Two-minute bite-sized chunk provides the answer.
Category: Successful Outcomes
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 (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…
What do you mean when you say ‘Outside-In’?
Outside-In is a regular theme during most of my keynotes, not least this last week here in Florida. A question asked from the floor related to the 30-second elevator test “can you explain to the CEO what this stuff is, why it is 
different, and how it reframes the work we do?”. I guess I was about to fudge and say this needs more than 30 seconds, and then remembered my two-slide explanation!
So, for those guys looking for a simple explanation, these two slides will do the job. I have put a bit of narrative in there also.
120+ in Florida at the keynote, 16 January 2018
The old, industrial-age traditional way of doing business.
We make products (and services). We look for the market to sell them in. We segment customers by circumstance and pitch our products to those segments. We add variations to the products to better fit certain niche segments. We build back-end systems and digital capabilities in this increasingly complex world. We are rigid, functionally oriented and abhor change.
The new Outside-In customer-centric way.
We identify the customers we would like to do business with. We understand their needs (even when they may not know them themselves) and specific Successful Customer Outcomes (SCO’s).
We categorise customers by need. We then create the capability to deliver to these categories the SCO’s (both products, people and digital). Progressively we manage new and existing customer expectations to deliver success without exception. We are agile, innovative and attuned to 21st century needs.
Let me know if this works for you.
Ciao, Steve
For the curious, the original slides came from a deck presented as a keynote in Sydney, Australia 3 years ago.
You can access that here: http://bit.ly/SydneyPEX
Customers are suffering digital distress – Three proven approaches to ensure you delight and deliver.
1. Design digital experiences around the customer needs, not around your customer mythology
Despite mountains of data customer insight remains an elusive animal. As a direct consequence, digital is frequently applied across existing processes without fully understanding customer pain points and the real Successful Customer Outcome.
Making invalid assumptions can irritate and permanently drive customers away. Take grocery checkout for example where retailers digitize an existing experience based on assumptions of customers wants. The resulting experience may still be fractured, with faulty scanners (they break a lot), long lines, and the more than necessary Associates to provide support for glitches. Not a great customer experience. If, however you develop an understanding of customer needs (even when customers do not know them) you may discover the checkout process is not required at all. Eradicating that process meets customer’s desires in terms of speed, convenience, and simplicity.
Amazons (i) checkout-less retail stores, walk in walk out enabled by scanning your phone on entry, scanning goods as you move around the store, and then scanning your phone on departure with automatic billing, provides just such an experience. In addition to improving the experience, costs are reduced and the customers come back for more and thereby grow revenues. In fact, this triple-crown benefit is a sure fire way of measuring any customer experience transformation.
2. Drive digital initiatives to simplify and improve convenience
Customer Research demonstrates the disconnect between what executives think customers value in digital, compared to working out their needs in a more objective and structured way. A technique such as the Successful Customer Outcome Canvas (SCOC)(ii) provides a step by step approach to articulating actual needs and aligning the experiences to deliver them. The resulting insight in terms of a set of objective measures based on needs allows the organization to question every interaction in the context of ‘does this contribute to the SCO?’ and if not, how do we remove it?
Uber(iii) are a terrific example of ‘one click simple’ with the apps user interface designed around understanding the overall Successful Customer Outcome and then delivering an optimum number of interactions. Providing this digital experience helps meet the customer’s desire to move efficiently, pay digitally, and provide feedback in the moment. Part of that ‘Successful Customer Outcome Canvas’ insight was in removing the anxiety of where is the car and how long do I wait? You can see the car and driver speeding towards you on the app.
3. Categorize your customers by need, rather than segmenting by circumstance.
Dealing with customers as segments (age, income, zip code etc.) misses the vital personalisation that digital excels at. By force fitting customers into standardized processes suited to segments creates friction and fractured experiences. Diagnosing objective needs may, for instance, highlight the digital savviness (or not) of a category of customer, and in doing so allow you to create a bespoke experience. Rather than industrial age segmentation, organizations that adopt Outside-In(iv) categorization meet and evolve customer expectations in an informed way with greater empathy and the resulting trust that “you have my back”.
