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Success in business has a lot to do with creativity, and creativity has a lot to do with seeing things from new perspectives.
By implication, if we want to be more successful one approach is to find models, ideas or theories that are off the beaten path, or — despite their evergreen relevance — have been forgotten by the masses.
With this in mind I’m starting a weekly series - “The best business books you haven’t read.”
First up is this incredible read from Danny Miller — The Icarus Paradox, which explains how businesses succeed their way into failure by continually emphasizing their strengths.
Builders become imperialists and bite off more than they can chew (like RBS for example).
Craftsmen become tinkerers, endlessly fine tuning their products while the market moves on.
Pioneers become escapists, launching highly innovative products with no demand.
Salesmen become drifters, thinking they can just push anything onto the market.
This book is as relevant today as it was when published 29 years ago - a forgotten classic you’ll be glad you read.
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When advocates tout the benefits of great customer experience they typically talk about retention and loyalty. You know what they almost never mention? Pricing power. This is a terrible oversight because:
a) Pricing has a tremendous effect on profitability - even tiny changes can have a massive impact.
b) A reputation for exceptional customer experience often allows you to charge more.
With this in mind, if you have a great CX but haven’t priced it in, consider experimenting with some price increases - you might be in for a pleasant surprise. Here’s a fun story to illustrate the point:
A friend of mine (looking very happy in the pic with her husband) runs a small business in Silicon Valley, with a hard-earned reputation for exceptional customer experience.
Late last year she asked me for some advice about growing the business, and agreed (with some hesitation) to an immediate 30% price increase.
So far her business has made three quarters of last year's total profit in the first three months of this year and demand is actually increasing.
Why? Price signals quality. At the higher price point she’s distanced herself more clearly from mainstream rivals becoming an easier choice for her well-heeled target customers.
Downside - she owes me a decent bottle of Scotch.
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The Cass Business School MBA Symposium is an annual highlight for me, and I’m definitely heading home on a high this year.
I’m especially grateful to everyone who gave up their evening to come to the masterclass last night and to Sionade Robinson Ph.D for hosting / arranging it all.
I’m amazed how far some people travelled to attend and that so many were able to stay on to the end despite the disruption.
Best of all was actually getting to meet some people in person for the first time and share a drink or two having been connected online for years in some cases.
Let’s not leave it too long to get together again - please keep in touch!
#customerexperience #NewDirections2019
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Error proofing is an extremely powerful way to improve just about every customer experience because it reduces both stress and effort.
Even better, despite (or perhaps because) error proofing is so simple that a baboon could do it, most people don’t bother, so it’s a sure-fire way to give your CX a distinctive layer of polish.
Here’s how you do it:
Step 1) Pick a customer scenario - e.g. “opening a new account”.
Step 2) Break the journey down into discrete stages - e.g. “entering address details”, “providing a valid form of ID".
Step 3) For each stage write a list of errors the customer could make - e.g. “using the wrong billing address”, "forgetting their ID".
Step 4) For each error identify ways you could prevent it from ever happening, or if you can’t, how you could help the customer recover as gracefully as possible.
Step 5) If you’re working as a troop, wrap up the session with some affectionate grooming, sharing a celebratory banana, or flicking your poo at one another.
That’s it. If you’re anything like most businesses you’ll be amazed at how many opportunities you find.
There’s a free error prevention worksheet in this pack.
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They say that if you write a decent book you have no idea where it’ll take you. Since I now find myself at this golf course in rural Georgia, I’d say they’re right.
Looking forward to a fun session with a leadership team today, talking all things customer experience. 👌
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I have so much to say about this simple slide that I'm not sure where to begin. It has certainly ignited plenty of debate over the years. Here are 4 takeaways in no particular order (I’ve been moving house this week and I’m a little worse for wear):
1. The slide reflects how most customers think. There's a difference in people's mind between a product; a brand; whether they’ve heard of something or not; and the customer experience, even if some weirdos have decided that CX now encompasses everything. Although they're interconnected, these distinctions can help you identify where to focus.
2. Most customers buy on total value: the aim is to be able to answer all 4 questions with a confident "yes", not one "very yes" and "no" to the others.
3. Diagnose the problem before prescribing CX improvements as the solution. If your product is totally outclassed by a rival, CX improvements won’t save you. If your brand doesn’t enter consideration, CX improvements have limited impact. If people don’t know you exist, they won't have the experience in the first place.
4. Whether you can “win” on CX or not depends on your strengths and weaknesses and those of your rivals. It just ain’t as simple as great cx = success.
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“By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.” Unfortunately, the only insight this now famous claim provides is how total nonsense gains credibility if it is shared widely enough.
The image shows a chart from the report - the only basis for the quote I can find. Note that participants described where their strategic emphasis lay — experience, products or price. They did not answer which of these factors was their most important differentiator. To assume they're the same thing is silly — it could simply be that CX is a weakness and the product is already a strength.
