What does Google know about you?

Here’s a quick how-to guide to finding out exactly what Google knows.

Protect your data

Half the battle in protecting your information is knowing where it is, how much is out there, who can get access to it, and then take the necessary measures to protect sensitive information about you AND your family, friends and work colleagues.

An interesting irony of the Facebook, Google and Amazon success story is the amount of personal data needed to customize their offerings to your unique customer experience #CX. The less you provide, the more generic your experience.

At the end of the day, it is all a choice about how much you wish to disclose, or not.

Acknowledgement to CNBC.
Access the video here also: http://bit.ly/2GUsl9i

3 reasons why Blockchain will transform every business (need to know!)

I interview the CEO of Blockchain-X and Railz, John Corr on why we need to know about Blockchain and how it is helping to change business forever.

When you talk about disruptive technology THIS is the very definition, and believe me all our lives #business and #customer experience are becoming very different as a consequence.

As the opportunity reveals itself nation states and political groupings are getting in on the act. The UAE government believe 50%+ of all transactions will use blockchain within 2 years. Are gearing up for a similar shift?

You can contact John Corr directly at linkedin.com/in/johncorr and john.corr@closequarter.co.uk

Learn how Blockchain, business and the associated customer experience #CX are changing the world and access the CEMMethod to help you and your organization realise the benefits.

Design Thinking – a new dawn for industry?

Google trends tell the story that Design Thinking (DT) tops many executive’s interests in helping deliver progressive services and products in a volatile 2018.

Consultants, Design studios, and so-called business experts have spawned new revenue streams as other management fads, sorry, approaches have declined in popularity.

Just do the math on google with ‘Design Thinking’ harvesting 15.2 million results in 0.4 seconds and the top ten results including training courses, how-to workshops and top team offsites offered by consulting firms. In fact, Epictions reports typically 10 DT articles a day currently being produced, consumed and naturally circulated around our senior executives.

No doubt you will know of new functions becoming a reality with DT central to their remit, but what exactly does this catchy label represent?

Is Design Thinking a real thing?

Is it different? Can DT be useful in navigating our increasingly volatile world? Are there genuine benefits to adopting DT enterprise-wide?

As an engineer and design thinker (note the lower case) for the best part of the last four decades, this concept is not new. The successful creation of new services and products always relies on the marriage of creative thought processes harnessed to pragmatic objectives to deliver bottom-line success. Sorry if that doesn’t sound as sexy as some of the DT consultants would have you believe.

But wait, there is good news… incorporating DT into industrial age approaches can breathe new life and significant business benefit for not just enterprises and employees, but most importantly customers and shareholders.

So what is this Damn Thing?

A critical element to understanding DT is that, unlike most commonly deployed methods, is not a linear 1-2-3, A-B-C endeavour. It is not a prescription and relies on the ability of organisations and their people to understand, learn, prototype and reinvent simultaneously the processes and customer experiences that deliver success. New services/products must articulate needs of customers (even when potentially the customer doesn’t know them) and move the needle in terms of cost, revenue and service simultaneously (the fabled ‘triple crown’).

So, a significant measure of DT success is winning the triple crown. Anything else that doesn’t convert the creative process into a top and bottom line success is just moving the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. It might look better, give us a different view, but it is still doomed and will ultimately fail to deliver.

To be successful you need to create an organization and individual mindset that understands ever-changing customer needs, expectations and

Is Design Thinking winning the Triple Crown?

fosters an approach of learning, rather than the silo-based, industrial age metrics common to many.

I am going to delve deeper in an upcoming article so if you would like to get the pro’s and con’s, the potential pitfalls and the how-to to ensure success join me again soon. If you register your interest here I will ping you the ‘how to’ piece as soon as it is ready.

[contact-form to=”stevetowers@gmail.com” subject=”Design Thinking – the next steps”][contact-field label=”Name” type=”name” required=”1″][contact-field label=”Email” type=”email” required=”1″][/contact-form]

Ciao for now, Steve.

The Accredited Customer Experience Master (ACXM ™)

Upgrading your skills and delivery for 2018 will determine your success.
Advance beyond functional industrial age thinking to Outside-In customer-centric practices. Tried and tested this program is a direct descendant of the CPP program with now over 90,000 qualified individuals across 116 countries.

