Since the days of Richard Normann, the guy who invented the business term ‘Moments of Truth’ and Jan Carlzon’s book in 1989, the business world has interpreted Moments of Truth in several ways.
Jan Carlzon’s 1989 book ‘Moments of Truth’ socialised Richard Normann’s concept.
I have also published many articles and conference keynotes (see the MOT primer below) reviewing the continued evolution of this interesting concept.
Definitions
My interpretation and application of Moments of Truth revolve around three themes:
First discussed back in 2009 the idea that all work an organization undertakes is, at a fundamental level, caused by Moments of Truth. In principle, everything a company does can and should be linked to a Moment of Truth.
We harness and make real this design principle using the Customer Performance Landscape. Connecting the dots from everything to the Cause of all work – The Moment of Truth.
c. The Moment of Truth for any organization is…
At a practical level organizations need to chunk down their approach to fixing and innovating Moments of Truth. CEO of Denver based SAAS company ‘Parallel’
Doug Bell, CEO The Experience Manager
Doug Bell says “A Moment of Truth is an interaction that contributes to the production of a successful customer outcome. It either does or it doesn’t. To ensure outside in, you need to look through the Successful Customer Outcome lens.”
Managing Moments of Truth
Enlightened ‘Outside-In’ organizations actively embrace Moment of Truth Management as an essential strategic and operational necessity to deliver engineered Customer Experiences. How so?
a. Designing for Moments of Truth – The Design-Implementation Gap
Early efforts were geared around designing optimal Moments of Truth, however, simply mapping customer journeys has never been enough. It is one thing agreeing on what a future state customer journey should be, it is entirely another implementing it. This Design-Implementation gap is precisely what kills the majority of Customer Experience initiatives.
b. Implementing optimized Moments of Truth
Successful deployment of innovated Moments of Truth is key to delivering optimal Customer Experiences. The most practical immediate results are focused on rapid roll out across a key experience and using the success of that to validate rolling out smoothly across the organization. Establishing ownership, accountability, metrics, controls and improvement paths are part of this discipline.
c. Operationalizing Moments of Truth
Once Moments of Truth have been designed, innovated and implemented into recrafted customer experiences they need to be actively managed ‘in the moment’ and shared. Every Moment of Truth should feed to a corporate dashboard, with real-time data showing the performance of that MOT and its associated experiences. If things go wrong the owner should be able to ‘course correct’ and real-time monitor the customer experience delivery.
Imagine a world without customer satisfaction surveys, no need for Net Promoter Scores, no focus groups, and no mystery shopping because you will know how 100% of interactions are performing 100% of the time.
Control and Action combined
The C suite and leaders will now have a clear line of sight into every corner of the organization and across the enterprise landscape REAL TIME. One version of the data truth (and not all those departmental/divisional versions of reality).
The need for retrospective action evaporates. Immediate and laser-focused control can be maintained delivering simultaneously enhanced service, lower costs, higher revenues, improved compliance and uber motivated employees.
What’s next?
In my next piece I will demonstrate how this can be done immediately. If you can’t wait for that ping me and let’s talk the how, now
I was keynoting a conference in Europe recently, and senior executives in the room were getting the rationale behind moving Outside-In. However, there seemed to be two perplexed groups in the place.
One was what a refer to as the ‘traditional process guys’, and the other ‘the customer is first people’, and interestingly they both asked the same question “Where do we start?”
My honest and most direct answer is “You do not have a choice. You have got to start where you are and go from there!” OK, I get what you’re thinking, how could they take that away and begin to transform their organizations?
So, I walked them through TWO distinctly different ways to navigate to Outside-In working and practice, depending on your mindset, enterprise history and maturity. For the two categories of customer in the room, the NEEDS are the same, just the way they navigate to achieving them is different.
What are the Results?
From a results perspective, both approaches focus on winning the triple crown, that is Improving Service, Growing Revenues and Reducing Complexity (and hence lowering costs).
Approach
Process Engineering
Customer First
Focus
Process is the starting point
Starts with Customer Needs
Scope
Reengineering the Processes
Aligning everything to Customer Needs
Intention
Build out from Process to Department to Division to Enterprise
Articulate Successful Customer Outcomes and Remove the complexity of things that do not contribute to it
Benefits
Local wins building to business-wide transformation
Immediate delivery against Triple Crown benefits
Executive Buy-in
Slow burn, however when they see the benefits and ‘get it’ the support is significant
Starts at the strategic level so influences everything the organization does
Recommendation
If your remit is just ‘improving processes’ this approach will get you their steadily, however, the challenges facing traditional business are seismic so is there time? So, make immediate gains but push hard for more quickly.
