It’s difficult to imagine implementing significant change within a large multi-national B2B organisation while dealing with the complexities of COVID and supply chain issues. However, this case study achieves the triple crown of business benefits by increasing revenue, decreasing costs, and significantly increasing value by reducing “time to respond.”
This organisation achieved outstanding results by taking an outside-in approach to customer outcomes and driving results through goal-driven collaboration. As a result, they were able to expand on a large scale during the COVID period.
I’m a real sucker for great new tips, techniques, tools, shortcuts, “hacks” and other quick ways of getting better results from our processes and customer experiences.
But
the truth is that the big wins don’t come from tips or tricks.
They
come from getting the
fundamentals right. Again and again.
Fundamentals
like really understanding your customers (internal and external) so your
products and services are what they need (not just what you think they want).
Fundamentals like having understanding the successful customer outcomes before you ever meet or work with them, so your processes and experiences build credibility and trust quickly.
Fundamentals like follow-up and nurturing your relationships so they are top of the priorities when your customers need to change things.
Fundamentals like being able to “meet” face to face, on the phone, or via a webinar or web page (and by “meet”, I mean help a customer get the best from their experiences and processes, understand their problems, the potential solutions, and decide how to change things to meet ever-changing needs).
Master the fundamentals and the little tips and tricks will improve your results even further.
Get
the fundamentals wrong and all the tips, tricks or clever techniques in the
world won’t hurt.
–
Steve
PS
If you’d like to get my very best training, insights and personal support to
help you align your processes and experiences for all your customers (internal
and external), why not join me for my new ONLINE training program? Click here for more details.
Dr W. Edwards Deming’s famous quote “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing” is truer today than ever in an increasingly customer-centric Outside-In world.
Perhaps we should upgrade the quote to encompass the focus on the customer?
“If you can’t describe what you are doing as relevant to a Successful Customer Outcome, you shouldn’t ought to be doing it”
Progressive Outside-In businesses understand this truth (think Amazon, Starbucks, BMW and Emirates) who are connecting everything they do to delivering these Successful Customer Outcomes. If activities and systems do not explicitly contribute to customer success they scrap them, and in doing so costs fall away, service improves and naturally, revenues grow.
Think about that for a moment from the customers perspective. It is certainly more pleasurable if interactions are simple and smoother. And if these experiences involve buying stuff, customers come back again and again for more. Even in public service, it stands to reason that reducing complexity will release more resources to do more meaningful work that delivers greater value to citizens.
So how would you approach your existing Customer Experiences and associated processes to move in this direction? Is there a formula that can be applied that is easy to use and produces immediate results?
Indeed, there is! We refer to this formula within the CEMMethod™, an approach developed originally in association with companies like Virgin and Southwest Airlines. The method, originally released in 2006, is now in version 11 and includes 50+ techniques that significantly improve business performance and customer success.
One of these techniques within the CEMMethod™ is referred to as the ‘Disruption Factor’ and quite simply allows you to calculate the potential for improvement in any Customer Experience. Additionally, it helps you pinpoint the areas that would benefit from immediate attention, and in doing so win the triple crown (lower costs, improved service, higher revenues).
If you want to know more about applying the Disruption Factor in your organization join us at the upcoming webinar register your interest here.
Companies wishing to build customer loyalty in the midst of a world being digitally transformed need to introduce the Customer Experience Management Office.
Existing approaches such as Program Management Offices do not address the need of the organization to become customer-centric. According to the Project Management Institutes definition “PMO’s serve as a means to standardize project-related governance processes and facilitate sharing of resources and tools. Others serve as centers of excellence, and still, others align project and program work to corporate strategy across an enterprise.”
1. Evolving from a Program Management Office (PMO) to a Customer Experience Management Office (CXMO).
You may be doing things right, but are you doing the right things?
There is a requirement to call out the need for Customer Centricity in literally everything the enterprise does.
Recently I was working with a global retailer who claimed that they managed Customer Experience via the projects orchestrated by the PMO, so I asked for their measures of success within the PMO.
Interestingly the primary metrics focused on three things – coming in on time, to the budget and achieving agreed project deliverables. So, digging deeper revealed the ‘deliverables’ were mostly aligned with functional objectives and only 15% of those talked to the challenge of becoming customer centric. Even more so – less than 10% talked about joined-up thinking across the silos on behalf of better customer experiences.
Therefore, evolving the PMO to a CXMO is required to centralise the enterprise-wide approach to ensure a consistent and strategic effort.
Find out more and register for the CXMO webinar >JOIN HERE <
Connecting everyone to Successful Customer Outcomes
2. The CXMO is not another functional forever specialism
This isn’t another excuse for empire building. The strategic CX justification revolves around enhanced/redefined Customer Experiences that deliver improved service, lower costs and higher revenues (referred to as the ‘triple crown’) initially from the enterprise-wide consolidation of customer-centric effort, then through systematically aligning everything to contribute to Successful Customer Outcomes.
