I am excited to share this interview with BPM Tips recently where I talk about the evolution of BPM and its play with Customer Experience Management. Interview with Steve Towers – Customer Experience Management and BPM fb.me/4cWCBudd8
As always, I would love to hear back from you with any comments and observations, just click the link fb.me/4cWCBudd8 and feel free to share your comments.
It is good to have a guide in life. Many of us share political creeds, religious beliefs and codes of honour to guide our decision making. Wouldn’t it be crazy good to have the same for the doctrine of Customer Experience? When I co-authored the best selling book “CEM Success without Exception” back in 2006 Customer Experience Management was in its infancy.
Now twelve years later we have the accumulated wisdom of the giants of CEM, proof that focus on Successful Customer Outcomes, Outside-In and working backwards are fundamental to winning organizations.
It is with these thoughts in mind and the worthy experience of many that I set pen to paper to craft these tenets as guidelines for all of us seeking to maximise our deployment of Complete Experience Management.
1. Customers are first, center and last for everything.
Understanding that all the work an organization undertakes ultimately stems from a customer interaction is key. Work to engineer every experience to the optimum.
2. Listen to the questions customers ask you.
Resist voice of customer surveys (they are biased and unrepresentative) and focus on understanding and articulating needs – the Needs of the Customer.
3. Stop selling and let people buy.
Customers are now prosumers and most know what they want and how to get it. You will not win them if you force sell; in fact, you will make enemies of them.
4. Map the Complete Experience.
This is both the stuff the customer sees (the customer journey and the brand promise) and the work that takes place across the rest of the organization to support all interactions. Combine those the Employee Experience and the Customer Experience you are nearing the Complete Experience; these are not separate things but should be viewed through the same lens.
The CEMMethod.com can help you in seeing the Complete Experience.
Customers develop trust when you say what’ll you do, and then do what you say. Conversely, do not project yourself as something you are not.
6. Be consistent and truthful across all your channels.
Customers will interact in ways and times that suit them, so ensure you keep a coherent message across all experiences.
7. Act on People liking people.
Do not hide behind automation, whether that is voice systems, web interactions or even text messaging. The most intimate relationships are formed with people, not computers.
Keep in front of the song.
8. Creating memorable experiences requires anticipation and coordination.
Fix problems before they happen, and when problems do arise (they will) pull out the stops to put things right.
9. Design every customer experience for the category of customer.
You should never ever treat all customers in the same way. Personalization and direct communication are proven winners in an era of standardization.
10. Employees are your first customers.
If they ain’t happy your paying customers won’t be either. Treat your people well and let them know they are the most critical part of the brand and the total customer experience.
Join us for Complete Experience Management with coaching, training, consultancy and Certification at www.bpgroup.org
Join us to learn the Secrets of Apples, Googles, Zara, Zappos and Emirates success
An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 270 times, in 67 cities with delegates from 116 countries.
The program, now in its twelfth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service. Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.
Here is a two-minute snap video and a copy of Outside In The Secret, the seminal book that will change the way you think about work forever. (updated for 2021)
Join your fellow professionals in getting more scientific about the Customer Experience.
Do you want to embrace advanced Customer-Centric thinking and become Outside-In?
Join James Dodkins for this quick, effective and fun icebreaker. Easy to do and always creates an enthusiastic buzz as a prelude to any meeting, seminar or training session.
For more join us…
Join us to learn the Secrets of Apples, Googles, Zara, Zappos and Emirates success
Certified Process Professional Masters Champions (CPP-Master) Program
An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 150 times, in 57 cities with delegates from 108 countries. The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service. Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.
When you get down to it why would you pay a $1? Yep One lousy USD. What is in it for you? What if I said I had for you the global thought leaders with unique content every month… http://bit.ly/30daysfor1dollar Where could you find a complete FREE Lean Six Sigma course underwritten by the BP Group, The Academy of Customer Experience and the British Institute of Quality Management… How could you meet, talk with and learn from the worlds leading LinkedIn business owner with a club of over 370,000 people… Why should you be bothered? http://bit.ly/30daysfor1dollar Who can deliver all this and terabytes more of DIRECT, USEFUL, IMMEDIATE stuff for ONE USD? I get it you can’t be hassled to click the link. Here’s some of the guys who you will be missing. Now don’t let me tell you this is one NOT TO MISS. After all you probably have it all anyhow? If you too like me appreciate excellent VALUE for goodness sake click the link. http://bit.ly/30daysfor1dollar If you don’t like what you see I will pay you 100 times your $1 investment. PROMISE. Gordon Bennett, it doesn’t get better eh?
