My latest blog post for Stella Connect tackles an obvious but often overlooked truism when it comes to customer experience: that we shouldn't be patting ourselves on the back for solving customer problems that could have been prevented in the first place.

Error prevention is not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination. It's been a core aspect of human factors work for decades and should be a foundational principle for any CX program because it offers a rare three for one deal: less effort and stress for the customer, and less cost to the business incurred by putting things right.

Chances are though, that your journey maps don't include a swim lane for error management, your team has never modeled out the potential errors and customers can make in a given scenario and how they can be prevented or better recovered, and your contact center staff are more concerned with first issue resolution than Matt Dixon's wonderful idea of next issue avoidance.

As if that wasn't bad enough, The Red Hot Chili Peppers album Blood Sugar Sex Magik is also thirty years old, which somehow made its way into the article too.

Comments, thoughts, feelings heartily welcomed as ever.

#customerexperience #cx #journeymapping #contactcenters

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We passed a big milestone last week: submitting the manuscript for book three to our publishers at Penguin Random House.

Submission is a very technical process. You hit send on an email (making sure you've attached the right file), shout "Woohoo!", then open a celebratory bottle of Scotch — Glendronach's 21 Year Old Parliament expression, since you asked.

There’s still a long way to go with the editing and publication process and a few little kinks to work out, but it’s a happy moment for any author when there’s a whole thing, rather than parts scattered on the floor requiring assembly. It’s also an opportune moment to express some gratitude to the people who helped us get this far.

Putting a book together is as much of a team effort as making any other product, so we’re very grateful for all the help we’ve received, especially from those who have given up their time to read the manuscript cover to cover and suggest improvements. It is immeasurably better for their input and I’m delighted to report that their feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

Csaba Konkoly and I cannot wait to share it with you next year, and thanks again for all the support and encouragement so far.

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Being an expert on your discipline or subject matter can only take you so far. As your business expands or you rise in seniority, you must become an expert on something else — judging expertise itself.

Even within a small business you can’t master everything that matters — marketing, accounting, IT, etc. Delegation is essential if you want to succeed (and stay sane). And nobody can be intimately familiar with every aspect of a large enterprise, let alone possess all the skills required to operate one.

We have no choice then but to rely on other people’s expertise, and the higher we rise the more reliant we become. But there’s a problem. Judging other people’s ability is often difficult — unless we’re also an expert ourselves — and it isn’t really a “skill” we’re taught. So how should we approach this tricky task? I use four basic heuristics as a starting point:

1. Do they have a demonstrable track record of success? This isn’t an infallible indicator, but it’s a good place to start.

2. Can they explain the ins and outs of their work in simple language? Real experts use little if any jargon in my experience.

3. Do they like questions and can they answer them? If people are evasive, vague or hostile when you ask them questions it’s generally not a good sign.

4. Have they ever changed their mind? Facts have a half life. If there’s no evidence of them ever having changed their tune, they’ve stopped learning. Run for the hills!

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The concept of digital transformation is fundamentally flawed in three ways.

First, semantically.
The term itself is abstract and ambiguous. People still argue over what it means, let alone what success looks like, which is hardly a solid foundation for execution.

Second, assumptively.
Digital transformation assumes a need — transformation — and assumes a solution — digitalness. But how many businesses need to transform, and is digitization the best solution if they do?

Technology is great, but only if it solves a problem or creates an opportunity. Many of these programs aren’t based on such analyses though. Instead companies kick them off because others have, and they're following the herd. The same was true with the business process reengineering fad in the nineties which also failed to live up to expectations.

Third, organizationally.
The structural, political, cultural and operational forces in large organizations resist change, almost by design. And the more extreme the change the more strongly it is opposed. Psychologically there's a big difference between an aspiration to improve, and an aspiration to transform.

Massive change is only possible when the pain of the transformation is less than the pain of continuing as is. Yet in most businesses, most of the time it isn’t so the initiative is stifled.

Want to know why transformation programs fail so often? They could never have succeeded in the first place! #digitaltransformation

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The greatest success in business comes from thinking and acting differently — there’s no benefit to doing the same things in the same way as everyone else, since any potential advantage is cancelled out. But you can’t just adopt any oblique viewpoint, you also need to be right.

