I ain’t proud of it, but I lost my temper big-time last week.

We’ve overpaid our accountants for sub-standard service for years, and although we’d already decided to leave when their last invoice came through, when I noticed a spurious charge for photocopying I flipped my lid and left their boss with a hot ear.

The issue here is accrued resentment. Customers do not treat gripes, grievances and unpleasant interactions as isolated incidents — their impact is cumulative, until one more is one too many. They might keep spending then suddenly leave over what looks like a trivial incident at first glance.

We talk a lot about linking CX initiatives to growth, but it's important to remember that great customer care plays a defensive role too — as a safety measure against the invisible yet toxic accumulation of resentment.

Just as disaster prevention experts think of safety as “A dynamic non-event” — they know processes are working because nothing bad has happened — CX decisions that minimize the potential for accrued resentment may have no immediately visible payoff, but that doesn't make them unimportant. In fact, in the long-run they might make all the difference...

#customerexperience

See this post on LinkedIn

Most of the time consistency is good. But there are times when consistency is bad, and one of those situations is your beliefs about your profession. Growth comes from changing your mind, and changing your mind is an inconsistency.

I’ve read a fair amount related to my field over the years, and most of these books — along with practical experience — have changed my understanding of how the world works. Some revisions have been small, some have been large.

I went from thinking NPS seemed like a good idea to it seeming like a bad idea, for example. I went from thinking that loyalty should be the primary focus of CX activities to disagreeing with that premise. I went from thinking of business as a kind of science, to thinking of it more as a numbers game. I could go on...

And yet, many are remarkably resistant to changing their mind. Some people even say to me “Well in your first book you wrote A and now you’re saying B!” Yes, if I hadn’t changed my mind about a few things between the age of 28 and 38 that would be a worry.

My question for you then: when it comes to your work, what have you changed your mind about in the last few years? Hopefully some things you'll share so I can question my own beliefs a little more!

See this post on LinkedIn

I’ve had a string of great experiences with small businesses recently. A garage, furniture shop, that kind of thing. These people aren’t customer experience “experts” — it’s all just intuition and common sense to them. Like all of us, they know how to do things that make people happy. But what stops bigger businesses from doing the same? Three factors immediately come to mind.

Psychological proximity. In a small business, decision-makers deal directly with the customer, feedback is rich and immediate. In a large company those in positions of authority may never see a customer — they only exist on slides and spreadsheets.

Skin in the game. A small business owner's livelihood is often directly linked to customer satisfaction. In a large company your salary stays the same whatever happens.

Autonomy. A small business owner can react to the circumstances and has the freedom to do whatever their intuition tells them. In a large organization there is red-tape and standard processes that prohibit you from using your brain.

It strikes me that if we focussed more on these things — getting people closer to customers, offering greater upside and downside exposure, and giving them more freedom to act independently — well...our instincts might take care of the rest.

#customerexperience

See this post on LinkedIn

I hear a lot of people talking about the science of customer experience these days. This confuses me because there isn’t one.

To describe customer experience as a science suggests there is a body of universally reliable truths, or cause-effect relationships that pertain to the interactions between a brand and their customers. Yet I’m not aware of any, our experience as human beings remains largely subjective, and for every CX principle there are cases where doing the opposite can be more effective. There is no equivalent of Ohm’s Law in customer experience, for example.

I think these people might be confusing the idea of approaching something scientifically — gathering data, testing hypotheses, and seeing what happens — with the possibility of creating a body of scientific knowledge for the field.

While the former is certainly a sensible approach, what works will always be highly contingent on the context of the business in question. You can approach the discipline as scientifically as you like, yet still not create a science out of it.

Happy to change my mind if anyone can share a non-falsifiable, universally applicable law of customer experience, and the evidence to support it. Good luck!

#customerexperience

See this post on LinkedIn

One thing has become abundantly clear to me over the last couple of years: the biggest opportunity for CX professionals is to improve their general business and marketing knowledge.

Our clients, colleagues and leaders want business results. And the more we help to achieve them, the more valuable we become. Yet few CX practitioners truly understand this broader context, and how to integrate their work with other activities that build the brand and grow the business. This must change if the discipline is to thrive in the future. It has become a matter of urgency.

With that in mind, I am considering creating a course: Business and Marketing Strategy for CX Professionals.

It would explain everything you need to know about the factors that determine commercial success and how they relate to customer experience. It would give you essential knowledge that will last you a lifetime (whatever career moves you make) about growth strategy, brand building, value creation and marketing. It would also be highly pragmatic, and supported by real world case studies.

If this interests you please just like the post, or better still comment with the kind of format you’d like — online, video, workbook, live seminars, etc. — and what topics you’d really like to learn about. Thank you!

See this post on LinkedIn

I have a love-hate relationship with the customer experience profession.