Are you ready? Ask yourself these questions (be honest and not complacent!)
a. Are digital initiatives aligned to Successful Customer Outcomes with optimized touch points, or are they designed around internal functional considerations?
b. Is your approach to innovation Outside-In and not restricted to departments, internal specialisms, legacy systems, regulations and last century mindsets?
c. Are you tapping in-the-moment real-time analytics to understand what your customers are experiencing as it happens, and then course correcting those experiences as they occur?
d. How are you managing your customer’s digital expectations? Are you keeping them informed of developing digital services?
e. What mechanism are you using to incorporate new digital learnings into the customer experiences? And are those learnings (next practices) gathered from outside of your sector, or are they just industry best practices?
References
i. http://bit.ly/goCX2017
ii. http://bit.ly/SCOC2017
iii. http://bit.ly/Uber2017
iv. http://bit.ly/SteveTowers2017
6. Breakpoints – 5 steps to heaven (continued)
|
Best Practice Tip: As you name your breakpoints try using the syntax – do something, to something to get something. An example might be
“open the email to action the request” |
Make sure you follow the instructions we’ve provided in identifying the Break Points in the target area. Getting this right will play a very big part in determining the degree of benefit achieved.
Also, make sure you write them in a descriptive enough way that you can come back a day, a week or a month later and know what each Break Point is…
Enter this information into your template.
Step 3 – Describe your Actions
You are now ready to describe Actions that can be taken to eliminate Break Points. You have the Break Points documented, now what would it take to eliminate some of them from your target area?
For each Action you identify you need to know what the Action is (describe it) and what Break Points it eliminates. Most often Actions will eliminate multiple Break Points.
The number of Actions you identify and describe will depend on many factors. Try and get as many good Actions as you can, doing so will help you create the most beneficial cost reduction plan.
Enter this information into your template.
Step 4 – Do the Cost and Benefit Assessment
What else do we need to know? We need to place our Actions into perspective, which we do by answering three questions:
How Much? How Long? How Beneficial?
“How Much” is the cost (time, expense) of taking the Action? It’s best to judge cost by using the three categories of High, Medium and Low*.
“How Long” should be expressed in days, weeks or possibly months – but never years. Because eliminating causes of work is actually much easier (and less complicated) than fixing effects, most Actions will take 90 days or less*
(*many Actions will take less than 30 days to complete).
“How Beneficial” is the number of Break Points that would be eliminated combined with our judgment of the overall benefit of the Action. It’s also best to judge benefit as High, Medium or Low.
* The use of the High, Medium and Low scale plays an important psychological role in this technique. We really don’t need more detail than this to know which Actions we should take. By choosing to do a more detailed cost/benefit analysis we will create more work and distract ourselves from the goal – which is eliminating costs!
Enter this information into your template.
Step 5 – Build your Cost Reduction Plan
Choosing which Actions are to be taken should be pretty obvious at this point. From the information already gathered we can see which Actions have the most “bang for the buck.” But for the order of the Actions it’s important to create a mix that makes it easy for us to be successful on a regular basis.
Try starting with a “quick win” to get people enthused about the plan. Mix other “quick wins” into the plan to create “breathers.”
Also consider prioritizing an Action that addresses glaring issues – those we all know are “not right.” Doing this communicates your understanding of the people in your organization and your empathy with their concerns.
Number your Actions in the order in which you want them to be taken. Use the same number for Actions that should be taken simultaneously.
5. Breakpoints – The Five Steps for Reducing Costs
The Five Steps for Reducing Costs
Describe your Target – The target is the “area” we are seeking to improve. Most often this would be thought of in terms of a “process” but there is no restriction on how we define the target areas we are working on.
Identify Break Points – For the target area, all of the Break Points that exist need to be identified. They also need to be described well enough that we (and others) can easily recognize them at any time.
Describe your Actions – Describing your actions is the way you clearly identify the steps you could take to eliminate causes of work. By identifying Actions and the number of Break Points each Action will eliminate, the benefit from each Action becomes clear.
Do the Cost and Benefit Assessment – The Cost and Benefit assessment adds several items that are important in helping us build our Cost Reduction Plan. What we need to know is: How Much? How Long? How Beneficial?
Build your Cost Reduction Plan – Using the Cost and Benefit assessment we can now build our Cost Reduction Plan. We do this by choosing which Actions are to be taken, and the order they are taken in.
