Incredibly inspiring words from a unique man – Steve Jobs
When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and that your life is just to live inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life. Have fun, and save a little money. But life that, that’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is everything around you that you call life.
Was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. And the minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, if you push in, something will pop out the other side that you can change it, you can mold it.
That’s maybe the most important thing is to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. I think that’s very important. And however, you learn that once you learn it you’ll want it to change your life and make it better.
Cuz it’s messed up in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.
Steve Towers, BPG’s Chief Experience Officer, is an expert in customer experience and process transformation who enjoys spreading his enthusiasm for this field through coaching, consultancy, keynote talks and books (twelve published).
Through the CEMMethod®, now in version 15, he and the BPG affiliates help companies win the triple crown 👑 —the simultaneous ability to Grow Revenue, Reduce Costs, and Improve service.
With over four decades of experience working with large enterprises worldwide, Steve has distilled the successful strategies of top-performing organizations into a proprietary methodology that can be easily imparted to CX and Process teams and executives.
His forte lies in envisioning the future of customer-centricity, customer experience, process management and realizing long-term benefits from business transformation. Steve’s approach combines customer-focused thinking, cutting-edge technologies, and a human touch.
Steve is also an entrepreneur and an early-stage investor in innovative software companies.
With the emphasis growing on Cost Reduction how can we do that in a constructive way that also delivers better Successful Customer Outcomes?
In today’s competitive business landscape, companies constantly seek ways to lower costs, increase revenues, and improve service to remain relevant and profitable. One proven approach to achieving these goals is by adopting the Customer Experience Management Method (CEMMethod), which includes the Triple Crown approach; this focuses on delivering Successful Customer Outcomes (SCOs) through North Star Alignment and Outside-In thinking.
This article will discuss how the CEMMethod, combined with innovative technologies such as AI, Digitization, and Machine Learning (ML), can lead to significant cost reductions and overall business improvement.
The Triple Crown Philosophy
The Triple Crown management philosophy focuses on achieving three key outcomes: lower costs, higher revenues, and improved service. This is accomplished by shifting from an Industrial Age mindset, which emphasizes internal processes and efficiency, to an Outside-In perspective that prioritizes customer needs and experiences.
The Outside-In approach, championed by thought leaders like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Tony Hsieh, Richard Branson, and others, involves understanding the Key Customer Outcomes (KCOs) and aligning all aspects of the organization to deliver these outcomes. This North Star Alignment ensures that every decision and action contributes to customer success, ultimately leading to Triple Crown Benefits.
Successful Customer Outcome Canvas
A crucial tool in the Triple Crown methodology is the Successful Customer Outcome Canvas (SCOC). This framework helps organizations identify and prioritize the most critical KCOs, the foundation for all business activities. By focusing on these KCOs, companies can eliminate unnecessary work, streamline operations, and reduce costs.
Outside-In Strategic Matrix
The Outside-In Strategic Matrix (OISM) is another essential component of the Triple Crown approach. This OISM provides a comprehensive view of the organization’s current approach to CX improvement and the actual Customer’s real experience. It is often initially reported that organizations have an incorrect definition of Customer Experience in seeing things from their perspective rather than the customers.
Through the OISM, companies can create a roadmap for achieving SCOs and transforming their businesses.
Six-Step Innovation
The Six Step Innovation process (6Si) supports the Triple Crown approach, which guides organizations through adopting Outside-In thinking and delivering SCOs. These steps involve:
Defining the target area: Identify the process or area that needs improvement.
Identifying Customer Interactions: Determine the obstacles and challenges that hinder the delivery of SCOs.
Describing Actions: Develop strategies and solutions to eliminate Customer Interactions and achieve SCOs.
Conducting Cost and Benefits Assessments: Analyze the potential impact of each action on costs, revenues, and service quality.
Implementing the Innovation improvements
Migrating the Cutomer Experiences to the new way Prioritize the most effective actions based on their potential for achieving Triple Crown Benefits.
Customer Experience Management Method (CEMMethod)
The Customer Experience Management Method (CEMMethod) is a comprehensive framework developed by the BP Group and Steve Towers that combines the principles of Outside-In thinking, North Star Alignment, and Triple Crown Benefits. Initially identified in the ’90s by then SVP of Research at Gartner, Jim Sinur, the Triple Crown approach helps organizations adopt a customer-centric approach, leading to significant cost reductions and improved business performance.
Customer Performance Landscape
The customer performance landscape is a term used to describe the overall environment in which customers interact with businesses. It includes factors such as the customer’s needs, expectations, and preferences, as well as the business’s products, services, and overall customer experience.