I love that we have the potential to make people's lives that little bit more easier or more enjoyable, and that we can become more prosperous as a result.

But I hate the stubborn refusal to make evidence-based decisions, the absurd reluctance to acknowledge the broader context of marketing and business strategy, and the near-pervasive fixation on silly metrics that don't matter.

With that in mind I'm grateful to Netigate for providing me a platform to air my views on how this discipline must change to become more successful in the future, and welcome you to join me for this free event.

A link to register is in the comments.

See you there!

See this post on LinkedIn

Two weeks ago one of my posts went bacterial (nobody wants to talk about virality these days), eventually being seen by the equivalent of Wembley stadium at full capacity. People have volunteered several reasons why this post about buying coffee attracted so much interest:

It was relatable. It was well written. It resonated with how we all feel about technology. There was pragmatic advice. It questioned the status quo. These might be true — thanks by the way! — but they're not the reason.

There was nothing especially interesting about the post. It was stylistically identical to most others I’ve written. It wasn’t consciously trying to tap into a cultural talking point. Instead, its success was mostly random.

In reality, life is a numbers game. If you take enough swings — assuming a decent level of competence — eventually a hit will go out of the park. The best way to have good ideas is to have lots of ideas. Yet we are often so focused on efficiency that we forget to keep putting stuff in the top of the funnel.

Looking for silver bullets is vastly overrated. Often we just need to keep going until we get lucky.

The post did demonstrate one crucial point however: success on Linkedin is possible without being emotionally incontinent. Hooray!

See this post on LinkedIn

In 2015 my wife and I rented a small home nestled in the Santa Monica mountains overlooking a lake, where I could write my second book in peace. It was heaven.

Each day I would write, walk in the mountains, and finish with a cold beer on the deck as the sun drooped below the horizon. The only problem was my landlady.

She was a singularly unpleasant individual who showed no inclination to fulfill her obligations as a property owner, and as our relationship disintegrated she began to harass us in ever more disturbing ways. We were left with no choice but to vacate the property.

When we hurriedly moved out I was deeply embittered. I missed my home and was enraged at her behavior. Not long afterwards, however, a wildfire burned the house to the ground. My wife is standing where our living room used to be in the photo. Were my landlady a more reasonable person, we would most likely have stayed in the house and lost everything, possibly even our lives.

It is tempting to focus on the downsides that come along with operating in a world beyond our control: the risks we face, and the bad hands we’re dealt. Yet in reality we all experience good fortune too, and often adverse events turn out for the best in the long run. We can only benefit from counting our blessings!

See this post on LinkedIn

I began learning to surf around the same time as my friend Jen, but it was clear that we were on a different path from the beginning. I only liked surfing. She was obsessed with it.

Unlike me, she surfed every day. If the conditions were flat she’d just practice paddling. If they were bigger than usual, she’d find a spot where she could explore the boundaries of her comfort zone. She saved her money for surf camps abroad where she could experience different waves and learn from expert instructors.

It wasn’t long before she was much better than me, but she was also getting more pleasure from her time in the water, and was far more comfortable in rougher conditions. Jen was on the path to mastery and left me trailing in her wake.

Deliberate, structured and consistent practice is absolutely necessary to fulfil our potential, regardless of the activity. Yet when it comes to our work lives, most of us don’t consciously or systematically practice vital skills that can set us apart, like selling, writing, presenting, or specialized competencies in our field — we just do them.

Something to reflect on at the start of the year then:

What do you want to get really good at, and how can you systematically practice that skill?

This intention makes a big difference.

See this post on LinkedIn

Last night, to test a claim that quicker and easier is always better, I embarked on an experiment: to have the most efficient evening of my life.

Ordinarily I do bathtime with my son before reading him a bedtime story, so he was confused when I hastily scrubbed him with a wet wipe and slotted him into his pyjamas in under a minute. Then, instead of picking a storybook, I had an ingenious idea: I read him a tweet instead, dumped him in his crib and shut the door.

Next, I sat at the piano to play some music and relax a little, but the Bach on the stand — while rewarding to learn — wasn't exactly easy, so I drowned out my son's howling with a brief rendition of chopsticks, before heading to the bar cart to fix a drink.

In the interests of brevity I snatched the first bottle I saw, but rather than savoring Macallan’s finest as one normally would, I glugged it straight from the bottle instead.

When we retired for the evening I made ardent love to my wife for eight seconds, then — as she gazed unlovingly into my eyes — I gave her the awesome news. We would not be visiting her family in Europe for our usual holiday next year. Siri had found me a hotel two blocks from home. An Uber could get us there in a minute.

My net detractor score has never been higher.

See this post on LinkedIn

Until recently I began my day with a trip to my local coffee shop. The friendly staff knew my order and we’d exchange pleasantries — a nice part of my morning routine.

Then they encouraged me to use their app. I could order ahead with two taps, store my favorites, and there were loyalty discounts too.

