CX Obsession - for CX and Process people - Getting more scientific about the Customer Experience

Are you a Process Performance Outside-In Outlier?

The Road to Hell is Paved with good intentions

This series of commentary is addressing the challenges faced by Certified Process Professionals® as they progress their organisations Outside-In.

We start with what is now a classic denial strategy and will progress over the coming weeks to review TEN (sometimes deliberate) misconceptions that seek to stop you on your journey to Successful Customer Outcomes.

‘The company has to get its own processes right first’.

In the context of Outside-In this is clearly a major mistake. As the Southwest Airlines and Apple examples demonstrate you fix the internal processes by understanding and acting on “the Customer Experience is the process”. In doing so eveything changes internally to better align to successful customer outcomes. That reduces complexity, removes costs, improves service and grows revenue.

Now if you brief is ‘in the box’ and does not yet extend to the Customer Experience the approach should be around optimisation through understanding the causes of work – moments of truth, breakpoints and business rules. Even though this is at best sub optimisation (recall the US banks Customer query process) it will take you to a much better place with significant performance improvements as you highlight and eradicate the ‘dumb stuff’.

Often times this has to be the starting point as, by definition, the way inside-out works is by the sub division of labour. You can only see the immediate walls around you and looking beyond maybe beyond your brief. Do not lose heart. Go with Optimisation (and if necessary stealth) as you introduce through existing projects the concepts of moments of truth, breakpoints and business rules. You will catch the eye of those responsible for the numbers as the changes you introduce go way beyond the traditional expectations.

Ciao, Steve

Next week… Changing the picture ‘My job doesn’t really involve the end customer. But I do have a mass of internal customers!’

CPP Master® Series FREE webinars and resources

BP Group updates and *NEW* WEBINAR series with CPP Master® Martina Beck-Friis

** FREE WEBINAR SERIES STARTS THIS WEEK**
The CEMMethod® WEBINAR with Martina Beck-Friis
– http://bit.ly/CEMMOverview

** Top DISCUSSION **
When you’re in a support department like IT, Finance, or HR who is your end customer, the rest of the organisation or customers outside…(Hussein Patel)
– http://linkd.in/at8hcB

Welcome to the BP Group led by Charles Bennett – http://bit.ly/9FDzJk
Dedicated groups for the Certified Process Practitioner | Professional | Master |
– http://linkd.in/CPP_subgroups

** David Mottershead Provides us with a new perspective with a prezi ?!**
http://prezi.com/xtekxms1ul3v/successful-customer-outcomes/

** Articles **
Outside-In is a business imperative (Steve Towers)
– http://bit.ly/cbszHM

All the Best until next time,
Steve Towers, BP Group Founder

See them at http:://www.oibpm.com |

BP Group 18th Annual CONFERENCE | Book your diary in Orlando Jan 17-21, 2010
– http://bit.ly/BPGroupUR18

Advancing Outside-In – The worlds FIRST Outside-In Conference

BP Group BPM Conference

View more presentations from theadley.

Advancing Outside-In update, resources and links

MAJOR MILESTONE ACHIEVED 5,400 members on BP Group Linked-In
BPGroup (est 1992. 43,000+ members | LinkedIn est. Oct 2008.)
Reflecting the growth and interest in all things process

The BP Group are Sponsors of the Business Process Professional® pathway –

http://www.businessprocessprofessional.com

** News & Events**
The CEMMethod® WEBINAR with Martina Beck-Friis (CPP Master®) and Steve Towers
– http://bit.ly/CEMMOverview
Enterprise Architecture CONNECTIONS subgroup exceed 340 in three months
– http://linkd.in/EAandProcess

BP Group 18th Annual CONFERENCE Heads-up | Book your diary in Orlando Jan 17-21, 2010
– http://bit.ly/BPGroupUR18

** Top DISSCUSSIONS **
When you’re in a support department like IT, Finance, or HR who is your end customer, the rest of the organisation or customers outside…
– http://linkd.in/at8hcB (Hussein)

How far down should process drill?
– http://linkd.in/ProcessDrilldown (Dick Lee)

Are corporate silo’s like castles? http://linkd.in/ProcessSilos (Karl Walter Keirstead)

Outside-in at Trader Joes http://linkd.in/ProcessTraderJoes (thanks to Patrick Ryder)
** New Sub Groups **

Welcome to the BP Group led by Charles Bennett – http://bit.ly/9FDzJk
Certified Process Practitioner | Professional | Master | – http://linkd.in/CPP_subgroups

** David Mottershead Hosts ANZ CPP Programme in November | (spaces strictly limited)
Auckland – http://aucklandcpp.eventbrite.com
Wellington – http://wellingtoncpp.eventbrite.com/

** New Articles **
Outside-In is a business imperative (Steve Towers)
– http://bit.ly/cbszHM

** 2011 Certification & Training programme**
– http://www.bp2010.com

Cheers, Steve Towers, BP Group Founder

Dedicated BPGroup discussions – apply via the links!