When picking stocks or launching startups, for example, what you want is a perspective on the market that isn’t widely agreed upon or understood, yet is actually correct. That’s how you get outstanding returns, which brings me on to customer experience.

The consensus view in CX is that the focus should be improving satisfaction, which will increase loyalty, retention and advocacy, and lead to growth — a glorious causal chain of events.

Yet there is a non-consensus view that has better supporting evidence: brands grow primarily through acquiring new customers, we have less control over retention than we think, active word of mouth comes mostly from new customers, and pursuing ever higher levels of satisfaction probably isn’t the best use of resources.

This non-consensus-yet-correct worldview is a gift for brands and CX professionals who can act accordingly while the mainstream dig in their heels and ignore the evidence!

#customerexperience #CX

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You can use linkedin for all sorts of things. To learn and share, to build a following, to promote your business, or just to practice using the infinitive form of verbs.

But for me the best thing is connecting with interesting people and building relationships in the real world. With that in mind, it was a real pleasure to meet Jacob Holst Mouritzen in Copenhagen last night for some great food, drink and conversation.

I highly recommend connecting with him if you're interested in evidence-based marketing, or looking to build your network in this part of the world. He's a bon oeuf, as they don't say in France.

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I may have been absent but I have not been idle.

We've decamped to a bolthole in Denmark which has given me a bit of headspace to put the final touches on the manuscript for book three which is very nearly finished, and the opportunity to indulge one of my hobbies — taking landscape photos.

On that note my Leica SL2 arrived a few days ago and it is the best camera I've ever had the privilege of owning. If you're into photography I highly recommend this monster machine.

Value added content will resume in a week :)

Hope you're all well.

Matt

#leica #photography #notcustomerexperience

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My second guest post for Stella Connect is live: "What Gets Measured Gets Mis-Managed"

The argument in a nutshell: customer experience practitioners, by and large, have devoted far more effort to gathering data than understanding how to interpret it, and as a consequence spend most of their time pursuing the wrong goals.

I gotta be honest: CX data scares me. I've learned a fair amount about research methods, data gathering and interpretation over the last few years, and having crossed the threshold from unconscious to conscious incompetence, I'm supremely grateful for my colleagues who really understand this stuff.

Enjoy!

#customerexperience #cx #loyalty

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A sincere question for the cognoscenti and thinkers among my network (that means you):

Has awareness of our cognitive biases actually made us better decision-makers or just made it far harder to trust our own judgements and the opinions of others?

I recently found myself berating a paediatrician, for example, who couldn’t tell me whether a course of action he suggested — based on a singular memorable event in his career — was supported by broader rigorous research or was just his availability bias. Yes, I make friends wherever I go, but it’s not as if I spare myself either.

Is that research I’m reading just playing into my confirmation bias? Could I have predicted that failure all along or was it the hindsight bias? Do I really think that person is smart or is it the halo effect? Do they really know what it takes to succeed or is it the survivorship bias talking?

Read Rolf Dobelli’s book The Art of Thinking Clearly — which contains ninety-nine ways our internal firmware distorts and deceives, and you can’t help thinking it should have been called “Why thinking clearly is totally impossible and you’ll never trust another person’s judgement again.” Too long for the cover maybe.

What do you think?

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I really believe that this Women in CX initiative is a great thing for the world, and I know how much blood, sweat and tears has gone into getting it off the ground, so I want to make sure that the female CX professionals from my network know about it and get involved.

I think it deserves everyone's full support — including mine obviously — so I'm putting together a fresh talk just for the community that I hope will give more value per square minute than any I've given previously. Not least of all because I'm a competitive *********** and I have some fairly stiff competition as you can see from the rest of the roster. Wahoo!

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When CX professionals are confronted with the reality that brands grow through acquiring new customers not deepening the loyalty of their current buyers, and that new customers drive word of mouth not long-standing loyalists, their reaction is typically indignation, denial, or refusal to examine the data.

That’s understandable. When our core beliefs are challenged it can make us fearful, and the process of discovery, reorientation and letting go of bad beliefs can feel like a lot to take on.

But while these insights challenge the dogma of the discipline, they don’t challenge the discipline itself. Instead, they represent an amazing opportunity, because those who embrace them can make a much larger contribution to their organization's success. How?