By demonstrating the value of ‘customer first’ in terms of the triple crown the enterprise can align quickly and effectively. Importantly avoid the ‘soft and fluffy’ sentiments expressed by many in the customer experience world.
How can I Implement?
Back in 2006 the BPG launched the CEMMethod™ and built out an approach, using the 50+ techniques based on global next practice from companies like Virgin, Zara, BMW, Zappos, Apple and Emirates. Since then more than 3,000 companies in 116 countries have become accredited and certified to transform their processes and organizations.
Now in version 11, the choice you make in deployment is based on your ambition and remit within the enterprise. If you are a leader needing to embrace the digital customer ‘Customer First’ leaps out as the main option. Alternatively, if you are in a traditional process-based business (lean, six sigma, BPM etc.) the more conservative ‘process engineering’ approach may be preferred.
You can access the following resources that will help you make an informed choice:
Customer Experience Management is defined as the total effort that goes into creating successful customer outcomes. This includes customer interactions and the conscious experience the customer ‘sees’ PLUS all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes, the IT, the people, the internal processes and the rules that connect the dots through to customer success.
For example a visit to a Cirque de Soleil in Las Vegas is a wonderful experience. The artists, the lights, the music and the emotion. However that is only half the story. The complete experience is delivered through the hard work behind the scenes, the production process, the electronics, the costumes, the training, the marketing, accounting and so on. Both what the customer sees and what creates the experience is the complete customer experience.
Do you want to get in the picture? Join us soon at a session in a city near you…
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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.
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.
Having identified the MOT’s and understood their Type we can ask ourselves do they explicitly contribute to the achievement of a Successful Customer Outcome. In a very direct way you can see MOT’s that are moments of misery, and those that are moments of magic.
Naturally we wish to eradicate the moments of misery, and optimize the moments of magic. Famously Scandinavian Airlines, under the leadership of Jan Carlson, set about removing unnecessary MOT’s and in doing so became one of Europes leading airlines in the late 1980’s.
How many MOT’s can you find, what type are they and do they contribute to a Successful Customer Outcome?
Any interaction with the customer is a MOT. There are of course many different types of interaction and we can summarize them as follows:
Person to Person –
Person to System –
System to Person –
System to System –
Person to the Product or Service –
Product or Service to Person –
Let’s review examples of each.
Person to Person. In a shop. Buying a ticket at a manned ticket outlet. Meeting a supplier. Anything in fact that involves a direct interaction between people.
Person to System.
Navigating an Automated Voice Response system. Paying for a parking ticket from a machine at the airport. Interacting with a cell phone.
System to Person.
Receiving a voicemail on your phone. Showing your passport to an automated immigration check. Requesting money from a ATM.
System to System.
The interaction between your machine and a server when you send an email. Your car navigation system interacting with a GPS system.
Person to Product or Service.
Operating a vacuum cleaner. Noticing your fences have blown down after a storm (this interaction is with your insurance policy).
Product or Service to Customer.
Receiving parcels from Amazon. Driving a hire car.
As you can see there may be nested MOT’s and they often occur in sequence. For instance Calling an automated call centre (PS), then following key presses (PS), talking with a Customer Service Representative (PP) and finally the call being closed by the automated service (SP).
A process is shaped by the types of MOT, their frequency and the relationship between them.
1. Moments of Truth are the cause of all our work.
In fact MOT’s create what we all say is process. Here is a video that explains their origin back in the 20thcentury. For our purposes this 10 part (one a day) series takes us through the understanding, usefulness and advanced application of MOT’s.
Why are they so important? Put simply any interaction with the customer is a Moment of Truth. Any interaction. Combine that with the observation that the customer experience is the process and you can see that MOT’s extend upstream and downstream of our business.
For example Southwest Airlines have innovated their check in process and it happens as you check out of the hotel. That MOT allows them to get the baggage into the loading cycle early and as a consequence it costs less, enhances customer service and ultimately delivers increased revenue (we all want more of that).
Getting a grip on Moments of Truth allows us to make the customers lives easier, simpler and more successful.
