Learning Nugget 32 - Customer Experience - Better Every Single Time

Be BEST = Better Every Single Time ! Today’s article is about customer experience. If you don’t work in the CX practice, you may think this article isn’t for you….actually it’s more important for you than those that do. Everything you sell, everything, has the potential to impact CX innovation. It’s one of the primary business outcomes you can successfully sell to. Imagine Customer Experience Innovation via frequent, operationally non-disruptive transitions delivering unassailable, disruptive market competitive advantage Hang on, did we just say disrupt by being non-disruptive ? Yes that’s exactly what we said. Companies spend significant amounts on customer service. Contact centre optimisation, automation and self service such as speech, transactional activities moved to web or smart device (phone and tablet) applications. While valued by both the company and their customers, they create no differentiation, as everyone is doing it. The contemporary buzzwords include big data, analytics and mobile, or more recently “digital transformation” or “digital first". Investments in these areas typically involve lots of cash, long implementations, significant resources and again rarely provide meaningful competitive advantage, as again…..everyone is doing it. So how can you deliver deeply valued customer experiences that provide break-away differentiation? Game-changing differentiation? Meaningful, where a customer becomes a raving fan? Simple….don’t do what everyone else is doing. Do the opposite. Instead of a few big and long investments that are predominantly still focused on “better service at a lower cost”. Innovate via a customer outcome mindset and lots and lots of smaller frequent changes across the entire customer lifecycle. Better Every Time Customer Experience (CX) Innovation is about a mindset change, it’s about re-thinking how CX Innovation is undertaken. Re-thinking from a customers perspective, not from the perspective of how do we out compete. Re-thinking from a service perspective (typically reactive) to a proactive perspective (the customers “job to be done”) This mindset shift frees the organisation to make decisions like never before. The Better Every Time framework is a cyclic value accumulation model. It is based on five key principles (constantly repeated):

What is the customer’s “Job To Be Done*” (JTBD)
What expectations does the customer have right now with regards to the JTBD
How is the organisation engaging the customer around this JTBD, proactively or reactively
What is one small change (not just addition could be subtraction) that can be implemented now that delivers and creates a new and improved expectation against this JTBD
How are expectations proactively influenced

Themed around the premise of simplicity - Make it easy for the customer to get their “job” to be done and proactivity – predict what they need before they do and do it for them. Yes companies have the data right now to do that. Break-away differentiation from the Better Every Single Time (BEST) Framework, comes not only from the shift in mindset, but from a ruthless commitment to continuous and frequent proactive change that regularly resets the customer and market expectations on what is a valued customer experience. The ability to rapidly change, frequently, without pause with a fundamentally new mindset IS what can set an organisation apart. You don’t have to be at the bleeding edge. Even companies that are household names for amazing customer experiences, are actually recognised mostly for doing the basics outstandingly well and just making it simple, easy and proactive. As you look across any industry it’s easy to see that most companies basic operations are in dire need of a refresh, an overhaul, and a spring clean. But most are so busy, reactive and short term focused that they are unable to re-imagine and successful execute a relentless ongoing regime of continuous CX innovation. The model presented in the following 7 1/2 min video is in my opinion the most important model on customer experience that most people have never heard of. Developed in the late 70’s by a Japanese professor the Kano Model lays out a very simple, but incredibly obvious visualisation of how and why CX needs to continue to evolve over time.