I downloaded it and placed an order the next day. And the next. And the next. I never saw the staff again. My drink was always waiting for me outside in the collection area.

The shop had become a vending machine, and I began to think of it as such. “Why do I walk 2 blocks to pick up coffee I could make at home?” I thought. I went from paying full price every day, to paying less through the app, to not paying at all.

Three lessons from my little parable:

1. Value is always relative, and when the basis for comparison changes, so does the perception of worth.

2. Every offering consists of multiple benefits and costs — you need to know which matters most. Reducing friction at the expense of human interactions that build relationships can erode value.

3. Great CX begins with a clear understanding of the brand, not the customer. Give your customers what they think they want and you'll just end up making things easier, cheaper and more like the competition.

#customerexperience

See this post on LinkedIn

Much of our success comes from serendipitous encounters — we have the right conversation with the right person at the right time and a new opportunity is born. So to increase our odds of success, we want to have as many of these encounters as possible. But how can we do this in practice?

One simple technique — as recommended by Christian Busch, who wrote a book on the topic — is to think carefully about how you introduce yourself.

If you only tell people what you do or who you work for there isn’t much potential to discover overlapping interests. Instead, to enlarge your luck surface area you should consider mentioning a nugget or two about your passions, interests or hobbies as well. This creates far more potential to discover common ground, which in turn leads to more interesting conversations, meaningful relationships, and future opportunities for everyone concerned.

I’ve seen this happen a lot — especially on Linkedin — where mentioning my interests in photography, classical music, whiskey, running, watches, motorcycle building, etc. has led to some wonderful dialogues and friendships, some of which just happen to have resulted in discussions about working together.

The question is, what are you interested in outside of work? Who knows what we might have in common!

See this post on LinkedIn

If you want to improve your customer experience efficiently and effectively, it is crucial to appreciate non-linearity.

Not every interaction is equally important to your customers, occurs with equal frequency, or affects the same number of people. And not every interaction is equally memorable, has the same potential to change perceptions, or to influence purchasing behaviour.

The effect of improvements is also non-linear in the broader sense. Sellers with slightly lower ratings on eBay for example, have far less pricing power than those with perfect scores. Some data also shows that incremental improvements in satisfaction don’t have an incremental effect on customer behaviour. Relative rank among competitors matters more, and to have a chance of creating genuine loyalty you need to be exceptional. Going from ok to slightly better might make no difference. Non-linearity is everywhere.

The key to success then, is to identify which interactions can have the biggest impact. We must also be realistic about the likely effect of our interventions.

CX programs predicated on a belief that incremental improvements to satisfaction will yield incremental improvements to retention and repeat purchasing are likely to disappoint!

#cx #customerexperience

See this post on LinkedIn

Management tools and techniques are based on a simple yet incorrect assumption: that people want their businesses to succeed.

The reality is subtly different. Often what people really want is to succeed on their own terms — with their vision, strategy and beliefs.

That's why many consultancy engagements aren’t about adding value but adding validation, analysis is mostly conducted to defend hypotheses not test them, and data is often cherry-picked to support rather than inform a narrative.

Founders often refuse to change their vision, projects must be finished because they have begun, and bad news becomes good news as it ascends the hierarchy.

There is a grand delusion at work. As the psychologist Jonathan Haidt once remarked, the rational mind is more like the Press office than the Oval office — used to justify the decisions we’ve already made — and we deploy the apparatus of the corporation to the same end.

My conclusion: the biggest superpower in business is not the right technology or resources, but the right mindset, something accessible to us all.

Open-mindedness, humility, adaptability, a willingness to learn and to change our minds are abilities we can all choose to cultivate, and will make a far bigger difference to our outcomes in the long run. #strategy

See this post on LinkedIn

Theory vs. practice. When it comes to business success, there’s a big difference.

According to the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy, for example, Cirque de Soleil created uncontested space in the market, making competition irrelevant. In reality though, Cirque de Soleil was started by a fire-breathing street performer and some mates who spent 4 years farting around with ideas in a Canadian village and did their first international show after 7 years of trial and error.

Similarly the boffins at Boston Consulting Group once wrote a paper for the British motorcycle industry explaining Honda’s success selling small bikes in the US. It was all down to experience curves, cost management, yadda yadda. In reality though, Honda tried selling big bikes but failed. Locals in LA noticed their employees riding Honda scooters and wanted to buy them, so they sold the small bikes instead.

Clever theories can be dangerous, seducing us into thinking that with the right data, the right analysis and the right plan, success is guaranteed. Unfortunately though, such deliberate approaches to strategy rarely work as planned because the world is too unpredictable. An emergent approach based on experimentation and learning tends to be more successful in practice.

