General
Last month I delivered a keynote speech to a group of business leaders in Athens, Greece. The HMA had adopted the concept of replacing the old concept of trying to do “more with less” with the concept from our book, “doing more ON less.” I loved the signage for the event. The concept of “more with less” is completely overused and in crisis situations just results in lots of under-funded activities, diffused leadership attention and gridlock of any progress. Doing “More ON Less” is about reducing the focus to the highest impact activities, concentrating funding on those items and focusing leadership attention on just a big initiatives. Here is how the idea of transforming through “More ON Less” could be applied in Greece today. (more…)
Free mini-ebook on Customer Experience
At a recent inaugural meeting of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), a group of professionals in customer experience, including executives from Cox Communications, Sprint, Fidelity Investments, and UPS gathered in Boston to discuss the latest trends and tools in the field of Customer Experience.
One of the top unanswered issues was, “how can we get Customer Experience to be on the strategic agenda for CEOs and other top executives?” Some people were concerned that the tactics of re-engineering customer service touch-points might overshadow the strategic value of creating a customer experience that is amazing, unique and memorable and drives revenue growth, premium margins and customer loyalty. (more…)
Mobile devices are now a core part of customers’ daily lives and therefore potentially a core part of almost any customer experience. Similar to company web sites offering up a new facet of customer experience in the early 2000s, mobile devices have the potential and will become another unique experience element of equal or more impact.
In the fourth quarter of 2010, IDC reported that there were 92.1 million traditional computers sold and 100.9 million smart phones. Smart phones and tables have now become a core part of the overall customer experience between companies and their customers. Even if you do not have a mobile device customer experience strategy, customers are hitting your current website from those devices or are calling your call centers from those same devices in greater numbers. (more…)
For me, the question of how much to spend on customer experience is a trick question. Customer experience is an investment and can be an asset. It is not always viewed that way, especially when revenues lag and there seem to be unnecessary costs that could be eliminated with no immediate and direct impact on revenue. A great example are the Nordstrom piano players.
Just recently, my local Nordstrom re-designed their escalators and designed out the grand piano area. I had heard that Nordstrom was eliminating piano players, but thought it wasn’t wide spread until it hit home in my own shopping experience.
For several years I have been quizzing audiences when talking about customer experience on things like, “which retail store has a grand piano player?” Brand recall is amazingly high for the Nordstrom piano players and people always get this right away. The person answering usually has a big smile on their face and often follows up with a positive comment about the experience. (more…)
Innovative thinking is a highly valued capability today. By working specific mental exercises as a deliberate part of your day, you can increase your ability to integrate left brain (creative) and right brain (logical) thinking patterns into a mix that generates more productive innovative thinking.
Any edge to think and act with more agility, innovation and creativity is highly valuable. An article on the LIVESTRONG blog recently shared some practical exercises you can use to build your abilities to integrate right and left brain thinking. This enables you to be a source of innovative ideas that can be implemented in practical ways or to generate creative sparks at the right time while implementing structured processes. (more…)
Very often I am asked, “do we really need ‘every’ department to participate in our customer experience initiative. My quick answer is usually, “if a department truly has zero impact on customers, then maybe they should be eliminated or outsourced.” Many times this drifts into a follow up question to test the edges, “…well, what about our legal department for example.” I’ve seen this too many times and have a great recent example to share with you on why even legal departments can make a huge difference in customer experience.
Recently while booking a business trip, I found a good deal on a flight on my normal carrier, which is United. After booking it, I realized that the return date may need to flex and was wondering what any change fees or penalties may be for this potential change. That’s when I was hit with this perfect “Counter Point” example where legal language makes all the difference in the customer experience. (more…)
You’ve just been handed the baton for improving customer experience at your company…now what?
The role of Chief Customer Officer (CCO), Chief Customer Experience Officer and other executive titles that revolve around strategic focus on the customer are some of the fastest growing titles in corporations today. But beyond assigning a top executive into the role of watching over customer experience, what should the capabilities of the CCO organization be and what should be their accountability? The leading customer organizations are taking on corporate challenges that require strong capabilities in strategy, marketing, creative and organizational transformation. Why are they building these diverse teams? What is the business value? And more importantly, how can you build a highly effective customer organization in your company? (more…)
The field of Customer Experience Management is driving a new wave of innovation through businesses. Innovation is often about fusing different disciplines together to generate new ways of thinking and ways of solving problems creatively. A major innovation trend today is the mixing of business strategy and design to form new ways of thinking to create compelling and valuable customer experiences. In the past, designers and business leaders would go to different schools, work at different professional services firms, work in different parts of an organization and belong to different professional associations. They were completely separate sub-cultures of the business world. Today, leaders are mixing those two worlds and the result is greater innovation, better customer experiences … resulting in greater business success. Venture capital funds, top business schools, leading customer experience executives and innovative service firms are all moving to harness this fusion. (more…)
One of the best metrics for monitoring your customer experience value is to measure customer satisfaction. Most companies do that. Most managers also look at the combined top two scores on a five point scale that includes “very satisfied” and “satisfied” and as long as those two categories are at a high percentage of answers, things are viewed as successful. After viewing Apple’s performance in mobile devices in terms of very satisfied customers and market share growth, maybe we should move to a two point scale that only includes Very Satisfied and “Also Ran” as the only two choices. That seems to be all that matters.
72% Very Satisfied Customers
Being satisfied with customers who say they are just “satisfied” is not the way to achieve market leadership. With competitive intensity so high in today’s markets, the only relevant measure is to drive up business performance is to focus on creating “very satisfied” customers as a majority. The bell shaped curve is after all average, or otherwise a commodity. A recent report published by CNET (and conducted by ChangeWave) on customer satisfaction with the iPhone 4 experience shows that Apple has achieved a 72% very satisfied rating. That is a rare accomplishment and demonstrates Apple’s commitment to customer experience excellence. Not just mere average “satisfaction.”
115% Growth in Market Share
The result of having such high “very satisfied” ratings is that Apple’s market share of mobile devices grew by 115% in the first quarter of 2011 according to a new study from IDC Research. That is growing from a single digit market share base, but the company above Apple’s share fell by almost 10% in the same quarter.
When setting success metrics, the benchmarks you set should not be done in a way to make you and your employees feel good and satisfied that, “at least people don’t dislike us.” Set the bar high, customer experience is an area of the business that can’t merely satisfy, it needs to wow, surprise, and delight customers every day and at every interaction. The result will be very satisfied customers and market leading growth.
In our strategic transformation work we are often asked the question, “why should we limit ourselves to just three major initiatives?” Executive teams feel that a short list of initiatives is not a stretch for the organization or that it is too limited to create transformational change. The truth is that when it comes to execution, transformational change comes from making major progress on a small number of things. It is about stacking up the resources on the most high impact initiatives that will have meaningful impact on customer value and the customer experience.
Harvard Business Review just published research from Booz Allen & Company that was based on a broad executive study of 1800 global executives. Here are some of the highlights for you to consider and to use with your stakeholders and team to make the case for focus.
* Most executives (64%) report they have too many conflicting priorities.
* The majority of executives (56%) say that allocating resources in a way that really supports the strategy is a significant challenge, especially as companies chase a wide set of growth initiatives.
* 81% admit that their growth initiatives lead to waste, at least some of the time.
* Nearly half (47%) say their company’s way of creating value is not well understood by employees or customers. (more…)
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Michael Kanazawa shares recent insights and tips about the no-nonsense, results-driven approach to driving business breakthroughs found in his new book Big Ideas to Big Results.