Did you see the Dare! the best selling book launch in February? It features the story of the transformation of Apa Nova, a Veolia company, based in Romania. It is a great story – you can access the book here – https://www.amazon.co.uk/DARE-Behind-Business-Transformation-Project/dp/1916312004/httpwwwstevet-20
In addition, the authors participated in a conference to discuss and share the secrets of success. Here is my keynote from that event.
Developing the skills to ‘see around corners’ is just one of the factors that separate high performing professionals and companies from the also-rans.
That is what this one-day Masterclass, led by Number One Best Selling Author, Global 20 Guru and Consultant to the best, Steve Towers, is all about.
This is an intensive hands-on workshop during which you will gain access to powerful tools that can, with immediate impact, transform your business and customer outcomes forever.
You can review the complete detail here: https://denvermasterclass.eventbrite.com
You will leave the workshop equipped with new tools and techniques, access to all the workshop materials plus a signed copy of Steve’s books Outside-In and his 2020 Number One bestseller Dare! Behind The Scenes Of The Best Business Transformation Project In The World.
You can review the complete detail here: https://denvermasterclass.eventbrite.com
Space is limited so please book early to avoid disappointment.
You have impacted the lives of many of us in the Business community, in a big way in our career journey. Our success can be attributed to your insights on Outside-In Thinking and Customer Experience, among others.
Mashaba Mulaudzi, Manager Process Innovation, South Africa
This experience has completely transformed how we measure, collaborate, communicate and innovate with the customer in mind. Keen to guide the next willing souls on this journey.
Durrel Ramrathan, ACX Master Coach
Brilliant Workshop. The speaker was awesome and gave great guidance on matters I am finding in the workplace.
Cindy-Lee Muller, Planning & Roadmap Manager, MTN (Pty) Ltd
The workshop is highly recommended for anyone who wishes to simplify and expedite processes thereby enhancing customer satisfaction. The speaker is immensely knowledgeable and demonstrates vast experience in the subject.
David Mulovhedzi, DPSA
Thank you so much for your time, energy, and investment in our growth and success during our Masters course. You shared your wisdom, stories, and made it personalized to us. We are so grateful.
SAP Sales Process Optimization Team, USA
Thanks to you for a fantastic mentoring programme … I am an Outside-In fan now!
Jimmy Cuadra, Director of Information Management, Akzo Nobel Paints, Singapore
We can learn a lot from Jeff Bezos. 60 seconds may be enough when you understand how he creates success.
I am still perplexed that so many folks seek to justify the failure of once-great companies like Nokia, Motorola, Blockbuster and Circuit City as being complex.
It wasn’t complicated and still isn’t to understand the reasons why they crashed and burned. It is in fact pretty simple. If you lose the connection between yourselves and customer success you will fail fast. All the best leadership, innovation and culture crumbles if you are not delivering #successfulcustomeroutcomes. However, don’t take my word for it – let’s hear it from the maestro himself
I am returning to #England for my annual Steve Towers
#masterclass in #london #cuxtomerexperience #cx #process #acxs #acx #ccxp Don’t be shy, come and learn the latest, greatest techniques as practised by companies like #amazon #zara #zappos and #emirates
https://londonstevetowersmasterclass.eventbrite.com
We are bringing to the table the newest innovations and hands-on methods to immediately deliver success on your return to work. Yes, these sessions are fun, and what with London just before Christmas, what is there not to like?
And hey if you have already done one of our coaching events ping me and I can arrange a loyalty discount 😉 There’s a mountain of new stuff as we launch #theexperiencemanager and #cemmethod version 12.
Hi – Steve here 🙂
I’m a real sucker for great new tips, techniques, tools, shortcuts, “hacks” and other quick ways of getting better results from our processes and customer experiences.
But the truth is that the big wins don’t come from tips or tricks.
They come from getting the fundamentals right. Again and again.
Fundamentals like really understanding your customers (internal and external) so your products and services are what they need (not just what you think they want).
Fundamentals like having understanding the successful customer outcomes before you ever meet or work with them, so your processes and experiences build credibility and trust quickly.
Fundamentals like follow-up and nurturing your relationships so they are top of the priorities when your customers need to change things.