We are very near to the BIG day. Go get a sneak preview and review the goodies, articles, videos, forums, FREE training & exclusive thought leadership from these global Guru’s.
Seasoned, innovative enterprise business architect who believes the success of an architecture should be measured by the business value it delivers, rather than the models or diagrams it produces.
My goal is to enable organizations to transform to the digital age. This requires that organizations be successful at creating processes built for change..
Senior leadership expert, demonstrable experience inspiring teams to embrace strategies that aid growth, improve customer relationships and produce high performance benchmarks.
A proven leader in formulating and delivering solid solutions for the most pressing business challenges organizations face in creating and delivering value to customers and shareholders. Senior Executive consulting services delivering extraordinary outcomes in all client engagements.
I am an action biased leader with an ability to execute change at multiple levels of an organization. My experiences range from strategic to operational level in financial, manufacturing and services industries. I enjoy my profession and find problem solving exciting. Below are some of my professional certifications:
Twenty five years working in the Technology Services, Consulting, Supply Chain, and Utility industries in South Africa, Europe the USA and Asia comprising:
Lawrence D. (Larry) Duckworth is a former Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Board(s) member, Growth and Liquidity Adviser, Financing Adviser, Boards member, and Adjunct Professor.
Proven track record of leading and consulting on many complex projects with diverse teams across different departments and companies. Developed and currently lead an extensive Lean Six Sigma training and mentoring program used across the Sprint enterprise.
Pradeep Henry is driven to turn software projects into strategic initiatives. To make this change happen, he brings a strategy-driven Discovery-and-Design method. Previously, as innovator, de facto innovation & change leader, and practice director, Henry played a proven role in the competitive differentiation and storied fast growth of Dun & Bradstreet spinoff Cognizant Technology Solutions.
Founder of i-nexus, the leader in cloud-based software for strategy execution. Respected thought leader, adviser and co-architect of the Strategy Execution 2.0 “Business System” that is rapidly becoming the de facto blueprint for how large organizations successfully deploy and execute their strategic objectives.
Traditionally, process excellence has focused on improving productivity, efficiency and effectiveness. Methods and approaches have evolved over time to help organisations streamline, remove waste and standardise processes, driving economic success in many countries around the world.
But times have changed. And we must change with them. The rise of digital and changing customer expectations is changing the very nature of business improvement. Organisations must now look for new approaches and strategies which place the customer at the centre of processes, to remain relevant and competitive in a dynamic market.
Ahead of Process Excellence Week Australia 2015, Steve Towers, Lead Coach and Co-Founder of the BP Group (UK) interviewed by the PEX team reviews the biggest factors currently transforming the process excellence landscape and the steps Australian organisations can take to successfully link process to customer outcomes.
What types of new approaches and techniques are changing the way companies approach business improvement?
Steve: We need to ask ourselves the question – what is driving change? And at a fundamental level we are seeing the ascendance of what I like to call the digital native. These are folks who have little patience for assembly line factory thinking with its rigid rules and structures. In fact as customers the digital native demands immediacy and attention.
Swinging back to the original question organisations now need to embrace approaches that meet the high expectations and promiscuity of this digital native. Otherwise they will not survive the decade – witness the demise of companies such as Nokia, Kodak, Blockbuster, and Blackberry. The new approaches and techniques emphasize the customer, front and centre. And I don’t mean in an arbitrary ‘voice of the customer’ way. I mean as a central focus for everything – strategy, operations, technology and process.
The book I wrote in 2010 referred to the overall concept of Outside-In, shifting the way work gets done by understanding needs and aligning everything an organisation does to achieving successful customer outcomes. In the five years since we reviewed the pioneers such as Virgin, Amazon and Zara the customer centric philosophy has become mainstream and accessible to all. So business improvement itself has shifted from getting better at what we do to redefining what it is we do and ensuring the delivery works for the new order.
How might companies go about linking process improvement with their customer centric strategy? What are the benefits?
Steve: Connecting the dots between process and customer is a critical challenge. It is only in the last 10-15 years that people have realised that all work is a result of customer interactions and can, with the appropriate approach, be connected to every single task and activity.
The resulting Process Performance Landscape demonstrates where costs occur, how revenue is created and what levels of performance can be achieved. Once we have that picture we can make informed decisions that touch everything the organisation does. The benefit is completely tangible, something I refer to as winning the triple crown, simultaneously driving out costs, growing revenues and enhancing service.
