Think Small to Win Big in Customer Experience

20 cultural nudges for any organisation to keep it real

Words like ‘transformation’ are scary, right? And yet CEOs are always being told that ‘Customer Experience’ is ‘transformational’. Well, maybe, but we also need to get real, and recognize that customer experience is also about delivering today – a journey of a thousand steps begins with the first step and all that, so here then is my list of the smaller, more palatable steps to start that journey within the organisation.

START AT THE BEGINNING

1. Join the dots: ensure that everyone in the organization has a deep understanding of the bigger picture, why this is important and how their own role’s contribution to the customer experience.
2. Make the vision real: have everyone know what it means to live the brand for your customers and deliver the company’s uniquely branded experience.
3. Follow the money: connect the cogs to understand the ROI of customer experience and how it drives the bottom line for the business.Start small, even with anecdotes and stated intentions, then track actions.

SIGNAL CHANGE THROUGH CULTURAL NUDGES 

4. Don’t call it a project or an initiative: they suggest a here-today-gone-tomorrow mindset, an open invitation for cynics to keep their heads down and hope it all blows away like so many other initiatives.
5. Look outside: admire and learn from the best in the world, whatever the sector, but especially not your own.
6. Create and evangelize success stories: find, learn from, tell and celebrate stories of great customer experiences delivered.
7. Get on the floor: get executives and leaders to spend time with and learn from the front-line via real, not stage-managed interactions, and role model new behaviours.
8. Outlaw silo’d thinking: be alert to call out ‘back office’, ‘head office’ and functional thinking and look for ways to reinforce the mantra, It Only Works When It All Works.
9. Get on first name terms with personas: create rich and insightful customer personas and put them in all your rooms to watch over – and challenge – decision making.
10. Change meeting etiquette: start every meeting with a customer story, end every meeting by asking ‘what’s in it for our customers?’

 HELP YOUR PEOPLE TO WIN 

11. Set the tone on day one: embed customer learning into new hire inductions to build customer empathy. Learning about internal processes comes later.
12. Create internal advocates: make it easy for everyone to be advocates of the brand and – wherever possible – active users of the product.
13. Harness employee power: find ways to make their voice heard, use their knowledge, experience, insights and energy to improve the customer experience.
14. Recognise and reward, quickly and easily – find simple and informal ways to call out and celebrate great delivery. Hand written notes can make a huge difference.

EMBRACE CUSTOMERS

15. Talk to customers: yes, I know. Obvious, right. Get leaders to ring lost customers, make visits and generally connect one to one with the customer. Invite them to internal conferences and generally find ways to bring them in and learn from them.
16. Close the loop: on the other hand, don’t talk to them, unless you’re prepared to act on what you learn, and change things for the better. And never forget to them what you’ve done. Doing this can work wonders, and it creates a halo effect too.
17. Give the benefit of the doubt: if in doubt, err on the side of the customer, and make sure your internal policies help not hinder customers.
18. Have some respect: Change the language. Customers are people, not targets and stop asking ‘who owns the customer’? (The answer is, if anyone owns anyone these days, it’s your customers who own you.)
19. Give to get: find small and spontaneous ways to surprise, thank and delight customers, and create positive memories and stories.
20. Be social media savvy: recognize that great customer experiences are the best marketing there is today, so fix things super-fast.

Power to the people (and those companies that embrace this). Ten 2013 consumer trends

(Photo : Anirudh Koul)

Wacky names, thought-provoking stuff. Here are ten key consumer trends for 2013 from trendwatching,com. Some good insights and signals in here on how the power game between consumer and company might be played out in future.

 ‘ PRESUMERS’ is about people seeking active engagement and participation with the company, getting involved in co-production before launch. Why? Because they connect, they are extreme advocates with a connection (I love this product, I like what this company is about, I want it to succeed and make a difference).

 Hand in hand with this, then, perhaps even a pre-requisite would be ‘FULL FRONTAL’, extreme transparency to you and me. So, what might transparency 2.0 look like? Well, moving from ‘having nothing to hide’, to “pro-actively showing and proving they have nothing to hide”, supplying unambiguous and clear evidence. So, a company will have to be pretty clear then about what it wants to be famous for and it had better be something more attractive to its customers than maximising shareholder value, for example.

 Another manifestation of consumer power is ‘DATA MYNING’ where we consumers begin to trade on our own worth to the company. As the paper says, “to date, the ‘big data’ discussion has focused on the value of customer data to businesses. Now, increasingly savvy consumers will start to reverse the flow”, and seek to benefit from the value of their own data”. 

Awesome Flawsome! 12 consumer trends for 2012

While some of this may be at the ‘Lady Gaga’ end of the trends spectrum, this is a lively and engaging view from Trendwatching.com of some key consumer trends for 2012.

I particularly like the cultural challenge that lies in “Flawsome”, which is about “brands that are honest about their flaws, that show some empathy, generosity, humility, flexibility, maturity, humour and dare we say it, some character and humanity”. 

It’s fascinating to see big name brands grapple with Flawsome; BP, Barclays, RBS, Netflicks, Toyota, the list could go on….

http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/12trends2012/

Has your business got the F-Factor? (That’s friends, fans and followers)

A good 2011 trends briefing on social media – the F factor – from trendwatching.com

As the intro says, “consumers are increasingly tapping into their networks of friends, fans and followers to discover, discuss and purchase goods and services, in ever-more sophisticated ways. As a result, it’s never been more important for brands to make sure they too have the F-Factor”.

The paper looks at how consumers are using networks to discover, rate and feedback on new products and services, and how recommendation may be becoming more ‘social’ and trusted, as opposed to impersonal and unknown.

http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/ffactor/