#strategy

See this post on LinkedIn

What is the key to Amazon’s success? Many people say it's their customer focus, which is no doubt a contributing factor. But this is only part of the story. Amazon also:

Sacrificed profitability to build infrastructure and economies of scale that rivals have struggled to imitate.

Locked customers in with Prime — a revenue model innovation — and by creating ecosystems around products like the Kindle.

Relentlessly entered new categories, like web services, where they thought they could win, regardless of whether it fitted with their core business.

Take risks and are willing to fail in public, in ways that few other businesses of their size are.

Opened up their infrastructure to create a marketplace, and benefitted from the network effect of bringing together buyers and sellers.

Ventured outside of their digital channels and into physical retailing.

Did a u-turn and started advertising like crazy in recent years to build more awareness.

What we also learn from Amazon then, is that brands should be willing to take risks and fail, think laterally, change direction, play a long game, build moats, and use structural means not just value creation to retain customers. Most importantly perhaps, that the whole system of a business creates its success, not any one part of it.

See this post on LinkedIn

Principles are great. Master the underlying theory of a specialism and you’re likely to have more success, more often.

But applying principles only helps if they address a performance constraint. Marketing theory is no use if the problem is cost control. CX principles won't help if brand awareness is the problem.

That’s why systems thinking is great. It can help you discover where to focus your attention for maximum impact, and consider the broader consequences of decisions.

But systems thinking also has limits. In our dynamic, complex world there is always an element of chance. We don’t control much of what happens around us, so outcomes are never guaranteed.

That’s why probabilistic thinking is invaluable. Because in reality, business isn’t an equation to be solved, it’s a numbers game to be played.

Upfront analysis and plans often provide a false sense of security — we must also run experiments and learn what works. Strategy counts for few of life’s successes compared to serendipity — we need to be open to unexpected opportunities.

Use all three approaches — thinking in principles, systems and probabilities — and you’ll maximize your payoffs.

#strategy #marketing #management

See this post on LinkedIn

Interest in customer experience began as a pragmatic response to three trends. Digital channels were increasingly popular but often had low switching costs, and task completion depended a great deal on the user experience; social media had given customers a louder voice; and as the number of channels in use proliferated, extra value could be created by joining them up.

At the time, we didn’t have ideas above our station. We wanted customers to be better served, but we also wanted to make money and recognized the value of other disciplines. The emphasis was on balance and integration.

It was only later that customer-centricity became a religion that sought hegemony over the rest of the enterprise. Product, brand, advertising...these are all experiences aren’t they? We should own them too. Marketing, operations, even finance should kiss the ring.

This over-reach has been disastrous. By trying to do too much the discipline has achieved too little. In over-promising it has under-delivered. And irony of ironies, provided a poor experience to a crucial customer: the business itself, which funds these CX initiatives.

The discipline must return to its more modest, pragmatic roots — a time where context, integration and balance mattered — or it’ll be gone before we know it.

See this post on LinkedIn

What does it mean to be a thought leader, rather than just a vocal enthusiast or commentator?

The decisive element is that thought leaders make an original contribution to a given field. There are three basic ways to do this: invention, synthesis and transposition.

Invention is an entirely novel idea. Inventive thought leadership is extremely rare because it can require years of research and experimentation to generate and validate original ideas and even more tenacious efforts to persuade people of their value.

Synthesis is putting existing ideas together in a novel way that makes them more accessible or powerful, or allows people to see a given topic from a fresh perspective.

Transposition is borrowing ideas from other fields, and applying them to your own. You might ask for example, what an app designer could learn from an architect, or vice versa.

When studying a genuine thought-leaders' work I tend to have one of two reactions. I either feel a deep discomfort because their well-evidenced insights clash with my existing beliefs; or have a satisfying “a ha” moment as if a puzzle piece has just slotted into place.

Both are exciting, but the former requires unlearning as well as learning — an advantageous skill to cultivate in our dynamic, uncertain world.

See this post on LinkedIn

Uncertainty is a bad thing. The better we can predict future events, the more control we have. That’s the thinking behind many business activities, and one reason companies spend so heavily on data, analytics and forecasting. But this line of thinking is fundamentally flawed.

The random events that affect us most are inherently unpredictable — just think about how you met your partner or ended up in your current job. And when it comes to complex systems like a business or the economy, minuscule changes in the behavior of any element can have massive impacts, a phenomenon popularly known as the butterfly effect. For prediction of the whole to be possible then, every individual element must perform in a predictable manner, including you.

As such, you either believe that you can analyze your way into knowing how future events will unfold, or you believe we have the freedom to make our own decisions in life. You can’t believe both since they're mutually exclusive.

In reality then, a predictable future would give us no control at all, and instead of being something to fear, uncertainty is our biggest source of opportunity.

The fact that the future isn’t pre-determined means we get to make it whatever we want, which I’m sure you’ll agree is a good thing!

See this post on LinkedIn