Three excellent mini videos from best selling author and Rockstar.cx founder James Dodkins that really frame current thinking around #CX and its key component the Employee Experience #EX.
With insights from Shep Hyken, Disney and Zappos go grab a coffee and enjoy a 10-minute break and look through the lens of Customer Experience Excellence.
Google trends tell the story that Design Thinking (DT) tops many executive’s interests in helping deliver progressive services and products in a volatile 2018.
Consultants, Design studios, and so-called business experts have spawned new revenue streams as other management fads, sorry, approaches have declined in popularity.
Just do the math on google with ‘Design Thinking’ harvesting 15.2 million results in 0.4 seconds and the top ten results including training courses, how-to workshops and top team offsites offered by consulting firms. In fact, Epictions reports typically 10 DT articles a day currently being produced, consumed and naturally circulated around our senior executives.
No doubt you will know of new functions becoming a reality with DT central to their remit, but what exactly does this catchy label represent?
Is Design Thinking a real thing?
Is it different? Can DT be useful in navigating our increasingly volatile world? Are there genuine benefits to adopting DT enterprise-wide?
As an engineer and design thinker (note the lower case) for the best part of the last four decades, this concept is not new. The successful creation of new services and products always relies on the marriage of creative thought processes harnessed to pragmatic objectives to deliver bottom-line success. Sorry if that doesn’t sound as sexy as some of the DT consultants would have you believe.
But wait, there is good news… incorporating DT into industrial age approaches can breathe new life and significant business benefit for not just enterprises and employees, but most importantly customers and shareholders.
So what is this Damn Thing?
A critical element to understanding DT is that, unlike most commonly deployed methods, is not a linear 1-2-3, A-B-C endeavour. It is not a prescription and relies on the ability of organisations and their people to understand, learn, prototype and reinvent simultaneously the processes and customer experiences that deliver success. New services/products must articulate needs of customers (even when potentially the customer doesn’t know them) and move the needle in terms of cost, revenue and service simultaneously (the fabled ‘triple crown’).
So, a significant measure of DT success is winning the triple crown. Anything else that doesn’t convert the creative process into a top and bottom line success is just moving the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. It might look better, give us a different view, but it is still doomed and will ultimately fail to deliver.
To be successful you need to create an organization and individual mindset that understands ever-changing customer needs, expectations and
Is Design Thinking winning the Triple Crown?
fosters an approach of learning, rather than the silo-based, industrial age metrics common to many.
I am going to delve deeper in an upcoming article so if you would like to get the pro’s and con’s, the potential pitfalls and the how-to to ensure success join me again soon. If you register your interest here I will ping you the ‘how to’ piece as soon as it is ready.
[contact-form to=”stevetowers@gmail.com” subject=”Design Thinking – the next steps”][contact-field label=”Name” type=”name” required=”1″][contact-field label=”Email” type=”email” required=”1″][/contact-form]
Increasingly enterprises are understanding the need to align everything they do with delivering Successful Customer Outcomes. Disney refers to this as “True North” alignment.
As the science of delivering True North develops organizations are upskilling their leaders to mentor all employees, from the lunchroom to the boardroom.
In the vanguard of these new professionals are the trainers, coaches and mentors using proven tried and tested approaches from the world leading CX companies such as Zappos, Amazon, Emirates and Zara.
When you are tasked with delivering business change, whether that is through the Customer Experience or Process Transformation using the latest techniques (rather than outdated industrial age) will guide you to immediate success.
All BPG Coaches and mentors are qualified to implement the CEMMethod customised to the industry and challenges you face and with the objective of aligning everything to delivering Successful Customer Outcomes.
You can review some of the latest folks to become licensed to lead these CX and Process Transformations – link with them below and dig deeper.
Upcoming sessions in Johannesburg, Dubai, Washington DC, Denver, Sydney, London, Lake Como (Italy), Montreal, Brussels – see the latest dates and venues
Upcoming sessions in Johannesburg, Dubai, Washington DC, Denver, Sydney, London, Lake Como (Italy), Montreal, Brussels – see the latest dates and venues
We have got to get more scientific about the Customer Experience.
The ACXP™ program is designed to introduce, develop and deploy the leading techniques and approaches that connect Customer Experience with immediate and sustained business impact.
Join us in a city near you and transform your approach to Customer Experience with immediate and tangible results.
Using pragmatic hands-on skills-based approach professionals get access to over 60 discrete techniques developed in the world’s leading CX companies.
CEMMethod™
Wrapped within the progressive and structured CEMMethod™ all levels of the organization are engaged to deliver the promise of CX success through delivering the Triple Crown –lowering costs, growing revenues and enhancing service simultaneously.
