** CEMMethod v. 10 ** As with all these things Customer Experience Management continues to develop as organizations mature and understand better the need to align everything they do to the successful customer outcome. And in the spirit of new boots and pants we have updated the CEMMethod and associated glossary to version ten. Eleven years after its public launch now with 40+ individual techniques and approaches designed to hand hold you through the tricky territory of reframing process Outside-In.
** Updated Training program ** Naturally the training has evolved alongside the latest thinking and practice in the worlds leading organizations, so if you need a refresher talk to us about the very special pricing. If you have colleagues who should adopt the CEMMethod and become qualified business process professionals then join us for three or five day sessions at a venue near you soon.
An internationally recognised program with proven track record delivered by been there and done it coaches more than 130 times, in 52 cities with delegates from 105 countries. The program, now in its tenth year, utilizes the BP Groups approaches and framework to help you and your organization win the triple crown – simultaneously reduce costs, grow revenues and enhance service. Producing Immediate and sustainable business results across any industry and sector.
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“The dealership experience is as old as the car industry, roughly one hundred years old. While cars have changed, the retail experience is much the same as it was one hundred years ago,” says Dr. Ian Robertson Member of the Board of Management of BMW AG, Sales and Marketing BMW.
BMW leaders asked themselves “what business are we really in?” and determined to move beyond “just automotive”. In fact automotive describes more of what is done, rather than the result and outcome that is achieved, and in this digital enabled market it is more important than ever to align the business to the desired successful customer outcomes.
According to Robertson it led to “a complete redevelopment of BMW’s digital world, the physical experience at the dealership, and how our people interact with customers in the sales process.” Looking at next practice in organizations such as Apple and Disney, BMW created a new role in its dealerships—the product genius. The BMW product genius is a non-commissioned expert who invests as long as it takes to help shoppers with their choices. “The product genius is not encumbered by the sale process and is not motivated to sell a car,” Robertson responded. “His motivation is customer satisfaction.”
According to BMW, product geniuses are appearing at dealerships in France, the United Kingdom, China and the Netherlands before finally arriving in the United States.
“The objective here is to better support customers with in-depth product knowledge as well as enabling the customer to better utilize and configure products in accordance with their particular needs,” said BMW in a statement. “As the product genius needs to be mobile, he or she will be equipped with a state-of-the-art Information Management System on a tablet device, allowing, for example, product configuration and in-depth explanation of features supported by visuals and films.”
Robertson made an observation that applies to most business ventures in today’s digital economy: “What we have done in the past is definitely, definitely, definitely, not good enough for the future.”
In a recent article we covered McKinsey’s take on Outside-In. This time let’s look at a practical toolkit that can help you define any process, set of activities, or indeed enterprise in terms of the Customer Experience.
Our guidance ultimately links every task and activity in the organization with a Successful Customer Outcome. The Customer Experience is therefore the sum of all interactions; both those seen by the customer and those taking place backstage.
Customer Experiences should ultimately be designed and controlled for the mutual benefit of the customer and the organization.
Terms like customer experience management are banded about by consultants and popular business journals.
However customer experience is often associated with the soft and fluffy pop management sentiment that the customer is king, and typically lacks a clear objective contribution to business success.
Hence it is dismissed by serious business executives who focus their attention on production line based approaches that seem more tangible offering improved efficiencies and lower costs.
Prepare to reframe that thinking. Customer Experience Management (CEM), as practiced by several of the worlds leading companies, is science based and enables organizations to consistently win the triple crown – simultaneously lowering costs, improving service and growing revenues. What can be more tangible in terms of achieving business success?
So let’s get scientific about the customer experience. Being a customer-centric business today means more than treating customers like kings. It requires discipline, method and intent. It means engaging customers like people, connecting with them in unique and authentic ways, building and maintaining a relationship with them over the long-haul.
Stop making dumb things happen faster for less money!
A lot of companies pay lip service to customer-centricity, write contributors Steve Towers and James Dodkins, but not many “walk the talk”. Here are 10 differences between inside-out and outside-in companies.
There is a lot of talk today, more than ever, about customer centricity, client focus, customer experience strategy and Outside-In. Many organizations have adopted aspects of these disciplines and where many have achieved monumental success others have fallen by the wayside. Why is this? The problem is perception.
Is your company just paying lip service to customers?
Countless organizations have said all the right things to make the workforce believe that they are becoming a customer-focused organization and then doing the complete opposite.
The effect of this is rising costs, shrinking revenues and ever lowering customer satisfaction.
The problem with this is that there is now a collective of organizations that have a “customer centricity doesn’t work” mentality. It’s like putting a rain hat in your pocket, going out into a storm, getting wet hair, then swearing the hat is useless. Just having the Outside-In customer centricity ideals is not enough; you have to use them in the right way.
So, how do you know if you work in an Outside-In organization or an Inside-Out organization wearing an Outside-In mask?
Table 1: Inside-Out or Outside-In?