The customer performance landscape constantly evolves as customers become more demanding and businesses strive to provide better experiences. As a result, it is essential for companies to continually monitor and adapt to the changing landscape to remain competitive.
There are several factors that businesses can consider when assessing the customer performance landscape. These include:
The customer’s needs and expectations: What are the customer’s needs and wants? What do they expect from the business?
The business’s products and services: How do the business’s products and services meet the customer’s needs and expectations?
The overall customer experience: What is the customer’s overall experience with the business? Is it positive, negative, or somewhere in between?
By understanding the customer performance landscape, businesses can make informed decisions about improving their products, services, and overall customer experience. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and revenue.
Examples of Cost Reduction Through the CEMMethod
Here are three examples of how adopting the CEMMethod and Triple Crown philosophy can lead to significant cost reductions:
Insurance claims processing: An automotive insurance company significantly reduced costs by streamlining its processing system, focusing on delivering the Successful Customer Outcome of a quick and hassle-free claims experience. The company achieved cost savings and improved customer satisfaction by eliminating unnecessary work and adopting AI and ML technologies.
Global B2B supply chain: A global B2B company rationalized its supply chain and shifted its focus toward the Successful Customer Outcome for its clients, resulting in significant cost reductions. By aligning all aspects of the organization toward customer success, the company was able to eliminate inefficiencies and optimize resources.
Pharmaceutical technology: A pharmaceutical company reduced costs by 66% by updating its technology infrastructure and introducing AI to handle labor-intensive tasks. This shift allowed the company to focus on delivering the Successful Customer Outcome of providing high-quality medications to patients more efficiently and cost-effectively.
Global Utility company: In an extensive digitization program, a Customer Performance Landscape was built to demonstrate the connection between IT systems and the delivery of the Successful Customer Outcome. Within a month, it was identified that seventeen of the existing systems no longer contributed to the newly articulated SCO and, after analysis, could be removed. The resulting benefits included the Triple Crown with similar efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity improvements.
Embracing AI, Digitization, and Machine Learning (ML)
Adopting innovative technologies such as AI, Digitization, and ML is crucial for organizations looking to achieve Triple Crown Benefits. By automating repetitive tasks, optimizing resources, and uncovering valuable insights from data, these technologies can help companies reduce costs and improve customer experiences.
AI and ML in Customer Service
One effective way to reduce costs and enhance service quality is by implementing AI and ML technologies in customer service operations. Smart Chatbots, for example, can handle routine inquiries and resolve issues quickly, freeing up human agents to focus on more complex tasks. This approach reduces operational costs and improves customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Digitization in Supply Chain Management
Digitization can lead to significant cost reductions in supply chain management by streamlining operations and increasing visibility across the entire supply chain. Companies can optimize inventory levels, reduce lead times, and minimize waste by adopting digital solutions such as IoT devices, predictive analytics, and real-time data sharing.
Conclusion
The CEMMethod hooked to the Triple Crown philosophy, focusing on delivering Successful Customer Outcomes through North Star Alignment and Outside-In thinking, offers a proven approach to reducing costs, increasing revenues, and improving the service quality. Organizations can transform their businesses, achieve Triple Crown Benefits, and thrive in today’s competitive market by adopting this methodology, along with innovative technologies like AI, Digitization, and ML.
Steve Towers, BPG’s Chief Experience Officer, is an expert in customer experience and process transformation who enjoys spreading his enthusiasm for this field through coaching, consultancy, keynote talks and books (twelve published).
Through the CEMMethod®, now in version 15, he and the BPG affiliates help companies win the triple crown 👑 —the simultaneous ability to Grow Revenue, Reduce Costs, and Improve service.
With over four decades of experience working with large enterprises worldwide, Steve has distilled the successful strategies of top-performing organizations into a proprietary methodology that can be easily imparted to CX and Process teams and executives.
His forte lies in envisioning the future of customer-centricity, customer experience, process management and realizing long-term benefits from business transformation. Steve’s approach combines customer-focused thinking, cutting-edge technologies, and a human touch.
Steve is also an entrepreneur and an early-stage investor in innovative software companies.
This is a collection of Jeff Bezos’ letters to shareholders over the years. It provides insights into how Amazon became one of the most successful companies in the world by focusing on customer experience.
The shareholder letters cover topics such as innovation, risk-taking, and long-term thinking. It also includes Bezos’ thoughts on artificial intelligence, space exploration, and climate change.