An experience is just a set of interactions, and we can decide which/whose interactions to focus on. For example we could put much more effort into dismantling barriers to purchase and reducing time to value. It also doesn’t mean that customer satisfaction doesn’t matter — a common misinterpretation — since this is bound to affect our acquisition abilities. A 1 star average on yelp isn’t exactly a customer magnet.

It just means reframing activities with a different primary goal — acquisition, not loyalty.

Vive la revolution!

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I’ve learned a lot from some fascinating people here, who seem to have one thing in common: small followings.

People with big followings are those who have devoted the most energy to grabbing attention — liking, commenting and posting like crazy — or are celebrities of some sort.

Unfortunately, celebrities are mostly just ordinary people who are extraordinarily lucky, so taking their advice is a bit like asking a lottery winner what numbers to use. And people with hours a day to spend on social media are often not the top experts, who are too busy doing whatever it is to chat about it.

There are also formulas for writing crowd-pleasing posts: tales of virtuous behaviour and triumphs over adversity, or sharing truisms that are inherently agreeable. So the easiest way to build a large audience is to say very little of substance at all. Yet the nature of social media makes it easy to confuse personality with character, fame with ability, and popular opinions for insightful ones. None of which is good for society in the long run.

Fortunately, there is amazing wisdom in the fringes so that’s where I’ll be looking. Thanks to the amazing people in my network who keep the quality rather than the frequency of their content up. Small is beautiful. Please keep sharing!

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When Stella Connect invited me to write a series of guest posts about customer experience on their company blog I went in open-minded, but was sure the red pen would make a swift appearance...

Quite wonderfully though, they haven't edited a word here, so kudos to them for running an article about the relationship between brand and customer experience, with passing references to three wheeled cars, Orcas, the human skeleton, systems thinking, and the pursuit of health, wealth and happiness.

I hope you enjoy it!

#customerexperience

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There are two distinct ways to innovate: in response to the customer, and on behalf of the customer.

Innovating in response to the customer is where they lead and we follow. We look at VoC data and decide what improvements to make. This is what most people think of when they talk about being customer centric, and how most large organizations approach things because it’s efficient.

Innovating on behalf of the customer is us deciding what we think is a great idea, then seeing if customers dig it. Many of our ideas won’t work — this approach is riskier and inefficient — yet this is how entrepreneurs tend to approach things, and where most breakthrough ideas come from. Why?

Innovating in response to the customer leads to predictable, incremental enhancements. There is less risk, but less potential reward. Innovating on behalf of the customer opens the doors to wild ideas which might fail, but if they succeed the returns can be phenomenal — more than enough to offset the misses.

This explains the paradox of Steve Jobs, who famously scorned traditional research yet also seemed profoundly customer focused — he innovated on behalf of the customer, accepted the risks, and reaped the rewards. As do Dyson, Tesla, Red Bull and Amazon, among others. #innovation #customerexperience

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Why is marketing called marketing and not customering? And why do entrepreneurs or start up founders talk about finding product-market fit, not product-customer fit?

There’s a simple reason — a business must be attuned to the market, not just the customer to succeed, and there are a multitude of factors within the market to consider alongside our customers wants, needs and expectations, such as:

How might regulatory changes affect us?
Is our category growing or declining?
What are the current and emerging competitive threats?
How can we raise and maintain awareness?
Which territories should we be covering and how do they differ?
What macro-economic trends have an influence?
How do political, social and technological developments come into play?
What’s going on with our suppliers and partners — how is bargaining power shifting?

Balancing these considerations (and there are many more) is what makes running a business hard, and why I struggle with the term "customer-centricity” — it strikes me as an overly simplistic prescription.

Yes, being customer focused is essential, but it is not enough to succeed. Ignore other market factors at your peril! #customerexperience

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My impression of the Air Pod Max after a week:

They are better than something that’s not as good, less expensive than something that costs more, smaller than something bigger and heavier than something lighter. Which is to say whether you think they are great or stupid depends entirely on your reference points.

The noise cancelling is the best I’ve experienced which is good because my son is two and a half. The design is logical but uninspiring, they are comfortable for hours at a time, and the spatial thing continues the trend Siri started — it doesn’t quite work.