So if understanding and applying the techniques and methods deployed in Apple, Amazon, Zappos, Zara, Emirates and BMW compels you to adopt the ‘next practice’ approaches come and join us in a city near you through 2018:

Johannesburg ACXM Orlando ACXM	13-15 March 2018 26-29 March 2018
Dubai Masters ACXM	8-11 April 2018
Dubai UAE ACX Champion	15-17 April 2018
Sydney ACXM	28-31 May 2018
New York ACXM	10-13 Sep 2018
Denver ACXM Washington DC ACXM	17-20 Sep 2018 9-12 Oct 2-18
Washington DC ACX Champs	15-17 Oct 2018
London ACXM	10-13 Dec 2018

Here’s someone who enjoyed the session:

The BPGroup Accredited Customer Experience Masters® (ACXM) Program takes BPM & CEM Training to an entirely new level.

Become an Accredited Customer Experience Master (ACX Master®) through learning and experiencing the most practical, successful and proven toolkit for customer-centric change

For 2018…

> New Case Studies > 60+ takeaway techniques > 90+ help videos > Fully revised CEMMethod (version 11) > CX Rating (4E’s) integration > All material provided > Dedicated Professional User Group > Ongoing webinars

The Accredited Customer Experience Professional/Master difference

This premier series is designed for those seeking advanced professional skills in customer experience and process management, CX improvement, CX alignment, customer centricity, and innovation.
These are the Outside-In Customer Experience Management, BPM Methods, and Techniques that Deliver!

Uncover CX/Process Improvement opportunities in just hours
Identify Actions that will improve customer experience and associated processes by 15% to 40% within 20 days of deployment
Integrate and Evolve methods such as BPM, Lean, Six Sigma and Operational Excellence to Outside-In thinking and practice
Delight your Customers (making them your greatest advocates) through Successful Customer Outcomes and Customer Experience Management
Innovate to compete, set the market trend and even dominate your industry
Advance Net Promoter Score and Customer Satisfaction to the next level
Release significant costs, improve revenues and enhance service (win the Triple Crown) immediately

Hopefully, we will see you soon!

What is & Who is Outside-In? (interview by James Dodkins)

Two-minute bite-sized chunk provides the answer.

Podcast with Roland Naidoo | Live stream – rockstar.cx | Business Awards…

Live broadcast with James Dodkins Rockstar.cx

This was an interview across the continents
(I am currently in Colorado, James is in England)
https://www.facebook.com/JDODKINS/videos/1425739797553815/

Do get along to the link – James will be hosting CX Rockstars from all over the globe 🙂

Business Leader in South Africa provides his views on Customer Centricity

Roland Naidoo, Senior Executive, Multichoice

Roland Naidoo (ACX Master) is a highly respected senior executive in the global entertainments business. As part of a podcast hosted by Futurology…

https://itunes.apple.com/za/podcast/futurology/id1078860959?mt=2&i=1000397468049

You can reach Roland here to progress the discussion:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/roland-naidoo-b403a029/

Award won by yours truly!

I was deeply honoured by the PEX community at the annual conference in Florida last month and received the Global Community 2018 Award. Needless to say (but I will) this is as much down to you guys and your great transformational work, so I graciously excepted the Award on your behalf. Thank you so much :

See the snapshot here: https://buff.ly/2EEE9Im

Next time we will be reviewing highlights of the upcoming 2018 conferences…

Get the inside track with Customer Experience thinking and practice

The once favorite topic for improving business performance was Lean Six Sigma, however, the last two years have seen the ascendancy of Customer Experience (CX) as a focus for top teams. ‘Google trends’ is a good barometer of emerging interests and this graph demonstrates increasing interest in CX (blue) compared with LSS (red).

Curiously the largest interest in industrial age improvement techniques like Lean and Six Sigma is in non-English speaking countries, whereas Customer Experience is strongly represented in North America, UK, Australia and South Africa.

For those using the search term ‘Customer Experience,’ the associated topic list provides additional insight into searchers interests. The % trend reflects the growth year on year with ‘Omnichannel’ and ‘Digital data’ seeing explosive growth.

By way of additional information, a search with Epictions focused on Articles produces these top three pieces in the last three months on the theme of ‘Customer Experience – Omnichannel’.

1. The Future of Car Sales Is Omnichannel (Bain & Co)

http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/the-future-of-car-sales-is-omnichannel.aspx

2. Your Omnichannel Reading Challenge (Genesys)

http://blog.genesys.com/your-omnichannel-summer-reading-challenge

3. Omnichannel Study: Now’s Your Chance to Get Ahead of the Competition for the Holidays (Marketingprofs)

https://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2017/33005/omnichannel-study-nows-your-chance-to-get-ahead-of-the-competition-for-the-holidays

The ‘Reading Challenge’ provides an opportunity to dig deeper with some surprising reads available related to employee engagement and the very latest customer trends.

