Block Buster Update this week…

Fantastic Testimonial | NEW Webinar | Events Heads Up | New Articles

** Setting up the CX Management Office – NEW Webinar now **
The How to with guidelines and template to create the successful Customer Experience Management Office https://www.cemnext.com/cxmo 

** Upcoming CPP Masters and ACX Masters ** (now in the 25th year!)
Johannesburg | Dubai | Washington | Geneva | Sydney | Brussels
See http://www.bpgroup.org/training.html 

** New ACXP program attracts terrific feedback **We were blown away by this one
(see more recent at: http://www.bpgroup.org/testimonials.html )

“The training was transformative for me personally and also made a huge push in my professional life to define CX Strategy more clearly. 

I would like to thank James Dodkins from BP Group for an amazing learning experience at Accredited Customer Experience Professional Training in Denver. I especially loved his teaching style and CX classroom projects. 

I learned so much. Thank you James! James is a true wealth of knowledge in all areas related to Customer Success, Customer Experience and Customer Centric Process Design.”
Sasha Stewart, Customer Experience Consultant, Logio Solutions LLC

** Recommended Conferences 2017 **

(and yes we are there too!)

Customer Experience Week Australia 2017 – Sydney 23-26 May 2017
http://www.customerexperienceevent.com.au

OPEXweek AUSTRALIA 2017 – Sydney – 25-28 July 2017
http://www.iqpc.com.au

OPEXweek Summer 2017 – San Diego – 21-23 August 2017
https://www.businessperformanceexcellencesummit.com

OPEXweek Global Summit 2018 – Orlando – 22-26 Jan 2018
https://www.opexweek.com

** THREE Articles **

* The 5 Critical Failures of 80% of Customer Experience initiatives
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-critical-failures-80-customer-experience-steve 

** The five crucial things successful CX companies do every day
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-crucial-things-successful-cx-companies-do-every-steve

*** Don’t give the Customers choices? 
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dont-give-customers-choices-how-easily-provide-best-steve 

I told you that was a biggy eh? See you the inside soon. Cheers, Steve
http://www.stevebtowers.com | http://www.bpgroup.org

The Road to Hell is Paved with good intentions

We start with what is now a classic denial strategy and will progress over the coming weeks to review misconceptions that seek to stop you on yourjourney to Successful Customer Outcomes.

‘The company has to get its own processes right first’.

In the context of Outside-In this is clearly a major mistake. As the
Southwest Airlines and Apple examples demonstrate you fix the internal processes by understanding and acting on “the Customer Experience is the process”. In doing so everything changes internally to better align to successful customer outcomes. That reduces complexity, removes costs, improves service and grows revenue.

Now if you brief is ‘in the box’ and does not yet extend to the Customer Experience the approach should be around optimization through understanding the causes of work ­ moments of truth, breakpoints and business rules. Even though this is at best sub optimization (recall the US banks Customer query process) it will take you to a much better place with significant performance improvements as you highlight and eradicate the ‘dumb stuff’.

Often times this has to be the starting point as, by definition, the way inside-out works is by the sub division of labor. You can only see theimmediate walls around you and looking beyond maybe beyond your brief. Do not lose heart. Go with Optimization (and if necessary stealth) as you
introduce through existing projects the concepts of moments of truth, breakpoints and business rules. You will catch the eye of those responsible for the numbers as the changes you introduce go way beyond the traditional expectations.

From the desk of James Dodkins.

Points of Failure – How to remove and improve (3 minute video)

Upcoming events? http://www.bpgroup.org/certification-by-city.html
Amsterdam – Cape Town – Orlando – London – Bangalore – Dubai – Brisbane – Denver – Sydney – Singapore – Dubai in 2014 

CEMMethod update (new version pending)

In January we updated the CEMMethod (it is now on its fifth version since 2006). Before year end we will introducing several new concepts and tools. If you would like that information please subscribe to the blog and I will include you in the previews.

