more than others, so those come first. One weak touchpoint undoes the ones that worked.
The operating model, incentives, and habits beneath it all. The hidden dimension. Change here is what makes the other three hold once we are gone.
Organisations come to us with different problems. Underneath each one is the same gap: between what they intend to deliver and what customers actually experience. Here's where we usually start.
You are making decisions about customers you do not fully understand. We uncover the real reasons behind behaviour, churn, and unmet need.
See our research work
You are making decisions about customers you do not fully understand. We uncover the real reasons behind behaviour, churn, and unmet need.
See our research work
Cross-functional teams turn insight into shippable products through fast prototyping, tight feedback loops, and real users involved early.
See our design work
Cross-functional teams turn insight into shippable products through fast prototyping, tight feedback loops, and real users involved early.
See our design work
We wire automation and AI into the operational core, reducing manual load and giving your team leverage, not just dashboards.
See our automation work
We wire automation and AI into the operational core, reducing manual load and giving your team leverage, not just dashboards.
See our automation work
Strategy means nothing without execution. We embed with your team to turn plans into shipped, adopted, working systems.
See our execution work
Strategy means nothing without execution. We embed with your team to turn plans into shipped, adopted, working systems.
See our execution work
Growth that compounds comes from retention, not acquisition alone. We build the loops that keep customers coming back.
See our growth work
Growth that compounds comes from retention, not acquisition alone. We build the loops that keep customers coming back.
See our growth work“In my 30 years of contracting research, this is the first data I have received that I can implement. Good Job!”
Chris Rhodes
Chief Operating Officer | POA Internet
“Marathon understood our goals, delivered smart solutions, and exceeded our expectations.”
Khadijah Mohamed
CEO & Founder | Kwanza Tukule Foods
“Marathon helps teams understand users and design solutions that exceed expectations.”
Adam Kasaine
Chief Executive Officer | Ed Partners Africa
It usually comes down to the same five things: the proof points clients tell us made the difference.
HELO (Human · Experience · Links · Organisation) is the only African-built four-dimension CX capability framework. It surfaces the structural gaps strategy alone can't see, and produces a board-ready picture in a single working session.
Our service designers hold Service Design Network accreditation, bringing international practice standards to engagements rooted in regional context.
We design for what customers actually do, not what they say they will. It's built into research from the first interview, not bolted on as a slide at the end.
Depth across banking, mobile money, investment, payments, and enterprise platforms, where experience and compliance both have to hold.
Research to embedded capability in a single firm. Fewer handoffs, no lost intent. It's the differentiator most competitors can't claim honestly.
Meet our Managing Director, Ndonye Njoroge.
Ndonye brings over 25 years of experience across business strategy, product management, and software development, spanning multiple continents. He leads Marathon with a clear mission: to improve human experiences by designing products and services that matter. With a background spanning global consulting and technology leadership, he blends strategy, brand, and digital thinking to help organisations create value for customers and the business alike. Under his leadership, Marathon works across Africa and beyond.
Marathon engagements across East Africa
Industries from banking to defense to pharma
Author of the framework we run on
Whether you need a product designed and built, a transformation executed, or a diagnosis of where the experience is breaking down, the starting point is the same: a conversation about where you are and where you need to be.
We help organisations turn strategic intent into customer experiences that actually land.