Do you ever have that sneaky feeling that we can get so much more out of our business processes? Are you Struggling to get support from the organization for your change? Are you curious about what are the best proven techniques (that go way beyond Lean and Six Sigma)?
If so you are in the right place!
THE USE OF THE RIGHT APPROACHES WILL REDUCE COSTS BY AT LEAST 30% (and at the same time significantly improve customer satisfaction!) – 100% Guaranteed
Steve Towers
This FOUR day 5 Hours per day program shows you how using the REAL LIFE work you are doing! Come get upskilled and take back IMMEDIATE improvements that realise tangible benefits from the get-go.
Let me take this opportunity to thank Mr Steve. Your teachings are timeless and they stick perfectly and forever in our minds. We shall never forget you wherever we find ourselves on this planet. Thank you so much, Steve 🙏
Benignus Otmar, Tanzania
Thank you, the experience was enlightening, empowering, educating, encouraging and engaging.
Natasha Doren, South Africa
Thank you, Steve, I have never enjoyed anything more than the CX course, The weight of knowledge I gained and the enlightenment that I got is indescribable.
Reem Elsadig, Sudan
Thanks Steve for such an excellent program, the dedicated manner you use to share with us your wonderful knowledge and wisdom in CX, and time to response all our questions! God bless you, thanks a lot!
Yanese Angeles, Dominican Republic
You started me out on this journey my friend. Thanks for letting me live out my passion!
Molly Redenbaugh, Iowa, United States
Thank you! It’s been an amazing journey and you have been a great mentor.It was an honor taking your class, I am now a confident CPP Master🙏🏾
Masele Masudi Msita, Tanzania
Thank you Steve for high-quality wonderful Master. I thought the course was brilliant.Thank you for everything.
Join our upcoming Coaching and Accreditation sessions online, LIVE & Interactive
This last 12 months I have experimented with a marvellous little utility that boosts your social postings and articles. Watch the demo at the link below and you will be smitten too. https://lttr.ai/UPph
To give you some idea of its impact (and some cracking links) these were my results in the last 4 weeks.
TOP PERFORMING CAMPAIGNS Your top 5 campaigns generated 89% of your total clicks last month.
Really clear quotes chosen by someone who knows his stuff. They are to the point and include folks you sometimes wouldn’t expect to see in a book like this. And they are nice in this format at one per day. Read and enjoy. Recommended.
Simple things can be very very effective and that is certainly the case with this ‘go-to’ template. Based on the Next Practice of some of the worlds leading companies completing this could change the way you think and do business forever.
It is my first interaction with Top Teams and Leaders and I use it as my first conversation with anyone who says they are tasked with helping transform their organisations (and themselves sometimes!)
In one minute you have the distilled strategy from the man who has created an empire with a very simple philosophy.
The Richest Guy on the Planet tells us how to do it
We live, eat and breathe this stuff. Come and learn how to do it for you and your organization. We can’t promise you will become another Jeff but you will change to healthier Obsessions!
Join our upcoming Coaching and Accreditation sessions online, LIVE & Interactive
Business failures are all around us, nothing new there then. If we go back a decade or so we saw the demise of Nokia, we’ve seen companies like Blockbuster crash and burn, and other companies in the High Street whether it’s in Europe or in the US disappear and never to be seen again.
Why is this so? When you look at the investment those companies were making there was no lack of intent to spend in understanding how the customer was changing. In the year that Apple introduced the iPhone Nokia was investing heavily in voice of the customer (VOC) surveys, customer satisfaction and NPS.
But they missed the point. Progressive Outside-In companies (think Amazon, Zara, Zappos, Emirates) are not about retrospective subjective analysis of perceived performance.
Also it isn’t about overlaying processes with a new language when fundamentally the very systems and processes were never designed to deliver customer experiences. Those now creaking processes were designed with a factory mindset centred around production line thinking, throughput and waste. Hence the challenge for many is more fundamental as it’s not about rejigging what you’re doing – it is about a complete rethink to move outside in the way that you do business.
Remarkably even in the third decade of the 21st century there are still those companies that think they can just tweak and change the language inside their organisations.
As if doing better advertising and marketing to customers and talking about ‘new’ services on top of their existing infrastructures and IT systems hacks it. The actual reality is somewhat different.
Senior Executive commentary
Top teams and senior executives need to grasp this challenge. Roland Naidoo, a senior executive at African based entertainments company Multichoice puts the choice starkly:
“Would you measure how fast a 1600cc car performed around an F1 circuit. No? Then why would you try to measure customer experience AND improve it on processes and products there were never designed with experience in mind. Go on enter your 1600 into the next F1. Wonder how it would perform?”
Roland Naidoo, Multichoice Africa
Lipstick on a Pig? Surely not…
Those companies who understand that ‘outside-in’ thinking calls for a complete realignment and new appraisal of what the customer experience consists of.
Rather than, to coin a phrase, putting lipstick on a pig. You have actually got to think about what is it you’re trying to achieve; what does success look like for our customer? And then align across all functions, all systems and ways of working towards successful customer outcomes. Disney refers to this alignment as getting everybody to understand where true north is and not to do anything unless it contributes to that alignment. Imagine all new initiatives being assessed by a similar approach?
Are you working in a Rubik cube?
Another aspect which comes into play is this idea that traditional measurement* is predominantly subjective and retrospective. Progressive outside in companies are not reactive – they get scientific about the customer experience.