Let’s explore these Steps in more detail:
Step 1 – Describe your Target Area,
ideally in terms that are understandable to others in your organization. Your Target Area will often be a “process,” as this is one of the most common terms used in describing the work people do.
Step 2 – Identify Break Points.
For the target area, identify each of the Break Points that exist within it, then record them in a descriptive enough way that others (and you if you come back later) will immediately know what you mean.
Note – This may initially present a challenge as it is not something we commonly have done in the past. Persevere and do your best to identify the Break Points in your target area and enough information will be available for you to build your cost reduction plan.
Outside-In at Apple strikes a chord
BP Group CPP Master® Arun Kumar (with noted technology innovators Gieom in India) comments:
This wouldn’t have been possible if you don’t think outside in…..if you don’t make the process for the experience of the customers and not just for your capabilities. Many I talk to think the innovation is a gamble…..how frustrating when actually innovation can be achieved by looking at a process and thinking of creating an ecosystem with others to achieve that. But anyway, happy that I can relate to these innovations and think it’s just how you look at your processes and not some design room magic by einstein haired scientists. Thanks for the halo.
Just saw the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference….and I am overwhelmed by iOS6 features on a phone. They have tied up with the likes of BMW, Honda, Jaguar, Audi to have a SIRI button in the next 12 months in their cars where traffic, weather, turn by turn navigation and Realtime Estimated time to arrive at a destination can be manipulated using voice on the iphone. They are calling it going from handsfree driving to Eyes free driving.
This wouldn’t have been possible if you don’t think outside in…..if you don’t make the process for the experience of the customers and not just for your capabilities. Many I talk to think the innovation is a gamble…..how frustrating when actually innovation can be achieved by looking at a process and thinking of creating an ecosystem with others to achieve that. But anyway, happy that I can relate to these innovations and think it’s just how you look at your processes and not some design room magic by einstein haired scientists. Thanks for the halo.(Arun is third from the left)
And thank you Arun for the observation!
The Focus has shifted from Inside-Out to Outside-In
I am frequently asked to summarise the difference between the inside-out industrial/information age mindset, and that of Outside-In (think Apple, Google, Zara, Zappos, Emirates etc.) thinking and practice. So here to answer that request (and from a section in my upcoming new book) is the overview.
Over the following weeks we will delve into each area and I will provide examples and case studies of each aspect of this Copernican shift.
| The Focus has shifted from Inside-Out to Outside-In | |||
| Industrial/Information Age | Customer Age | ||
| People | Silo’s | Multi functional | |
| Specialist | Multi skilled | ||
| Isolated | Relationships | ||
| Awards – Time served | Awards – Value Created | ||
| Autocratic | Dynamic (to suit the needs) | ||
| Processes | Doing things right | Doing the right things and doing things right | |
| Manufacturing mindset | Customer Experience | ||
| Tasks/Activities and Outputs | Outcomes and SCO’s | ||
| Stocks | Flows | ||
| Products | Services | ||
| Left to Right, Top to Bottom | Customer Centric | ||
| IT | Algorithmic | Heuristic | |
| Hierarchical | Hyperlinked | ||
| Analytical | Understanding | ||
| Ownership | Access | ||
| Strategy | Top Down | Inclusive | |
| Structured and Rigid eg 5 yr plans | Agile and Adaptive | ||
| Tablets of stone | Continual Alignment to SCO’s | ||
| Market/product focus | Customer/expectation focus | ||
| Customers | Uninformed | Prosumer | |
| Loyal | Promiscuous | ||
| Forgiving | Rebellious | ||
| Locked-In | Demand Flexibility | ||
| Compliant and managed | High Expectations and fickle | ||
| Single channel | Multi channel | ||
| (c) 2012 Steve Towers | |||
Next week we’ll start by reviewing the Customer Aspect
Join us at IT Web South Africa http://bit.ly/AfricaSixSigmaOnSteroids
Join us at PEX Week London http://bit.ly/PEXLondon2012
Join us at the CPP Master Class London http://londonmasters2012-estw.eventbrite.com
Moments of Truth and dumb assed hotels
Watch this entertaining expose of everthing wrong with international hotels frequented by fellow Road Warriors. Of course I am sure your business isn’t as half as dumb as some like the hotel trade? Or is it?
(let’s acknowldge a great spot by Samir Asaf CPP Master)