Hence the CXMO usually has a limited lifespan of 3-4 years as once the discipline is established and everyone is aligned to Successful Customer Outcomes the resources can be devolved back into the business.
In summary, establishing a CXMO is a systematic and strategic initiative.
Co-ordinating everyone, from the boardroom to the tea room, is essential to ensure the shift from the industrial age to the customer centricity age delivers practically and immediately.
Find out more and register for the CXMO webinar >JOIN HERE <
3. Harnessing the disparate CX efforts requires a CXMO.
The majority of people can agree on the valuable benefits of becoming customer centric (triple crown etc.) however departments and divisions will need to be aligned.
For example, the IT systems underpinning current operations were never designed with customer centricity in mind. Their purpose was to automate tasks and activities associated with functional activities such as Accounting, Sales, Customer Call Centers and so on. Sometimes there are efforts to integrate data across these silos but even enterprise-wide systems still have a focus on outputs, rather than delivering well-crafted Outcomes.
Hence migrating the critical to mission systems requires a strategic, top-down driven effort, so that changes are planned, consistent and co-ordinated against customer experience priorities for every part of the organization.
Find out more and register for the CXMO webinar >JOIN HERE <
Reward structures
A significant challenge impacts the Rewards and Remuneration structures. In industrial Age, thinking employees are rewarded for doing things, and not necessarily in delivering results.
A simple way to test this hypothesis is to look at the metrics that drive business performance and see whether there are a majority of the measures targeted at counting outputs, rather than customer outcomes. Typical call centres, for example, will be measuring things like Number of Calls, Average Handle Time, Abandon rates and so on. How many of these does the customer actually care about?
Progressive Customer Centric companies shift the emphasis to measuring the Customer Outcome desired. This fundamental shift in the metrics requires that employees are rewarded for delivering results, rather than completing tasks, and therefore a strategic enterprise-wide rethink to ensure all the dots and connected.
Find out more and register for the CXMO webinar >JOIN HERE <
Walking the Talk by the top team requires an enabled CXMO.
In the example of the Call Center, what is in a name? A lot it would seem. Imagine renaming the Call Center to a Customer Experience Center… Naturally, measures of success should shift to emphasizing the actual customer experience rather than just processing calls as in a production line.
The top team needs to take ownership of the challenge as all too often they can be heard talking about how important the customer is, how we should be customer focussed, how much the customer matters to us while at the same time reminding the Call Center people that Average Handle Time (AHT) is king.
If you work in an environment which prioritizes AHT as a leading measure of success your concern about delivering a Successful Customer Outcome becomes secondary. So, it isn’t just about talking the talk, it is about the top team actioning a customer-centric vision supported by creating the right Attitudes, Behaviours and Culture.
Find out more and register for the CXMO webinar >JOIN HERE<
Where to Start?
This really isn’t a choice. You have to start where you are now, move quickly and begin to harvest the benefits of customer-centric operations. An early objective is to examine the deliverables for all current projects and ask the question ‘how will achieving this contribute to improving the customer experience?’.
You will meet resistance from some folks who say ‘this project has nothing to do with the customer… it is an IT systems change, a change to internal processes, a new accounting approach etc.’ Your response is the natural ‘everything should contribute to Successful Customer Outcomes, and if we are doing things that don’t they should be stopped’.
Connect the dots to every customer interaction
The principle here is one of connecting the dots through to every customer interaction, which leads to another objective; identifying the critical customer experiences and mapping those in the context of their linkages with internal processes, rules and digital dependencies. This will then produce a prioritised list of targets for improvement.
There is no doubt some heavy lifting involved, not least of which is planning the migration from current state PMO to future state CXMO. There are many objectives to consider and your overall approach should be determined by the maturity of your organization.
To review the options join us in the webinar walking through recent CXMO case studies and emerging ‘next practices’.
Find out more and register for the CXMO webinar >JOIN HERE <
The critical step in improving customer understanding is to stop asking questions. Instead listen to the customer’s opinions, perceptions and expectations.
Enter a Disney theme park and you will be greeted by courteous cast members (road sweeps, characters, security personnel) who politely listen, understand and act on the questions customers ask.
Using a structured approach cast members guide a dialogue to elicit customers needs, identify actions and develop a plan in less than 30 seconds. In fact, they can articulate customers needs even when customers themselves don’t know them.
So let’s get scientific about the customer experience and scrap those dumb surveys that are subjective, self-selecting and geared to understanding wants.
Just some of the qualified and accredited Coaches helping their organizations transform to Customer-Centric and Outside-In success.You can review their credentials here.