It’s a mess out there – but you know the Magic now :)

Breakpoints are always caused by Moments of Truth. Usually if you find a MOT there will be 3-4 BP’s also. Makes sense then to start eradicating the unnecessary MOT’s.
Business Rules! Did you hear the one about waiting 8 days at the Prudential for the ink to dry on parchment paper?
Or the Allied Pickfords 35  mile rule?
People forget about them and the reasons why they exist – how many BR’s have you got?

The Customer Experience is the process.

Where do your processes start and end?
Procure to Pay? Enquiry to Invoice? If so you are in the wrong place.

Where does the process really start, and end. It certainly isn’t contained by our functional specialist silo’s. You have to go out to the customer need and finish with the successful delivery.

How do you define process start and end? Is that really complete?

Part 2 of 4: Identify and Align to Successful Customer Outcomes

In the first article in this four part theme we reviewed ‘Understand and applying Process diagnostics’. We now move our attention to the second  way we can rethink process forever –
Identify and aligning to Successful Customer Outcomes

“Businesses can be very sloppy about deciding which customers to seek out and acquire” Frederick F. Reichheld

The six questions we ask ourselves in this iterative process are:

I.    Who is the customer?

At first glance should be an easy answer however it is not as obvious as it seems. The ultimate customer for any profit making enterprise is the person, or company who provides the revenue by purchasing the products or services we produce. It is a matter of fact that in our inside-out legacy world we have created multiple customer-supplier relationships which include internal ‘service’ providers such as Information Services, Human Resources and so on. In mature Outside-In organisations the internal customer ceases to exist as we progressively partner to align to Successful Customer Outcomes and artefacts such as Service Level Agreements become a thing of the past.


II.    What is the Customers current expectation?
The 2006 book “Customer Expectation Management “ Schurter/Towers reviewed in detail the of creating and managing customer expectations and how through clear articulation companies such as Virgin Mobile in the US redefine their market place. In the context of the SCO map we need to understand the customers (as identified in the answer to question 1) current expectation. This often reveals both a challenge and opportunity. Customers will tell it as it is, for instance in an insurance claim process “I expect it is going to take weeks, with lots of paperwork and many phone calls”. That should tell you the current service is most likely poor and fraught with problems, delays and expensive to manage however this presents the opportunity. If that is a market condition (all insurance claims are like this) then moving to a new service proposition will be a potential competitive differentiator.  


III.     What process does the customer think they are involved with?
In the inside-out world we see process in a functional context. Therefore insurance claims are dealt with by an insurance claims department. Customer Retention is the baby of you guessed it, the Customer retention department and marketing is done by the marketing people. This split of responsibility is a legacy of functional specialisation created by relating to business as a production line. Adam Smith wrote in ‘The Wealth of Nations’ (1776) of an English pin factory.  He described the production of a pin in the following way: ”One man draws out the wire, another straightens it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head: to make the head requires two or three distinct operations: to put it on is a particular business, to whiten the pins is another … and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which in some manufactories are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometime perform two or three of them”. The result of labor division in Smith’s example resulted in productivity increasing by 240 fold. i.e. that the same number of workers made 240 times as many pins as they had been producing before the introduction of labor division. The insights form Smith underpinned the industrial revolution however using this principle to organise ourselves in the 21st century is to a very large part the wrong approach. That is precisely what the answer to the question will tell us – “sorry sir you are talking to the wrong department, let me transfer you”. Or even getting stuck in automated response system hell “press 1 for this, 2 for that, 3 for the other and 4 if you have missed the first three options.” These are features of the labor division mindset. Ask a customer what process they think they are and you will frequently be surprised by the answer.


IV.    What do we do that Impacts customer success?
Often we ask customers to do numerous many activities which appear sensible  to receive service or indeed buy products. Relating back to the insurance claim we can see rules and procedure around how to make claims, the correct way to complete forms, the process of collating the information, the timeframes within which to claim, the way we can reimburse you and more.  Often times these restrictions that we impose made sense at some time in the past however they may no longer be relevant.

