Tips
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…)
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…)
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…)
Many businesses don’t have real signature points in their customer experience, which are the most important drivers of Net Promoter Scores. People aren’t going to refer your business to anyone if there is not a unique and memorable element to talk about.
Recently I was speaking at the national Association of Strategic Planning conference on the topic of customer experience and brand integrity. One question came up about how customer experience relates to the Net Promoter Score (NPS). It was a great question and for those who subscribe to NPS as a key performance metric, here is a post that describes how to improve that score and the business results it implies through Customer Experience and specifically Signature Points.
The beauty of tracking your Net Promoter Score is that it is entirely customer focused and it is simple. That’s powerful. NPS measures just one question, “how likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?” This is a simple question for customers to answer. The tougher question that managers then face about NPS is, “how can I improve my NPS score?” That is not a simple question. You can’t directly manage each customer’s answers to the NPS question, but you can manage the ‘customer experience’ you deliver every day. If you are working hard to improve your NPS score, here are some tips on how to simplify delivering breakthroughs in your customer experience that can give you significant jumps in your NPS score.
Three Steps to Improve NPS (more…)
In almost every recent transformation I’ve been involved in, we’ve been discussing the same things. How can we get more done, faster? And there is often a caveat…that we won’t be able to increase spending.Sound familiar? I spend lots of time thinking about how to frame up the situation about focus, selecting a small number of high-impact initiatives, and doubling-down resources on those initiatives. And with so many teams, it seems that a fundamental principle that is undermining high-impact execution is the seemingly logical concept of doing “more with less.” I try to explain the flaw in this thinking, and then Scott Adams, through Dilbert, just nails it! At least in terms of taking a jab at the flawed logic and way that it is received by employees. Here are some practical steps executing a better alternative, doing “More ON Less.” (more…)
In the past five years or so, our transformation work is experiencing a major shift in how to generate the engagement and alignment of all employees in an organization. It is now more common that teams at all levels may not be co-located in a single office, people collaborate across global time zones, and we have learned how to develop social clusters of expertise that extend both through and beyond traditional organizational boundaries and connections. In this post are the beginnings of a list of solutions that are worth exploring. (more…)
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What’s get measured gets done. That statement can be true, but how many of us see countless reports coming out monthly, weekly or even daily, that take hours to produce, and nobody even looks at them? Metrics can be one of the most powerful tools for generating tight focus on execution if used correctly. Or, metrics can be a complete waste of time and distraction to the real running the business and delivering value to customers. What seem like slight differences make the difference in driving high-impact and valuable work.
One challenge that seems to have come up repeatedly in our work through the second half of 2010 was the issue of setting success metrics. So, it is probably worth sharing one key insight here that can help to focus and improve the use of metrics in driving success. (more…)
In doing analysis for web company that provides online solutions for managing commercial and residential contractor bids and work processes, we were looking for examples of great technology integration stories. We immediately raised up the seamless integration between the iPod and iTunes as a great customer experience. It is so easy that there is no user manual needed, but this is a rare exception.
In looking for other ideas, I was thinking about integration between Google Maps and GPS devices and searched Google for examples. (more…)
Most of us would rather not go to a hospital. When we do go, it often seems that most of the staff aren’t too happy to see us there either. Individual medical professionals and staff can sometimes be friendly one-on-one, but nobody greets you, nobody welcomes you, and you spned most of the time sitting around in uncomfortable chairs, reading dull magazines, and trying to not breathe the air in the cramped waiting rooms.
I don’t write this post as an endorsement of Kaiser, but I recently went to a Kaiser facility and was extremely surprised by the great service. It provides a great view into transforming of customer experiences. In the case of Kaiser, admittedly I was expecting the worst. The ‘Thrive’ branding seems so perfect, but how could a large company in such a tough industry transform such a typically negative experience into a positive one? Kaiser proved, at least in my case, that it could be done. Anyone who provides service to the general public could learn from the detailed and simple steps Kaiser has taken to make the customer experience far exceed the expectations. (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.