Another Groundhog Day? Is your organisation driving you and your customers insane? 5 steps Smart Organisations take to break the cycle

Groundhog Day Movie Poster

In the 1993 film, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray re-lives the same day over and over again. He sees the outcome from his actions and behaviours as plain as day. After a while, it starts to drive him slightly insane. Only when he works out he needs to do something different does he finally start to get a different result and win the heart of the girl of his dreams (Andy MacDowell).

Insanity: (Definition) – doing the same thing every day and expecting a different result.

From a customer experience perspective most organisations are insane. Most desperately want to deliver better for customers, but despite the best of intentions, they keep making the same mistakes. Day in day out. These things turn their customers off and reduce financial returns. As in the film, it’s like watching a car crash waiting to happen. To get customers to love you and your brand you need to understand what really makes a difference to customers and business outcomes and then invest in the changes to make it so.

Mapping Customer Journeys and truly comparing against real customer needs helps break the cycle. And it can be done in days not months in 5 easy steps.

Step 1 – Get the cross-functional team (and customer) in the same room

Get the cross-functional team in the room at the same time, or at least in the same room looking at the same map over a short period. Get them to bring the facts, data, analysis and insights with them. Bring the customer into the room too, whether virtually (with insights, verbatims, videos) or physically. And don’t be frightened to bring some frontline staff too (they always have a good handle on the real issues). You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the speed of progress that can be made. And if you haven’t done this before, you’ll be amazed the clarity that’s brought and understanding that’s built through having all the functional experts in the room, seeing the same picture.

H2X Customer Journey Mapping Workshop

Step 2 – Walk the Journey & add a proven Customer Journey Mapping methodology

You’ve got to walk the customer journey looking through the customer’s eyes. We’ve found over the years that bringing the journey map to life visually, with all the facts together on one piece of paper galvanises thoughts around the big issues and potential solutions. The secret is looking at business and customer issues at the same time and finding solutions that solve both simultaneously.

Step 3 – Evaluate the options financially

Customer Experience investments are no different to any other business investment. So, we also rapidly build a business case model to evaluate costs and returns of the various solution options. This needs enough detail to be credible and to include customer dynamics (revenue and behaviour), interacting with fixed and variable cost to serve. To ensure buy-in we always get Finance to sign the model off.

Customer Experience Prioritisation

Step 4 – Walk the Senior Team through it

The cut through that can be achieved through a fact-based discussion around these Journey Maps with the senior team is compelling. Especially when you bring it to life with customer and employee stories.

As one client CEO said, when he was reviewing the maps with his executive team:

“You can take it you have our full support, now what do you need from us…”

Step 5 – Execute on improvement plan

For that organisation, focusing on 3 vital but important actions was the first step away from Customer Experience Insanity and becoming a Smart Organisation. The returns from the quick wins they discovered more than paid for the engagement in the short term, let alone the £Multi-M longer term returns.

HOWTOEXPERIENCE has worked with many blue-chips to quickly map customer journeys in order to identify and fix those “groundhog day” issues. Improving business returns AND customer love quickly.

Start this next week

You could start this next week. Think about that gnarly touchpoint or customer journey that you know is destroying value. Chances are, whilst you’re thinking about it, you’ll have already lost more value than the small investment required in identifying and nailing the solution with our support.

Contact David Williams, HOWTOEXPERIENCE now…you’d be insane not to!
T: 07968 854764 E: davidw@howtoexperience.com

PS Ask about our special X-ccelerator mapping programme that will serve up maps, business case and actions in two weeks.
More on Groundhog Day – Bill Murray’s early clumsy efforts to find out about his sweetheart… here

Smart and Stupid Companies

I spoke late last year at the Smart Utility Conference on developing and delivering compelling experiences. Being slightly mischevious I took the “Smart” theme and asked the audience whether they worked for Smart or Stupid companies and put up the following exhibit.

Stupid	Smart
Inflated Expectations and broken promises	Provide continuity and ownership
Sell, Sell, Sell	Show Respect and Honesty
Sneaky and dishonest	Give the Personal Touch
Impersonal and robotic	Reward existing customers
Incompetent and ineffectual	Provide aftercare

A National Consumer Council Survey of 2000 consumers over 18 months defined five attributes of both the “Smart” company and the “Stupid” company. They set out how British businesses throw away money by alienating consumers. They may resonate with your experience.

 

Attributes of Smart and Stupid

Of course, I agonised over which real examples to use and as luck would have it, the night before, my speech, BMI, the airline, proved to my wife that they truly were a “Stupid” Company. The outcome of the experience – she said, “I will NEVER use that company again” – reinforces what the Consumer Council found. Smart Companies have customers that come back more often and buy more when they do. I used a great personal story of a Smart Company, Apple to set the two apart. More on the detail below.

I told the stories to the audience of 150 senior managers starting with:

“It used to be true that if you had a bad experience you’d tell 20 other people about it, but in the digital age it’s more likely that you’ll tell over 1000. That speech and this blog is further proof that this truly is true.”

But if the economics are so clear, why are so many companies Stupid?

