Month: April 2013

Successful Customer Outcomes Posting Four

5. And now we are ready to establish the real Successful Customer Outcome (SCO) as a set of statements of intent with SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound) objectives. There is no room for management weasel words such as fast, efficient, effective, timely and the like. Here we get specific and develop metrics that will tell us how well we are delivering the SCO. Having identified the Statements of Intent and the associated measures we are ready to summarize the complete SCO Map.

What is the one liner that describes this SCO?

6. The one liner may even sometimes be summarized as one word. Also we are now bordering on the territory of Strategy as the articulation of the SCO Map should link directly with the organization Mission and Vision. In mature Outside In organizations the SCO Maps link with customer categories and we develop a clear line of sight from every single task and activity right through to the organization objectives. That line of sight is a tangible and objective linkage that confirms everything we are doing is aligned with corporate goals and objectives.

Successful Customer Outcomes Posting Three

So you have the customer and their expectations understood.
What about the process the customer thinks they are involved with?
3. What Process does the Customer think they are involved with?
Challenge yourself with this one. It isn’t the process we, as an organisation, think the customer is involved with. You need to look at this Outside In.
If you, as a customer have twanged your car it isn’t the claims process, the assessment process or the evaluation process. It is much more likely to be “getting back on the road as soon as possible”. How much of what you are doing contributes to that? Are you busy processing claims, counting them, improving the efficiency of processing claims and minimizing the risk. Honestly the customer doesn’t give a stuff about that. They just want to be back on the road.
4. What do we do that Impacts Customer Success?
All the stuff we do as organizations in ensuring has been developed over time to minimize risk, improve effectiveness and delivery the required service at the lowest cost.  Along the way we have introduced rules and controls to ensure we deliver those objectives. Thinks about it in your company. Do you have checkers checking checkers? Are the unwieldy procedure manuals, written tot the latest so called Service Level Agreement standards? In our likelihood you will have things that directly impact customer success. Dumb rules, procedures from the past and checks and balances no longer required.

Successful Customer Outcomes Posting Two

So how can we construct a Successful Customer Outcomes (SCO)?
Download the flashcard at the end of this review.
There are six questions we should ask ourselves, stakeholders and customers.
At the most fundamental level:
1. Who is the customer?
Yes, as an organization, we have to make the choice. We can’t sit back and wait for customers to find us we need to find them. Who are they? What value can they add to our business? Do we actually have customers we do not want? It is an interesting discussion which should put us in charge of the choice. After all these days not everyone can be our customer!
2. What is the Customers Current Expectation?
Not a small question. Have you created an expectation – either consciously or worse, inadvertently. How can you find out? Ask the customer!
Now the qualification to this when the customer answers is… did you know that?
How much of what you are currently doing aligns with the customer expectation? 
Tomorrow we will explore the Process the Customer thinks they are involved with?

Successful Customer Outcomes Posting One

At the height of the Industrial Age we didn’t have to do the right things, we just needed to do things. Commercial success resulted for many who were able to organize a business and produce goods.
As the Industrial Age gave way in the 1960’s to the Information Age competition started increasing. It was no longer good enough to do things, we had to do things right. This was the genesis of the management approaches (Industrial Engineering, TQM, Porter’s Value Chain, Management by Objective, Six Sigma, Balanced Scorecard, Lean, etc.) in wide practice today.
However you won’t find these approaches at the heart of most successful companies in the 21st Century because we’ve now moved past these inside-out management techniques.

We are now in a Customer-Driven Economy and the only way to excel here is through outside-in techniques that lead with the customer. Succeeding in the Customer-Driven Economy comes from doing the right things, and those right things are in fact Successful Customer Outcomes.