Fundamentals like being able to “meet” face to face, on the phone, or via a webinar or web page (and by “meet”, I mean help a customer get the best from their experiences and processes, understand their problems, the potential solutions, and decide how to change things to meet ever-changing needs).
Master the fundamentals and the little tips and tricks will improve your results even further.
Get the fundamentals wrong and all the tips, tricks or clever techniques in the world won’t hurt.
– Steve
PS If you’d like to get my very best training, insights and personal support to help you align your processes and experiences for all your customers (internal and external), why not join me for my new ONLINE training program? Click here for more details.
I am proud to officially announce my participation as one of the judges at the “North American Customer Centricity Awards” organised by Arcet Global.
Hosted in Dallas, Texas, this event showcases the best in customer experience and leadership across North America. Sharing ‘next’ practice, case studies and learning from each other’s success across a wide range of sectors.
I will be joining several senior judges and very much excited and looking forward to assessing the submissions from some of the worlds leading customer-centric companies.
https://customercentricityawards.com/awards/
#judge #awards #innovation #customerexperience #ARCETGlobal #customercentricity #dallas #texas
We upgrade our homes, our cars and our lifestyles as a matter of course. When was the last time you upgraded YOU? No, I don’t mean a fancy new pair of shoes or those nice looking jeans what I am talking about is the way you think and do. At a fundamental level, we need to be able to lead change and enable those around us to embrace and welcome all aspects of this volatile world, which as I have already suggested isn’t going away anytime soon.
All things considered, that is what our coaching, mentoring and training programs are all about. Not only incorporating the latest innovations in business change but reframing the way you think.
In this last twelve months, the approaches we use have upgraded to include a new platform that redefines process and customer experience deployment and includes the capture, analysis, ideation and implementation of experiences from the front-line to the board room.
Now some may think they have done all the growth they need to do and rely on those traditional tools for the daily work. That is, however, the way of the dinosaur, almost waiting for the asteroid to strike and wishing they would survive its impact. We know what happened there.
If so there’s a series of courses from one-dayers to a week across the planet led by been there and done it mentors who spend the majority of their time helping organisations embrace this brave new world. Come and get the benefits of their latest learnings as we codify together, hands-on, the means for you to upgrade and retool.
I will be blunt (nothing new there then) I abhor the talking heads know it all theoretical claptrap courses where learning is stifled and it is a listen and do as I say dirge. Hence anyone who has experienced our programs will tell you how exciting, invigorating and enabling the hands-on learning is. Even to the extent of using your own challenges and working them through the sessions in association with teammates and colleagues. Yes, case studies help but how much better is fixing your own stuff and learning how to integrate the tools and techniques directly?
That underpins our programs, learning by doing.
In fact, the relationships you forge in the fires of embracing the CEMMethod will become a part of the new you on your return to the office.
We are running open courses across the planet in 116 countries with over 100,000 professionals now qualified. Our inhouse courses, where we customise the material to your industry and current dramas, are also popular and we are proud to talk of the thousands of companies who have embraced the learnings. Either way, open or inhouse, you will have a fantastic time so have a look, delve a bit, and sign-up soon.
Your upgrade is waiting!
| CPP Master | Johannesburg | October 7 – 10 |
| ACX Specialist | Manchester | October 14 – 16 |
| CPP Master | Detroit | November 4 – 7 |
| ACX Master | Johannesburg | November 11 – 14 |
| ACX/CPP Champion | Johannesburg | November 25 – 28 |
| CPP Master | Cape Town | December 2 – 5 |
| CPP Champion | Washington DC | December 16 – 18 |
| INHOUSE | By Request | Your choice |
Is your Customer Experience initiative working for you?
CX Obsessed or just playing at it?
Upskill you or your team find out more to learn how others have become successful with a Customer Obsession strategy
If we incent people to achieve Successful Outcomes then we win for the employees, customer, shareholders, in fact, everyone except the competitors! This is what The Experience Manager enables.
Access The Experience Manager:
The worlds first Outside-in platform.
https://www.theexperiencemanager.com
Join us at an upcoming workshop/session: https://www.bpgroup.org/training.html
Outside-In The Secret (book on this theme from 2010)
www.outsideinthesecret.com
CEMMethod™
www.cemmethod.com
Connect with me on LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetowers/
Business failures are all around us, nothing new there then. If we go back a decade or so we saw the demise of Nokia, we’ve seen companies like Blockbuster crash and burn, and other companies in the High Street whether it’s in Europe or in the US disappear and never to be seen again.