What types of techniques can be used to achieve cost reductions, revenue improvement and customer satisfaction?
Steve: It is sometimes thought that cost, revenue and customer satisfaction are mutually exclusive. Not so and in fact they should be approached together. Firstly if we understand the causes of work and its effects (our processes) we can set about either removing the causes by putting in place actions to eliminate them.
Secondly if we cannot manage the causes away we must improve them. A couple of useful techniques in this context, which complement process excellence approaches, are the Outside-In Strategic Matrix and Successful Customer Outcome Model.
Australia appears to be a little behind the rest of the world when it comes to business improvement – what steps do you think we need to take in order to catch up?
Steve: A lot of the difference comes down to economic cycles. Australia really didn’t feel the severe impact of the last downturn and as such business was pretty much as usual. Other countries witnessed the implosion of long established industries and you either went under with them or reached out for ways, beyond industrial age thinking, to survive and subsequently thrive. Until recently, Australia hasn’t had the same worries so there has been a degree of misplaced complacency. Catching up is going to require great effort and simply put some won’t make it. That will affect not just the high street brands but the careers and future for many. So listen and observe the next practices emerging and make them Australia’s own. The Aussie ability to assimilate and improve at the same time will get you there.
What key trends or factors will drive change in the process excellence arena in the next 12-18 months?
Steve: A biggy here is the professionalization of process excellence. And then isn’t about belts and titles. It is about equipping our people to live and work with the digital native in all of its forms. We have already discussed the emergence of customer centricity and Outside-In thinking and that is the key. Those folks who can harness that thinking and apply it to their organisations will undoubtedly succeed; at the expense of others still practicing outmoded approaches from the industrial era.
To be blunt the top team demand results like never before. Getting there isn’t about trying harder, it is about working smarter and that involves reframing process excellence to performance excellence. Reaching out beyond the linear production line straightjacket to Outside-In agile structures able to change and evolve rapidly. That is a capability thing and requires folks to get up-skilled as quickly as possible.
What is the value of attending Process Excellence Week Australia 2015?
Steve: At a personal level it is about self improvement. It is about understanding and learning what others are doing so you can take that learning and turn it to your success. At an organisation level it is about the insights of the speakers, vendors and workshop leaders. As a forum to ask the sticky question amongst fellow professionals it is a great place for fast track learning. And on that score the networking opportunity is massive. It is great to know you are not alone in the improvement quest, there are others here to help, share and advise. From my point of view no other conference in the southern hemisphere comes close. Period.
Steve will be further exploring the common ingredients of sustained success and how using the power of process linked with a customer centric strategy can produce a winning and repeatable process excellence formula at Process Excellence Week Australia 2015.
Stop making dumb things happen faster for less money!
A lot of companies pay lip service to customer-centricity, write contributors Steve Towers and James Dodkins, but not many “walk the talk”. Here are 10 differences between inside-out and outside-in companies.
There is a lot of talk today, more than ever, about customer centricity, client focus, customer experience strategy and Outside-In. Many organizations have adopted aspects of these disciplines and where many have achieved monumental success others have fallen by the wayside. Why is this? The problem is perception.
Countless organizations have said all the right things to make the workforce believe that they are becoming a customer-focused organization and then doing the complete opposite.
The effect of this is rising costs, shrinking revenues and ever lowering customer satisfaction.
The problem with this is that there is now a collective of organizations that have a “customer centricity doesn’t work” mentality. It’s like putting a rain hat in your pocket, going out into a storm, getting wet hair, then swearing the hat is useless. Just having the Outside-In customer centricity ideals is not enough; you have to use them in the right way.
So, how do you know if you work in an Outside-In organization or an Inside-Out organization wearing an Outside-In mask?
Table 1: Inside-Out or Outside-In?
Inside Out – attending to tasks and activities
Outside In – aligning to Successful Customer Outcomes (SCO’s)
Doing things right
Doing the Right things AND doing things right
1
Pyramidal management knows best
Context and customer defined
2
Business as a factory (left to right)
Customer Oriented Architectures
3
Benchmarking competitors
Determine customer needs and trends
4
Customer feedback retrospective
Customer needs designed and delivered
5
Process Improvement and optimization
Customer Experience innovation
6
DMAIC/SIPOC/DFSS/Lean
CEMMethod/4D’s
7
Improving efficiencies
Developing value for the customer
8
Model and method oriented
Customer journey and experience focus
9
Top down business architectures
Customer centric frameworks (context sensitive)
10
Remuneration for tasks completed
Rewards based on delivery of SCO’s
Let’s review the not so subtle differences
#1: Pyramidal management Does your CEO really know the most about your organization? Can your CEO really relate to customers? Let’s face it, your CEO probably hasn’t spoken to a customer in years (if ever) so, why are they best qualified to determine how your organization is run? Maybe they aren’t…
#2: Business managed as a factory (left to right)
What percent of the work within your organization is manufacturing? What if you don’t manufacture anything? Then why does everything within your organization look like a factory?