The situation is compounded by the way internal functional specialism focus on project objectives. Richard Prebble, a respected New Zealand politician writes in his 1996 book “I’ve been thinking” of the inability of organisations to think clearly of the amount of work they create and in fact “they spend a million to save a thousand every time”.
His story of the challenge within large organisations is typical “The Post Office told me they were having terrible problems tracking telephone lines … They found an excellent program in Sweden which the Swedes were prepared to sell them for $2m …. So the managers decided to budget $1m for translating into English and another $1m for contingencies. But, as the general manager explained, it had turned out to be more expensive than the contingency budget allowed and they needed another $7m. “How much”, I asked, “have you spent on it so far?” “Thirty-seven million dollars” was the reply. “Why don’t we cancel the programme?” I asked “How can we cancel a programme that has cost $37m?” they asked   “Do you believe the programme will ever work?” I asked “No, not properly” “Then write me a letter recommending its cancellation and I will sign it” The relief was visible. I signed the letter, but I knew I needed new managers.”

This type of inside-out thinking causes companies to create apparently sensible checks and controls within processes that actually manifest as customer inconvenience, cost and delay. Are you making the customers lives easier, simpler and more successful?


V.    The Successful Customer Outcome – what does the customer really need from us?
At this point we should have enough information to objectively create several statements that articulate the SCO. These statements should be specific, measureable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (SMART). Usually there will 6-10 such statements which become the actual key performance measures as move the process Outside-In. For example a North American business school completed the SCO map and created these statements from the customer perspective for an ‘Education loan application’ process:
a.    I need to receive my financial assistance
b.    I need to receive aid  before the semester starts
c.    I need to attend the classes I have chosen
d.    I do not want to call to chase progress
e.    I need to receive the correct amount
f.    I do not want to have to fix your mistakes

There is no ambiguity here and we avoid a common mistake of using management weasel words such as ‘efficient, effective, timely’ which may mean things internally but to a customer are of little help. Creating SCO statements that may be used as measures for process success is a key aid on the journey to Outside-In.


VI.    And now we reach the core of the onion. What is the one line statement that best articulates our Successful Customer Outcome? This one-liner embodies the very nature of the process and sometimes the business we are in. In ‘Thrive- how to succeed in the Age of the Customer’ McGregor/Towers (2005), Easyjet (Europe’s second largest airline) is used as an example in this quest. Their simple “Bums on Seats” SCO sentence works both from a company perspective (we must maximise utilisation, offer inexpensive seats, get people comfortably and safely to their destinations) and the customers needs  “I need a cheap safe seat to get me to the sunshine quickly without a fuss”.  

The company one liner will become part of a series which are measureable through the SCO statements and can be tested and revised depending on evolving customer expectations and needs. It may in fact ultimately replace the inside-out strategic process and provide the organisation with its Raison d’être.

Of course when we start the journey it is often sufficient to create SCO maps to help grow understanding and even if the actual SCO Map is subsequently replaced (as we take a broader view) the improvement in understanding around the customer is invaluable.

In the third part of this four part series we will review “Reframe where the process starts and ends”

Join us on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=1062077

Visit additional resources www.oibpm.com
Become a Certified Process Professional www.certifiedprocessprofessional.com 

Moments of Truth are fine but what about …

Breakpoints an Introduction
The last few articles have focused our attention on the primary cause of all work in our processes – Moments of Truth. Fix those and the benefits are dramatic, immediate and sustainable. However what about this internal work we are doing? All the hand-offs between departments, the relationships with business partners and the wider Supply Chain? That is where Breakpoints come in.

–>

What you will Learn
The Breakpoints Tool Kit provides the means to tackle internal bureaucracy and reduce/eliminate all those handoffs that cause all that work.
Recommendation
The BP Group provides a program built on 8 foundational methods, techniques and skills which help you to deliver triple crown benefits i.e. simultaneously reducing costs, improving revenues and enhancing service.
The steps are practical, sensible and focused on action. The approach provides direction to people who are responsible for organization performance improvement, process realignment and ensuring ‘outside in’ thinking at all levels of business.  If you fall into that category, the method and techniques will help you realize your performance and process objectives. The BP Group recommends this solid and proven approach to senior executives, managers and process performance professionals.
Ready? We start Breakpoints tomorrow. See you then 🙂
Steve