Why is this so? When you look at the investment those companies were making there was no lack of intent to spend in understanding how the customer was changing. In the year that Apple introduced the iPhone Nokia was investing heavily in voice of the customer (VOC) surveys, customer satisfaction and NPS.
But this misses the point. Progressive Outside-In companies (think Amazon, Zara, Zappos, Emirates) are not about retrospective subjective analysis of performance. It isn’t about overlaying processes with a new language when fundamentally the very systems and processes were never designed to deliver customer experiences. They were designed with a factory mindset centred around production line thinking, throughput and waste. Hence the challenge is more fundamental as it’s not about rejigging what you’re doing – it is about a complete rethink to move outside in the way that you do business.
Remarkably even in the third decade of the 21st century there are still those companies that think they can just tweak and change the language inside their organisations. As if doing better advertising and marketing to customers and talking about ‘new’ services on top of their existing infrastructures and IT systems hacks it. The actual reality is somewhat different.
Top teams and senior executives need to grasp this challenge. Roland Naidoo, a senior executive at African based entertainments company Multichoice puts the choice starkly:
“Would you measure how fast a 1600cc car performed around an F1 circuit. No? Then why would you try to measure customer experience AND improve it on processes and products there were never designed with experience in mind. Go on enter your 1600 into the next F1. Wonder how it would perform?”
Roland Naidoo, Multichoice Africa
Those companies who understand that ‘outside-in’ thinking calls for a complete realignment and new appraisal of what the customer experience consists of.
Rather than, to coin a phrase, putting lipstick on a pig. You have actually got to think about what is it you’re trying to achieve; what does success look like for our customer? And then align across all functions, all systems and ways of working towards successful customer outcomes. Disney refers to this alignment as getting everybody to understand where true north is and not to do anything unless it contributes to that alignment. Imagine all new initiatives being assessed by a similar approach?
Another aspect which comes into play is this idea that traditional measurement* is predominantly subjective and retrospective. Progressive outside in companies are not reactive – they get scientific about the customer experience.
Measuring each interaction as it happens and if necessary course-correcting in real-time. They develop the ability to see around corners to understand what’s coming next. They don’t have to wait for analysis 2 weeks after an event to decide that some remedial action is required.
This knowledge in the instance of what is happening requires us to create this idea of ‘action in the moment’ for all our employees. Zappos**, for instance, give their employees the tools and the capability to be able to make decisions in the moment (without the need to escalate to supervisors).
And there is another challenge companies face if they are still organised around functional specialist silos. If you’ve recruited low paid people and given them a script to follow, manage them to average handle times and throughputs you’re going to fail.
Once more the outside-in companies have an edge here as they understand that to give your most precious resource (the customer) to the employees then you need the right people in the right place able to do the right things at that moment of truth.
So what is your organization doing? is it trying to put lipstick on the pig? is it just trying to overlay the existing process is an infrastructure with this new customer-centric way of talking and doing?
It is very simple. You need to get down to brass tacks of rethinking what customer experience is all about its implication for the organisation going forward. Those organisations that are taking this outside-in approach find the world becomes simpler, faster and much more directly oriented towards delivering successful customer outcomes and winning for the bottom line.
* Why does traditional measurement fail?
from the CX Rockstar aka James Dodkins at https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6566333517070954496/
** Zappos – Wow customer service: https://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2018/09/15/the-secret-of-wow-customer-service-is-breathing-space-just-ask-zappos/#7da91ff01b2c
Roland Naidoo can be reached at:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/roland-d-naidoo-b403a029/
| Certified Process Professional Master (CPPM) | 10th Aug | 4 days @ 5 hours per day |
| Accredited CX Master (ACXM) | 18th Aug | 4 days @ 5 hours per day |
| Accredited CX Mentor (ACX-Mentor) | 1st Sep | 4 weeks @ 3 hours per week |
| Accredited CX Champion (ACXC) | 8th Sep | 3 days @ 5 hours per day |
| Certified Process Professional Champion (CPPC) | 22nd Sep | 3 days @ 5 hours per day |
| Certified Outside In Master (COIM) | 8th Sep | 7 weeks @ 3 hours per week |