They are better in every way than the aging Bose they are replacing — a basic expectation since they are new and cost more. They are also a nice complement to the AirPod Pro’s.

In summary, they occupy a classic Apple sweet spot in the middle ground: a Bose / Sony alternative for the status anxious, or a budget substitute for audiophile headphones when you’re out and about — both of which suit me just fine. I suspect they will sell like ice cream on a hot day.

There might be something to market positioning after all...

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Barbarian Days is the best book I’ve ever read. It won a Pulitzer and was featured on Barrack Obama’s summer reading list. Yet it has attracted plenty of criticism. Some reviewers on Goodreads complain about all the surfing, for example. The subtitle is “A surfing life.”

Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina has sold in the millions and is often described as the greatest novel ever written, but you wouldn’t know it from the reviews. A quarter of people rate this book three stars or less — it’s too long and boring. The average score is just four stars.

If these ratings were for businesses their CX teams would be concerned. To placate their detractors they might introduce Barbarian Days Sans Surfing — a more customer centric read with less watersports. Or Anna K-Lite — Tolstoy for the terminally impatient. But this would be absurd.

Expanding your customer base — the means by which businesses grow — and maximizing satisfaction scores are mutually incompatible goals. The more people you serve, the broader their needs and expectations, and the harder it is to keep everyone happy all the time, something to consider when comparing your brand with others. If might be that lower satisfaction scores than rivals are a reflection of your success, not a sign of impending doom.

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Most people know how Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony begins: DUM—DUM—DUM DUHH! DUM—DUM—DUM DUHH! Dramatic but simple. Four notes.

Listen to it in full and you’ll notice the distinctive quality of all great creative works continues throughout: a sort of inherent rightness as Leonard Bernstein called it, or inevitability.

When we experience such things we imagine their creator must have downloaded them from some divine realm. That the result must have arrived instantaneously, fully formed and flawless. Yet this is not true.

Beethoven's sketchbooks show him experimenting and agonizing over his ideas for eight years. He re-wrote one of the main melodies fourteen times, scribbling and scratching out versions until it was just right.

Creating something of enduring value takes time. And even masters of their craft must have freedom to experiment and iterate to produce their best work.

Often what separates the very best from the rest is the willingness and support to persevere until whatever it is, it just works. Until the solution feels so right that any alternative feels wrong. Until our products fit so well into the customer's life that their presence is felt most by their absence.

That’s what greatness looks like: obvious, inevitable, and the difficulty involved, invisible.

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A challenge for CX professionals is the word “experience” itself. There are many types of experience and each is improved by different means.

Flow state experiences, for example, are typically improved by removing distractions, sharpening feedback and carefully matching the task difficulty to the actor's competence.

Pleasurable experiences, however, are typically improved by developing the sensory and social elements, considering how the customer’s self-image and values are reflected in their interactions, or how much their sphere of competence is expanded (in the case of learning a new skill for fun for example).

Drudgery, by contrast, is better improved by automation, effort reduction, error prevention, etc. Although one could argue that transforming a drudge into a pleasure, might be a worthy goal.

These three classifications aren’t supposed to be collectively exhaustive or mutually exclusive by the way. I just plucked them at random to make a simple point: there’s no such thing as a universal prescription for improving experiences.

You need to know what you want the experience to be like first — something that seldom gets the consideration it deserves.

#customerexperience

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Ten ways to turn journey mapping from a waste of time into a value creation machine:

1. Gather and consolidate as much background information, primary research and data as possible before starting

2. Clearly define and prioritize customer scenarios as a separate exercise, then specifically map the ones that matter most

3. Include a cross-functional team and representative customers in the process

4. Trace the journey right to the start and right to the end, and don’t miss any stages in between

5. Include wait times — these are often major pain points

6. Get down to the task level — the devil is in the detail. Knowing the broad stages alone is seldom actionable

7. Explicitly model expectations — those the customer may have and those the business must set

8. Specifically capture possible errors — knowing these mistakes can help you prevent them or ease recovery

9. Extract all the challenges / opportunities from each map and prioritize them in a separate backlog

10. Treat the mapping exercise as the halfway point — you must follow through to implementation for there to be any value

11. Don't include a squiggly emotion line with hearts on. The prettier the map looks the less valuable it tends to be.

#customerexperience

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