We can’t meet the future with an industrial age mindset… join the rest of us in the 21st century.
#3: Benchmarking competitors
If you benchmark against other competitors you will, at best, only ever be as good as them, no better, most of the time worse and you will always be one step behind the trend.
Are you still managing a business that you think looks like this?
Rather than focusing on what your competitors are doing, focus on what the real need of the customer is and deliver that, innovate the customer experience, there is no easier way to become a market leader…let your competitors benchmark you.
#4: Retrospective customer feedbackAsking customers “how did we do” is stupid, asking customers “how did we do” 3 weeks after it happened is even more stupid, allowing customer to self-select for a survey to tell you how you did 3 weeks after is happened is even more stupid than that.
If you want to get totally non-representative, inaccurate, and relatively useless data on how some customers may have felt you performed at some point then the traditional methods are fine (NPS, CSi, etc).
To measure a customer experience properly and objectively you need to first know what makes a great customer experience and measure if you are doing those things, we need to get scientific about the customer experience (CXRating). If you are still in the land of subjective, self-selecting, retrospective feedback, chances are you have no idea just how well, or poorly, you are performing…even if you think you do.
#5: Focus only on process improvement and optimizationTaking what you are already doing and making it happen in a shorter time frame, more efficiently or for less operating cost is not good enough any more. If you are doing dumb things all you are doing is making dumb things happen faster for less money.
You should focus on innovating the customer experience. Any work within your organization is caused by a customer interaction somewhere down the line. If you engineer and innovate at the causal level, you will make the customer experience better and eliminate swathes of pointless dumb work that you are wasting time on every single day…simple really isn’t it?
#6: Trying to use DMAIC/SIPOC/DFSS/Lean to optimize the customer experienceIf you are using process improvement methodologies that were created to optimize manufacturing processes to optimize the customer experience then you will find yourself in a mess.
Use a 21st century methodology like the CEMMethod that was designed for this day and age to really turbo charge your customer experience efforts. Have you ever heard the phrase “trying to fit a square peg into a round hole”? Methodologies like Lean and Six Sigma were great at what they were created to do, but they were not created to improve customer experience… and therefore won’t.
#7: Improving efficiencies for internal customers onlyTrying to make things more efficient for yourselves inside your organization – more often than not – will actually make things worse for the customer. Don’t just perpetuate the Inside-Out mindset. You need to make sure that everything you are doing is actually creating value for customers. Don’t focus on internal customers, focus on real customers… they pay your wages.
#8: Model and method orientedDon’t get shackled by the oppression of the models and methods that ‘the man’ has said you should use. You shouldn’t focus on trying to implement a model or method you should be focused on how to make the customer experience better… whatever it takes.
#9: Top down business architecturesDo you work in an environment when the person above you tells you what to do and you tell the people below you what to do? If your whole working life is focused on trying to make your boss happy what aren’t you focusing on? That’s right, the customer.
As soon as we enter a habitat like this we make a habit out of ignoring what’s right for the customer over what is perceived to be right for the organization. I’m not saying you’ll be able to change this overnight, I’m just saying it’s wrong and will eventually lead to your organizations downfall… don’t get left behind.
#10: Remuneration for tasks completedIf you pay people for doing stupid things, they get very good at doing them. Traditionally, you will get paid for completing tasks and activities, filling in forms, processing invoices, taking calls etc.
If everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) was paid for delivering customer success just imagine how different your working environment would be. Empowering workers to be able to do whatever it takes to deliver customer success is the polar opposite of workers having to complete X number of forms in a day… this is maybe the biggest game changer of them all.
The Nature Conservancy, based out of Arlington, VA is moving progressively towards their customer. Who is that? Watch the video and ask the question of yourself. Who is my customer, and what am I doing for them?
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Certified Process Professional Masters (CPP-Master) Program
An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 130 times, in 52 cities with delegates from 105 countries. The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service. Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.
An internationally recognized program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 130 times, in 52 cities with delegates from 105 countries. The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service. Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.