Measuring each interaction as it happens and if necessary course-correcting in real-time. They develop the ability to see around corners to understand what’s coming next. They don’t have to wait for analysis 2 weeks after an event to decide that some remedial action is required.
This knowledge in the instance of what is happening requires us to create this idea of ‘action in the moment’ for all our employees. Zappos**, for instance, give their employees the tools and the capability to be able to make decisions in the moment (without the need to escalate to supervisors).
Industrial Age thinking will kill you
And there is another challenge companies face if they are still organised around functional specialist silos. If you’ve recruited low paid people and given them a script to follow, manage them to average handle times and throughputs you’re going to fail.
Once more the outside-in companies have an edge here as they understand that to give your most precious resource (the customer) to the employees then you need the right people in the right place able to do the right things at that moment of truth.
So what is your organization doing? is it trying to put lipstick on the pig? is it just trying to overlay the existing process is an infrastructure with this new customer-centric way of talking and doing?
It is very simple. You need to get down to brass tacks of rethinking what customer experience is all about its implication for the organisation going forward. Those organisations that are taking this outside-in approach find the world becomes simpler, faster and much more directly oriented towards delivering successful customer outcomes and winning for the bottom line.
Here are seven classic examples from a recent blog of someone selling Call Centre Services. No, I really am to polite to call them out. I thought I had travelled back in time 50 years, but I am appalled there are people still doing this?!
This hurts my Head
Why are these so Wrong? Answers on a post card but Part Two Next week will provide more insight.
And then in Part Three we will explore the alternatives…
Call Centre Measures that cripple Your Customer Experiences (the seven deadly sins)
Service Level – “The service level is the percentage of calls responded in a particular time limit. It assesses the skills of agents to deliver the service as per the Service Level Agreement (SLA) given to the clients.”…. It is a significant way to judge the performance of a call center.
Average Call Handle Time – “This KPI measures time an agent needs on a call.”
Average Queue Time – “To assure that the wait time of callers rests in the fair scope and the patience of customers should not be tested”
Call Abandonment – “It is a usual experience in the call center that clients disconnect the calls before even connecting to an agent.”
First Call Resolution – “The client is frequently in a rush. Thus, he requires that the concern of the caller must be fixed in the first call”
Occupancy Rate – “It is completely about the ability to complete the work within minimum time.”
Agent Turnover Rate – “It measures the rate of agents who switch the job. It not only causes customer service conflicts and delays as well as it also creates many issues.”
A person once said this to me… “If you pay people for doing dumb stuff they will get really smart at it”
A Very Wise Women
In Part Two we will review why Call Centre thinking is so BAD and should be BANNED.
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110 K people qualified since 2006 in 124 countries 60+ Global Coaches and Mentors – All have been there and done it!
I revisited my lists of sources, contacts and influencers, brought them up to date (the last two years or so) and collated the best across the domains I operate in. I included the recent Award winners acknowledged for their contributions to business. The result you can access below which contains the people, their LinkedIn connections, their best videos and in some cases additional resources.
My work takes me all over the planet and I get to meet some awesome people who are generous with their time and ideas. I then test, optimise and codify these great ideas into techniques and approaches we can all access.
Dare! Amazon Number 1 Best Seller (2020)
I was relating this approach at a keynote in a conference in Romania recently following the publication of our new Amazon best selling book Dare!
The keynote went well (see the extract version below) and everyone adjourned to the bar to relax and network.
At that drinks reception several people wanted to know my sources of inspiration, so naturally, we started trading names, some well known and some not yet so. As I was doing this it struck me this was one of the most commonly asked questions whether I am talking or working with some of the leading companies on the planet. So an idea was born…
Steve’s keynote in Bucharest in February 2020
Who are the best and what are their secrets?
I revisited my lists of sources, contacts and influencers, brought them up to date (the last two years or so) and collated the best across the domains I operate in. I included the recent Award winners acknowledged for their contributions to business. The result you can access below which contains the people, their LinkedIn connections, their best videos and in some cases additional resources.
So the next time someone asks me a question about influencers I am going to point them here!
All the Best, Keep safe and well, Steve
Customer Experience, Customer Service, Leadership and Operational Excellence
Click the image to access videos, books and other resources!
Limiting mindsets. A scourge of modern times and a limit on human performance keeping us in thought straight jackets.
Dare! Amazon Number 1 Best Seller (2020)
If you want something new you have to stop doing something old
Peter Drucker
So what are modern day thinkers and Innovators doing to break out of preconditioned constraining beliefs? Well if you google ‘innovation’ you get 1,650,000,000 (one billion, six hundred and fifty million) responses which would be a bit of light reading for the weekend 😉
So I tried another tack and thought about the best online videos and books featuring innovation, and yes there is a fast track way to watch and hear the thoughts of today’s greats, in action doing their innovative things.
Who are the best and what are their secrets?
I revisited my lists of sources, contacts and influencers, brought them up to date (the last two years or so) and collated the best across the domains I operate in. I included the recent Award winners acknowledged for their contributions to business. The result you can access below which contains the people, their LinkedIn connections, their best videos and in some cases additional resources.
So the next time someone asks me a question about TipTop Innovators and influencers I am going to point them here!
All the Best, Keep safe and well, Steve
Innovation Experts 2020
Click the image to access videos, books and other resources!