In the BP Group, we have codified the very best practices of CX leaders in and around Customer Experience into the CEMMethod™.

If you would like to find out more about how to access this learning please visit us at www.bpgroup.org or drop by at www.stevetowers.com

Data and information shared with thanks to Google and Epictions.

The Shocking Truth about Customer Experience

The single biggest piece of advice I give to senior executives setting out on the Customer Experience journey is to STOP. Yes seriously, the vast majority of CX efforts are completely misaligned.

CX Efforts Misaligned

Don’t get me wrong the intentions are good. Unfortunately, it goes something like this:

Top Team are listening and decide they need to get with this customer centricity/Outside-In/working backwards thinking.
Senior Management makes noises that the customer is THE thing the business must focus on.
The Executive engage the marketing and sales guys to get with it and start pushing the message.
Functional leaders hear the noise and bluster. They start using the language, whilst thinking this is just more fluff and nonsense. They make the right noises for now but keep their heads down, because they know this will go the same way as so many other ‘strategic initiatives’.
Fundamentally functional heads carry on working with the out of date reward system that promotes sub-optimal industrial age thinking and practice.
The Executive see the usual inertia, results not coming through, apathy and indifference and decide their business isn’t really an Amazon.
Top Team then reverts to just getting better at what we are doing, then when someone in ‘our industry’ proves it we will follow.
Functional leaders breathe a sigh of relief and invest even more in industrial age systems and training. The illusion of doing something, in this case, is actually worse than doing nothing.
The businesses failure is noted by customers who move to those who do understand and deliver Customer Experience success.
The company becomes another footnote in the history books. Talked about at business schools and picked apart because of the failure to get the new Outside-In customer-centric mindset.

Making Customer Experience Successful everywhere all the time

This isn’t rocket science (unless you are NASA of course). Understanding that the structures and ways of working from the industrial age were NEVER designed to be customer-centric. They were established to make things faster by optimizing production lines.

And oh, don’t think because you are not in manufacturing you are OK. It is likely your complete ways of working will be making everything look like production management systems, with talk of leaning out, waste reduction, standardization, efficiency, productivity. Sound familiar?

Understanding this Customer Experience misalignment is fundamental.

I encourage doing three things before re-joining the CX road-march:

Understand how big the gap is between what you are doing and what Successful Customer Outcomes you need to be delivering.
Audit the current key performance indicators.
Are they mostly about outputs?
Usually, the balance will be 80% output metrics (like calls answered, Average Handle Times, Abandoned Rates, Projects completed on time to budget etc.).
Meanwhile, the really important measures that tell you a Successful Customer Outcome is being achieved will only be a small proportion.
What you measure is what you get and no amount of Customer Experience drum banging will work unless those measures of Outcomes become the most important.
Create an awareness of what real CX success is all about.
This isn’t just the stories. It is about the actual things on the ground that need to change. The WHY and the HOW go hand in hand. Often times upskilling a group of key players at all levels to make them Ambassadors for the Customer achieves way more than massive corporate investment in branding and image.

In conclusion, Customer Experience cannot be treated just like another corporate initiative. To achieve success requires a significant shift in mindsets, and when that is achieved the realignment of the Enterprise to Outside-In can really begin.

Want more guidance and tips like this?

☑ More Articles like this one – visit my CX Obsession resources

☑ Upskilling and mentoring – Every level from the boardroom to the lunch room – BP Group

☑ In person and virtual training – The ACXM™ program

☑ Executive briefings and keynotes – How to get your hands on me and other CXperts (see what I did there?)

The 7 most popular Customer Experience Articles

Google tells us that Customer Experience is a significant and trending topic, the graph below ably demonstrates that point. (See google trends)

However, given all the noise what are THE most popular articles on the theme?
Here we present the seven most popular of the last couple of years.
Read and share

7th: Putting customer experience at the heart of next-generation operating models

McKinsey

This one for is McK’s second in the top seven this time…

“Digital is reshaping customer experience in almost every sector. Digital first attackers are entering markets with radically new offers, disrupting the ways that companies and customers interact and setting a high bar for simplicity, personalization, and interactivity.”