The quote is a total mis-representation of the facts then, if you can call them that, given their farcical research methodology:
1. A roundtable discussion with 31 “business leaders” and CX professionals.
2. In depth interviews based on the themes from that roundtable session with another 35 people.
3. Surveying 204 CX professionals to “validate the findings”.
No mention of including CMOs, pricing professionals or product strategists — you could hardly propose a more biased arrangement.
The ease with which this nonsense gains credibility is truly alarming. Less surprising - Forbes published the claim in an article without bothering to check its provenance.
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Shops on Main Street in Santa Monica have such a high turnover that it’s become a slightly morbid hobby of mine to do a quick run around the grid in my head and guess how long each new one will last.
I thought Bareburger would last a year - pinning their impending doom to the cost and working capital implications of their menu and brand positioning — but I think they lasted two. My crude analysis:
The restaurant offered every kind of burger, bun, topping and side imaginable, using only the finest ingredients. Yet pricing was pretty reasonable. I saw a couple of challenges:
a) Choice paralysis for customers who took one look at the menu and had an aneurysm.
b) High costs keeping fresh supplies of a huge variety of expensive ingredients, and likely high waste because of low demand caused by (a), without the premium pricing to compensate.
Throw in the extortionate rent and lackluster service and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Key lessons:
1. Every business is an inter-connected whole - all the parts need to fit together (hint hint, read the grid).
2. Making choice hard for customers usually ends in tears - they either choose someone else, choose nothing at all, or choose whatever they had last time, never exploring your broader range of offerings.
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I met the design critic Stephen Bayley once. I’d always admired his writing so I sent him a gushing email and he took me out for pizza, cementing his hero status forever.
A quote from Le Corbusier in one of his books had left an indelible impression on me: “Design.” He wrote, “Is intelligence made visible.”
From the moment I read that, I felt intense pressure to do my best whatever project I was working on. It wasn’t just my intelligence on public display, I reasoned, but my entire work ethic laid bare.
To re-jig the master’s prose, I believe that a brand’s customer experience can be thought of similarly. Not as intelligence, but as thoughtfulness made visible.
Thoughtfulness is the universal hallmark of excellence in CX because everything else ladders up to it: a neat flourish here, some streamlining there, an unexpected personal touch — they all show consideration for our customers.
Thoughtfulness is also universally appreciated. It makes people feel special and fortunate. It also makes them want to reciprocate - no bad thing.
Best of all, in defining customer experience as "thoughtfulness made visible" maybe we can escape the trap of trends and generic solutions, and stay focused on what really matters - our customer's unique needs.
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Tech companies have done a great job persuading us that data analysis is the secret sauce, whatever recipe we’re making. When it comes to creating a great customer experience though, this isn’t true.
If it were, the top rated brands for CX would be the ones who gathered the most data from the most interactions and crunched it all with the most powerful software. But they aren’t in my experience.
Metrics are important — they tell us what is happening and help us evaluate our progress. But they don’t tell us why those things are happening or what to do about them, which is more important.
They also can’t make people care, which is the biggest challenge of all. In fact, they often make people care less, because metrics dehumanize.
Numbers help us communicate long-distance with detached objectivity, but the key to creating a great customer experience is exactly the opposite: psychological proximity. Getting close to customers, not gazing at dashboards.
Let’s be clear then. Our most vital currency isn’t data — it’s ideas about how the future can be better.
Ideas that come from an alchemical blend of customer understanding, subject matter expertise, and simple human ingenuity.
Creating truly exceptional experiences is more art than science. Data informed, yes. But idea driven.
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Giving a keynote speech is just the most incredible privilege. Think about it — you have the undivided attention of hundreds or thousands of people while you share your passion and ideas, and you get paid to do it. Isn’t that an unbelievable way to make a living? I think so, and that’s why I really, really, really put everything into it.
I want to have a good time. I want the audience to have a good time. I want it to be fun and valuable. I want it to be the best presentation ever. I rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and refine and refine and refine and I keep trying to get better. There is always room for improvement.
Unfortunately, despite best intentions it’s not always what you want it to be. The chemistry isn’t there, the room has an odd vibe, the AV sucks, people are tired, Or — try as you might — you’re having an off day.
BUT. Sometimes all the planets align. The venue is great. The audience is up for a good time. You’re riding high. The message lands well. It’s just magic. You want it to last forever. Yesterday was my third keynote for Amex and one of those magical days. I had the time of my life.
Huge thanks to everyone who made me feel so welcome and came to listen. I’m heading home with a big smile on my face and a birthday-sized hangover.
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There’s so much bullshit written about customer experience I can’t possibly de-bunk all of it without looking like an irascible mega-troll. So instead, you can calculate an article’s Net Bullshit Score yourself by awarding one point for each of these:
1. Hyperbolic claims. E.g. “The top rated firms for CX grow 82 times quicker than rivals.”
2. Vague but impressive statistics that are impossible to prove. E.g. “Research shows that eliminating tasks from the customer journey yields an 596% ROI.”
3. Claiming causality on account of correlation. E.g. “The secret behind the success of the fastest growing brands in America? The Chief WOW Officer.”
4. Reductionist thinking with no acknowledgement that other factors are at work. E.g. “Want to double your revenues? Just eliminate friction.”