If your enterprise is demanding results from CX the four-day ACXM™ will get you in the right place double quick.
Existing CX measurement systems are fundamentally flawed, subjective and misleading
Connecting the dots from the customer experience to business impact is not just necessary, but essential for credibility and ongoing CX investment
Upskilling to proven tried and tested techniques and the CEMMethod will guide you to immediate results
Building an Outside-In dashboard that links everyone to Successful Customer Outcomes encourages the top team and enterprise-wide support
Recent validations…
Thanks very much for an amazing course! You are a fantastic facilitator and I’m truly blessed to have you share your wisdom with us. Jenny Simpson, Senior Consultant, Business Improvement, National Australia Bank
I’m writing to endorse BP Groups program. It completely changed the way I think about the customer experience and process. The program provided me with the ability to apply all the learnings immediately after the training. Very effective training with a wealth of knowledge to share. This is a must training for everyone who’s interested in making a process better! Maria T Ferreira AVP – Client Experience & Process Improvement at Citi
Thanks for your time and the fantastic course, delivered in Auckland recently. Looking forward to attending the Masters in June – will see if I can bring some colleagues!! Neal Ross, Chief Information Officer at Konica Minolta Business
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 (South Africa)
Strategic Changes
I did the Masters two weeks ago and it completely changed my world.
Since then things are going really fast within our organization. The rest of the guys in our executive team are completely sold on the concept.
I am now taking the rest of the staff through some sessions. We plan to work on and optimize 6-10 key processes in the near future. We are also:
• Revamping our organization structure to go to the “customer inclusive” model.
• We are going away this weekend to re-think our business plan (which was based on old thinking)
• We are actively considering getting rid of all our titles and silos in the organization and only having “the business we really are in” on the business cards.
• We are completely changing the KPI model to only focus only on and rewarding for an increase in revenue, cost savings, good service and most of all successful customer outcomes.
• We have appointed a staff member to begin talking to clients and to start understanding and managing their expectations.
To be honest I did not think it would happen that quick. Nachiket Gole, Chief Information Officer – PowerNET Computer Consultants
…you’ve fundamentally changed the way I think about every process.
And inspired me to try Outside-In (OI) in all walks of life.
The first two levels should be included in educational curriculums (yes, even at the junior levels).
If everyone started applying OI, the world would be… where it should be. Mahesh Mirchandani, CEO at BhumiTech
Rockstar.cx (James Dodkins) takes us behind the green line at Disney with Disney EVP Lee Cockerell
Join us to find out more of the Outside-In and Customer Centric approaches and techniques at http://www.bpgroup.org/training.html at a session in New York, Washington DC, Denver, London, Dubai, Johannesburg, Sydney in the next 90 days.
See you all there!
The single biggest piece of advice I give to senior executives setting out on the Customer Experience journey is to STOP.
Yes seriously, the vast majority of CX efforts are completely misaligned.
Customer Experience Efforts Misaligned
Don’t get me wrong the intentions are good. Unfortunately, it goes something like this:
Top Team are listening and decide they need to get with this customer centricity thinking.
Senior Management makes noises that the customer is THE thing the business must focus on.
The Executive engage the marketing guys to get with it and start pushing the message.
Functional leaders hear the noise and bluster. They start using the language, whilst thinking this is just more fluff and nonsense. They make the right moves for now but keep their heads down, hoever they know this will go the same way as so many other ‘strategic initiatives’.
Fundamentally functional heads carry on working with the out of date reward system that promotes industrial age thinking and practice.
The Executive see the repeating inertia i.e. results not coming through apathy and indifference and decide their business isn’t really an Amazon.
Top Team then reverts to just getting better at what we are doing, then when someone in ‘our industry’ proves it we will follow.
Functional leaders breathe a sigh of relief and invest even more in industrial age systems and training. The illusion of doing something, in this case, is actually worse than doing nothing.
The businesses failure is noted by customers who move to those who do understand and deliver Customer Experience success.
The company becomes another footnote in the history books. Talked about at business schools and picked apart because of the failure to get the new Outside-In customer-centric mindset.
ACXM Training Orlando 26th March:
for CX improvement consultancy and training, customer-centric culture transformation, the ultimate rockstar team building experience and rockstar keynote speakers.
Interviewed by Rockstar.cx on the theme of Outside-In. Here a few 2-3 minute chunks- do feel free to download and share, oh and sign-up for Rockstar.cx cos I know there are some excellent interviews coming up, the most recent with ex Zappos evangelist, Jon Wolske.
