| I wasn’t always an expert in Customer Experience and Outside-In In fact, when I became an Industrial Engineer I didn’t have the first clue about how to deliver Successful Customer Outcomes. I’m going to share a personal story with you about one of my early failures… It’s a little embarrassing to share, but I think it will inspire you. It was a quest of five years looking for a standardized Home Loan process and system for a world-leading bank. My team and I visited 30+ countries, reviewed more than 40 IT suppliers, and talked with other top banks and mutual lenders. We sat down with the best business professors, authors and researchers and attended dozens of events on our quest… |
And just as in Monty Python and the Holy Grail we returned home empty-handed. You can imagine the investment of time, energy, and budget to realize there isn’t such a thing as an Ideal Home Loan process and system (despite what the big consultancies and IT vendors had told us).
Our senior executive team in the bank was incredulous. In fact, deep down I doubted my own capabilities, I was exhausted and had failed with one of the biggest projects in the bank’s history. Or so I thought…
That is when the truth hit me square between the eyes. We were thinking of our business in the wrong way. My enlightenment was complete when Steve Jobs, in the same year 1997, said the now immortal words “You have got to start with the Customer Experience and work backwards to the Technology, not the other way around”
I had finally got it – we had to think Outside-In, put the customer at the center of everything, and realize using out-of-date business thinking has no place in the 21st century.
Everything changed for me in May 1997.
Since then I have worked with the world’s leading companies learning and adopting Outside-In as a way of being.
Trust me, if I can do this so can you.
In fact, you even have it better than me. You can bypass all the trouble I went through by simply learning from my mistakes.
I laid out a safe and sensible plan for you here: https://bit.ly/GCCACXP
What do you most admire in the ones you love? Remind yourself that is one of the many reasons you love them, whether it is a partner, child or stranger. Think about that and enjoy the feeling.
Steve Towers