5. Derogatory remarks about other specialisms beyond the author’s realm of expertise. E.g. “Customer experience trumps pricing, product and advertising, etc.”
6. Award a bonus point if the author is selling something related to the above (typically mentioned at the end).
7. Add a second bonus point if the article in question is published on Forbes.com — the Mount Vesuvius of CX bullshit.
Scores of 1 or above = 🐮💩
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Before round-table events, we ask attendees which brands they think have a great customer experience. Despite asking 100's of people, and all the money businesses are flinging at CX projects, the same 4-5 brands come up almost every time. Why?
The short answer:
a) These brands (Apple, Amazon, Starbucks, Disney, etc.) are typically top of mind in their categories.
b) They also offer a consistent experience that is strongly associated with their brand in particular.
Three big implications:
1. Having a great CX and being recognized as having one are not the same. Recognition is important though, because that's when CX becomes a true differentiator and brand asset.
2. The impact of advertising, brand and CX initiatives are amplified when they’re in sync — the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
3. CX improvements will have less impact if they aren’t supported by efforts to raise and maintain brand awareness. It’s a noisy world. People can easily forget you and the experience they had, even if it’s rather good. You need to keep reminding them.
This is why I flip my lid when advertising is portrayed as some kind of punitive tax for a poor customer experience. They aren't alternatives - they're complementary, interdependent and equally important.
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I met a group of bigwigs in California yesterday for a dialogue about all things customer experience. It wasn’t your average get together — the firms had a combined market cap of about $2,000,000,000,000 ($2tn). I even got dressed properly. Three key themes:
1. CX teams are spending too much time and energy measurbating, strategizing, researching and evangelizing, and not taking enough action to improve things. I get the impression there is high turnover in senior CX roles because they just aren’t delivering. Less rhetoric, more results is the order of the day.
2. CX practitioners need to improve their strategic and marketing acumen. They need to demonstrate a better understanding of the broader corporate strategy and how they can support it, prove the value of their work, and integrate with other marketing activities to help build the brand.
3. Finally, I believe the future of CX is smaller, more manageable projects and a greater focus on iterative continuous improvement. Big Bang projects take too long to deliver too little value.
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Wells Fargo’s fake accounts, VW’s diesel emissions, Tesco’s horse burgers — all these scandals reveal the same thing: the idea that the customer experience can be “managed” is a joke.
Any decision taken anywhere in the business can affect your customer experience. It’s emergent — not under anyone’s direct control.
Non-CX projects probably have more impact on your customer experience than the CX projects do - change ERP systems and you’ll see what I mean.
And if your sales team start defrauding your customers, you ain’t gonna journey map your way out of that one in a hurry.
The question is, how do we control the uncontrollable?
Short answer: people within the business — top to bottom — need to believe that customer experience really matters, and take collective responsibility. Your job is to build that belief, day by day, year by year.
This requires a two pronged approach:
First, appeal to your colleague’s self-interest and existing motivations. Paint a picture of how their world is better when the CX is better. Remember - statistics don’t get people to act, emotions do.
Second, prove it, with deeds not words. Show them the money. Demonstrate the impact. Find something to hang your hat on and gain momentum.
Keep building the belief, and the change will come eventually.
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What is your brand’s distinctive, experiential signature? If you can’t answer, stop and figure it out before you waste money on a potpourri of CX projects that deliver no value.
The Bookstore in the small town of Lenox, Massachusetts has thrived since opening in 1966. Why haven’t they been crushed by Amazon? Part of the reason — their customer experience is completely different.
They can't win when it comes to creating an effortless, consistent experience, but they don't need to. Their shop is a beautiful space full of personality (complete with a wine bar), and their friendly, expert staff eagerly strike up conversations with customers, learning about their interests and recommending books they'll love.
Their experiential signatures — the ambience, booze, friendliness and sense of community — are sensory and social; totally distinct from Amazon's (effort and stress reduction).
What have Barnes and Noble done? Dabbled in digital; opened some cafes; launched a membership scheme and a bit of omni-channel stuff.
It’s not working because there's no focus — no distinctive, experiential signature to give customers a clear reason to shop there.
Don't make this mistake. Decide your CX signature, then hammer it home with every interaction.
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Most customers are spoilt for choice, so knowing who you're competing against is essential. Sounds bloody obvious right? But many businesses don’t know who their true rivals are. Answer these three questions and the results might surprise you:
1. If we didn’t exist, who would our customers spend their money with?
This one encourages you to think more laterally about how customers might otherwise satisfy their needs. It often reveals a plethora of substitutes or even cobbled together solutions across multiple categories that might represent be your real competition.
2. If we had a magic net that could make anyone’s customers ours, which business would we use it on?
This reveals your assumptions about the kind of customers you’d like to have. It also says a lot about who you really wish you were as a business, and who you really think you’re better than — both are good to know.
3. Who would use their magic net on us?
This one should help you pin down your biggest threats, and who you should be wary of.
Gather answers from your team for all three questions and you’ll probably find the answers vary a lot. Even better, pretend you’re five years into the future then answer all three again. It’s a really useful exercise.
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