Executives obviously don’t consciously set about not delivering for customers. And none that I know would want to be characterised as working for a stupid company. However, short term profit focus leads to results that are just that – short term. And that’s because it’s often the primary driver from shareholders. Smart businesses understand that profit is an outcome. And that long term growth comes from not only acquiring customers and managing them cost effectively, but keeping and growing them over the long term. Often that requires making investments in policies and experiences that don’t have an immediate payback. It’s this approach to profit creation and mindset shift at the top that can be so difficult to attain. Helping businesses to do this is what HOWTOEXPERIENCE does.

What do Smart Companies do differently that sets them apart from Stupid ones?

Apart from the mindset barrier, what we’ve found though our work over the years is that the best companies have a systematic approach to driving sustainable and profitable relationships with their customers. (Often called Customer Experience Management). They understand what drives value for customers AND their businesses through a set of customer journeys. From Searching and Buying to Leaving, and every customer interaction inbetween. They design intentional, branded experiences that ensure the right investments are made through these journeys. They then set themselves up to deliver. Ensuring that plans to improve are embedded within business-wide strategies, plans and objectives and that these are cascaded through the organisation. They deliver these through strong cross-functional working and people with the right skills, supported by appropriate tools and capabilities. They manage through internal and external measures, a closed corporate feedback loop into management reviews. This ensures the finger is kept on the pulse and that day to day the intended experience is being delivered.

We’ve distilled the detailed practises Smart organisations adopt into a healthcheck so any organisation can compare their current practises and ensure they are systematically set up to deliver their commercial objectives.

HOWTOEXPERIENCE CEM Dashboard

After Easter we’ll be launching our HOWTOEXPERIENCE Academy to help organisations upskill their customer experience professionals and licence them the tools to be able to accelerate programmes and deliver faster experience and commercial improvements.   Everyone can be a Smart Company if they put their minds to it!

We’ve distilled the detailed practises Smart organisations adopt into a healthcheck so any organisation can compare their current practises and ensure they are systematically set up to deliver their commercial objectives.  

After Easter we’ll be launching our HOWTOEXPERIENCE Academy to help organisations upskill their customer experience professionals and licence them the tools to be able to accelerate programmes and deliver faster experience and commercial improvements.   Everyone can be a Smart Company if they put their minds to it!

What made my wife so mad at BMI and me so happy I’m an Apple advocate?

So back to BMI and Apple.  We’d booked a long weekend away with the family, 8 months ahead of the trip, this involved flying up to Scotland.  Four months before the trip we were informed that due to “operational reasons” our flights had been cancelled. Alternatives to go out a day before and come back a day after were offered. For many reasons this wasn’t convenient – the main one being that all our arrangements around the original dates were already locked in. BMI didn’t offer us a refund or apologise for the inconvenience, which would have been disappointing but not fatal in terms of the Williams’ Relationship with BMI.  Instead, they tried every wriggle in the book, and a few that weren’t, to assert that we couldn’t have our money back. Of course, booked through the internet, the first few attempts at resolving were through on-line self-service that kept us going round a loop for a week or two. Eventually we got a customer service number and my wife spent half an hour on the phone arguing with them, eventually getting sense by escalating to a supervisor who grudgingly gave the refund.  The whole experience left her exasperated and me inspired for my speech the next day! Since this story we have had exactly the same thing happen with Easy-Jet! We’re hoping for third time lucky with re-booked flights with British Airways – although with the imminent strike…I’m fully expecting it could be a long drive to Scotland!!! Clearly the airline industry is under enormous pressure. And the pressure for short-term profit is driving all the wrong customer outcomes and I might add significant additional customer service costs.

My Smart company example is with Apple. By the way, you can find many other good positive experience stories in the Experience Zone on our website. You might even want to add your own!

“You’ve just bought a new Apple product and you’re telling me that within a week, it’s not working. That’s not what you’d expect from Apple. We’d better take this back and get it sent off to the lab to see what’s wrong with it. Here’s a replacement.”

A year or so ago we were over in the States on holiday and my 8-year old son, with birthday money burning a hole in his pocket was desperate to buy his first ipod. So we went into an Apple store and found the perfect one. Oh, it was a thing of beauty that never left his side for the next week. Unfortunately, this included when he decided to take a dip in the Pacific Ocean in Malibu with the obvious result. He was distraught. We went back to the store out of hope more than anything. I explained to them exactly what had happened, the fact that it was his first ipod and asked whether there was anything at all that they could do – fully expecting the answer to be no but you could buy another one! The Apple Guy looked me straight in the eye and said:

“You’ve just bought a new Apple product and you’re telling me that within a week, it’s not working. That’s not what you’d expect from Apple. We’d better take this back and get it sent off to the lab to see what’s wrong with it. Here’s a replacement.”

He didn’t need to do it, I didn’t expect him to do it, I hadn’t even mentioned my conference speech tour on customer experience, but he was empowered and understood the importance and impact on me and my son. We’re advocates and I can asssure you that there are many more Apple products in our household as a result of this fantastic piece of smart service.   It pays to be Smart!

Hello world!

I’m starting a proper publishing strategy. Watch this space…first article next week will be about Smart and Stupid Companies!