********************************************************************************
Certified Process Practitioner® – for those qualified to CPP Level 1
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=2929539

Certified Process Professional® – for those qualified to CPP Level 3
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=2515784

Certified Process Master® – for those qualified to CPP Level 5
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=2741121

********************************************************************************

********************************************************************************
EA Connections – interested in Enterprise Architecture & BPM?
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=3180325

Outside-In Process – Advanced & Enterprise BPM takes centre stage
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=2057992

Advanced BPM – it says what it does on the tin
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=2056169

********************************************************************************

********************************************************************************
BPGroup Sweden – led by Martina Beck-Friis
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=2678614

BPGroup Germany – Led by Paul Bailey
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=2669692

********************************************************************************

Certified Process Professional® November-January – Six cities to Mastery

The global programme grows capabilities from Certified Process Practitioner® through to Certified Process Master® – review the series at http://www.bp2010.com

The quest for the Triple Crown – Four ways to transform process for success forever

The quest for the Triple Crown – Four ways to transform process for success forever

There’s been much discussion about the Successful Customer Outcome across several LinkedIn threads recently
(see http://linkd.in/DanielaProcess, http://linkd.in/ProcessDick, http://linkd.in/ProcessGeoff, and http://linkd.in/ProcessNic)
however that isn’t the only way to move processes Outside-In. In fact there are FOUR tried, tested and proven approaches to simultaneously reduce costs, improve revenues and enhance customer service (winning the Triple Crown).
You can explore this territory by visiting the following mini articles. Next week we’ll feature several recent webcasts.

Articles:
Part 1: Understand and apply process diagnostics
| http://bit.ly/ProcessDiagnostics |

Part 2: Successful Customer Outcomes
| http://bit.ly/SuccessfulCustomer |

Part 3: Reframing process for an Outside-In world
| http://bit.ly/ReframingProcess |

Part 4: Rethinking the business you are in
| http://bit.ly/WhatBusinessRUin |

If you are already qualified as a Certified Process Professional you should already have completed the Outside-In Strategic Matrix® (OI-SM) which complements the articles. Try it out for yourself and see how Outside-In you actually are.

Next week THREE webcasts to as we travel deeper into Outside-In.

Best Buy is a poster boy of Outside-In, Are they done yet?

Although Best Buy gets its fair share of customer complaints online, it responds to them in a different way due to its Outside-In philosophy. Take Twelpforce. This system lets Best Buy employees see and respond to Best Buy-related issues that Twitter uses express, and over 2,500 people are taking part. The Twelpforce system brings together several groups: customer service representatives, in-store salespeople (called blueshirts), and the Geek Squad, technicians that visit homes to render technical assistance.

To see Twelpforce in action, consider this: Earlier in the year, Josh Korin purchased an iPhone and insurance plan from a Chicago Best Buy. His iPhone stopped working one day, and the store’s staff gave him a loaner BlackBerry to replace it. He didn’t want this — especially since he bought insurance — so he tweeted his disapproval. He did this on the weekend, but even so, customer service representative Coral Biegler tweeted back at him. The very next day, she had managed to find a replacement iPhone for him. From then on, Korin tweeted about how impressed he was with the service he received from Best Buy. His wife did too — and she has over 3,000 people following her on Twitter. Twelpforce grew out of Best Buy’s commitment to technological innovation from employees.

The idea was the brainchild of Gary Koelling, a member of Best Buy’s marketing group and a social-media guru. Ben Hendrington, a technology staffer in the e-commerce division, spent a week thinking about how he could harness the Google cloud computing platform to create a Twitter app to serve many employees at once. Marketing manager John Bernier was in charge of the project and successfully managed legal challenges like labor laws. The leaders at Best Buy support innovation, no matter where it originates inside the organization. CMO Barry Judge places a strong emphasis on innovations such as Twelpforce. We are nearly constantly in a half-baked mode, as for ideas, Judge states. Half-baked ideas let individuals [on the inside as well as the outside] offer you feedback. There is always an education going on in Judges department of marketing. If you’re not inquisitive, you will not last for very long in marketing, he stated. You must have some that aren’t successful to notice that.

The results of this mindset are easy to see in Best Buys marketing. One way Judge does this is posting television commercials on his blog prior to airing them. In one instance, commenters beyond the company expressed displeasure claiming a lack of sensitivity in a commercial that tells how a Blue Shirt assisted a customer in the armed forces. There was no airing of the commercial. Another innovation from Best Buy is opening the programming interfaces on its site, www.bestbuy.com, which lets other sites know about things like changes in price. The staffers in marketing made up all of these activities.
They were all risky. And they all proceeded.

Sources of Information for Advanced BPM aka Outside-In

If you wish to read and listen more on these themes the following references are useful.
Join the community discussing these issues, challenges and opportunities.

Community and social networking	Networking	http://bit.ly/I0tvw
Customer Capitalization – Roger Martin, Dean of Faculty, Rottman Business School	Article	HBReview, Feb 2010
Don’t give customers what they think they want Steve Towers	Article	http://bit.ly/3xUIn4
Evolution of Approaches BP Group	Research	http://bit.ly/Fw5Kv
Outside-In Interview with Blog Radio	Podcast	Outside-In (15 mins)
The Best Performing companies Millward Optimoor	Research	http://bit.ly/uAyVW