Inside Out – attending to tasks and activities
Outside In – aligning to Successful Customer Outcomes (SCO’s)
Doing things right
Doing the Right things AND doing things right
1
Pyramidal management knows best
Context and customer defined
2
Business as a factory (left to right)
Customer Oriented Architectures
3
Benchmarking competitors
Determine customer needs and trends
4
Customer feedback retrospective
Customer needs designed and delivered
5
Process Improvement and optimization
Customer Experience innovation
6
DMAIC/SIPOC/DFSS/Lean
CEMMethod/4D’s
7
Improving efficiencies
Developing value for the customer
8
Model and method oriented
Customer journey and experience focus
9
Top down business architectures
Customer centric frameworks (context sensitive)
10
Remuneration for tasks completed
Rewards based on delivery of SCO’s
Let’s review the not so subtle differences
#1: Pyramidal management
Does your CEO really know the most about your organization? Can your CEO really relate to customers? Let’s face it, your CEO probably hasn’t spoken to a customer in years (if ever) so, why are they best qualified to determine how your organization is run? Maybe they aren’t…
#2: Business managed as a factory (left to right)
What percent of the work within your organization is manufacturing? What if you don’t manufacture anything? Then why does everything within your organization look like a factory?
We can’t meet the future with an industrial age mindset… join the rest of us in the 21st century.
#3: Benchmarking competitors
If you benchmark against other competitors you will, at best, only ever be as good as them, no better, most of the time worse and you will always be one step behind the trend.
Are you still managing a business that you think looks like this?
Rather than focusing on what your competitors are doing, focus on what the real need of the customer is and deliver that, innovate the customer experience, there is no easier way to become a market leader…let your competitors benchmark you.
#4: Retrospective customer feedback
Asking customers “how did we do” is stupid, asking customers “how did we do” 3 weeks after it happened is even more stupid, allowing customer to self-select for a survey to tell you how you did 3 weeks after is happened is even more stupid than that.
If you want to get totally non-representative, inaccurate, and relatively useless data on how some customers may have felt you performed at some point then the traditional methods are fine (NPS, CSi, etc).
To measure a customer experience properly and objectively you need to first know what makes a great customer experience and measure if you are doing those things, we need to get scientific about the customer experience (CXRating).
If you are still in the land of subjective, self-selecting, retrospective feedback, chances are you have no idea just how well, or poorly, you are performing…even if you think you do.
#5: Focus only on process improvement and optimization
Taking what you are already doing and making it happen in a shorter time frame, more efficiently or for less operating cost is not good enough any more. If you are doing dumb things all you are doing is making dumb things happen faster for less money.
You should focus on innovating the customer experience. Any work within your organization is caused by a customer interaction somewhere down the line. If you engineer and innovate at the causal level, you will make the customer experience better and eliminate swathes of pointless dumb work that you are wasting time on every single day…simple really isn’t it?
#6: Trying to use DMAIC/SIPOC/DFSS/Lean to optimize the customer experience
If you are using process improvement methodologies that were created to optimize manufacturing processes to optimize the customer experience then you will find yourself in a mess.
Use a 21st century methodology like the CEMMethod that was designed for this day and age to really turbo charge your customer experience efforts. Have you ever heard the phrase “trying to fit a square peg into a round hole”? Methodologies like Lean and Six Sigma were great at what they were created to do, but they were not created to improve customer experience… and therefore won’t.
#7: Improving efficiencies for internal customers only
Trying to make things more efficient for yourselves inside your organization – more often than not – will actually make things worse for the customer. Don’t just perpetuate the Inside-Out mindset. You need to make sure that everything you are doing is actually creating value for customers. Don’t focus on internal customers, focus on real customers… they pay your wages.
#8: Model and method oriented
Don’t get shackled by the oppression of the models and methods that ‘the man’ has said you should use. You shouldn’t focus on trying to implement a model or method you should be focused on how to make the customer experience better… whatever it takes.
#9: Top down business architectures
Do you work in an environment when the person above you tells you what to do and you tell the people below you what to do? If your whole working life is focused on trying to make your boss happy what aren’t you focusing on?
That’s right, the customer.
As soon as we enter a habitat like this we make a habit out of ignoring what’s right for the customer over what is perceived to be right for the organization. I’m not saying you’ll be able to change this overnight, I’m just saying it’s wrong and will eventually lead to your organizations downfall… don’t get left behind.
#10: Remuneration for tasks completed
If you pay people for doing stupid things, they get very good at doing them. Traditionally, you will get paid for completing tasks and activities, filling in forms, processing invoices, taking calls etc.
If everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) was paid for delivering customer success just imagine how different your working environment would be. Empowering workers to be able to do whatever it takes to deliver customer success is the polar opposite of workers having to complete X number of forms in a day… this is maybe the biggest game changer of them all.
This video from a few years ago captures both the man and the moment.
He goes from strength to strength and this quote epitomizes his credo “I believe that drudgery and clock-watching are a terrible betrayal of that universal, inborn entrepreneurial spirit.”
Rock on Richard, carry on challenging and changing. At the end of the day it is the customer who wins because of you.
“It is about establishing one guiding principle that goes from the very top down to the smallest branch. Our employees who deal with customers every day understand their needs and do the best for them – this customer-focused DNA needs to run throughout the bank. We need to remember – and then never forget – that the customer is why we are in business. We need to change our behaviour at every level to reflect this simple truth. To move from stability to renewal, we need to first address and then clean up every aspect of how we treat customers.” The Royal Bank of Scotland’s (RBS) CEO Ross McEwan.
He’s been at the helm of RBS, once very briefly the worlds largest bank, for 18 months. Prior to this, he was the group executive for retail banking services for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) for five years. A New Zealander is the man from down under going Outside In?
CBA have certainly transformed and regularly outperform their peers. One of our favoured measures of ongoing success, the triple crown (simultaneously reducing costs, improving service and growing revenues) suggests he has what it takes. 18 months in and we should start to see the results. He can talk the talk, now can he really deliver for RBS. We will let you know next month 🙂