This book explores the business models of four of the most successful companies in the world: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. It argues that these companies have become so dominant because they have mastered the art of customer experience.
Scott provides us with insights into how these companies operate and what makes them so successful. It also explores these companies’ impact on society and what the future might hold for them.
This is a memoir by Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of Zappos. It provides insights into how he built one of the world’s most successful online shoe retailers by focusing on customer experience.
The memoir covers topics such as company culture, employee happiness, and customer service. It also includes Hsieh’s thoughts on entrepreneurship and what it takes to build a successful business.
This is a guide to modern marketing. It argues that marketing is not about advertising or selling products but about creating valuable connections with customers.
Seth provides insights into building a brand that people love and creating products that people need to buy. ‘This is Marketing’ explores technology’s impact on marketing and marketers’ future.
Morgan Blake provides insights into how companies can create a customer-centric culture that will help them succeed in the future.
It covers topics such as customer experience design, data analytics, and employee engagement. The book also includes case studies from companies such as Starbucks, Airbnb, and Uber successfully implementing customer-centric strategies.
This is the dawning of the golden age of Customer Experience. Join Steve Towers on FIVE key trends born of AI.
🌎 ChatGPT has the potential to significantly enhance your CX. This can be seen in five key trends. Smart chatbots, Augmented Intelligence, Enhanced communication, Innovation, and application programming.
Steve Towers, BPG’s Chief Experience Officer, is an expert in customer experience and process transformation who enjoys spreading his enthusiasm for this field through coaching, consultancy, keynote talks and books (twelve published).
Through the CEMMethod®, now in version 15, he and the BPG affiliates help companies win the triple crown 👑 —the simultaneous ability to Grow Revenue, Reduce Costs, and Improve service.
With over four decades of experience working with large enterprises worldwide, Steve has distilled the successful strategies of top-performing organizations into a proprietary methodology that can be easily imparted to CX and Process teams and executives.
His forte lies in envisioning the future of customer-centricity, customer experience, process management and realizing long-term benefits from business transformation. Steve’s approach combines customer-focused thinking, cutting-edge technologies, and a human touch.
Steve is also an entrepreneur and an early-stage investor in innovative software companies.
Now, let’s talk about the benefits of ChatGPT in customer experience. How can ChatGPT improve customer experience? I see five emerging trends.
If you prefer to consume your information via video, here it is (approx 4 minutes). https://youtu.be/aetJ_nAhrZo
Smart Chatbots
There is a new generation of chat Bots. The old chat Bots were scripted. The new ones are more conversational, and the old ones feel inhuman and frustrate customers.
The new ones are like you’re having a conversation with another human. The quality of the feedback you get is much higher. You can continue a conversation, so it’s like you’re talking to a live person.
Once we have the quality of ChatGPT in customer service Bots, it will be a whole new world of automation of customer experiences.
Augmented Intelligence
It’s finally happening. The AI system can help humans speed up their work and reactions towards customers. They can ask the chatbot to give a first idea of a reaction towards an email.
Then they can fine-tune it a little bit, or if you have to send an email to, like, let’s say, thousands of customers, and you have to tell them that maybe a shipment is going to be late or that you’re out of stock of specific products you can ask the chatbot to write an email for you and then you can fine-tune it.
The productivity of the humans working in and around the customer experiences will increase dramatically because of AI.
Conversation Management On social media today, many organisations have people just reacting to people on Twitter or Facebook. When they write a review on TripAdvisor or open table now, you can ask ChatGPT to write a first reaction towards a customer’s post.
Again you get a first reaction. You reach a specific style; you can fine-tune it. Now you can react to reviews on TripAdvisor, for instance, at five times the speed compared to when you have to type in everything, so it speeds up conversation management.
Again, it’s an increase in efficiency and effectiveness.
Rapid Innovation
Sometimes we’re like stuck. We always repeatedly think about the same concepts to make our customers happy.
Now you can ask your AI assistant to come up with some ideas and say how can I wow my customers when something like this happens? When something goes wrong?
You can ask AI about your company’s style and culture. Ask which Innovations and customer experience would bring value to our customers. Instead of getting together ten people for half a day, you now type in a question!
Some have tried it with some surprising results and generated new good ideas.
After that first session of ideas, you can build on that as a human team, inspiring the team to develop innovation in CX.
Application coding
Code interfaces for customers may not be up to speed, or they’re not convenient enough, and then the CX team wants the IT team to work on that.
However, there’s often a long queue of technology priorities, and you have to wait three months to change a simple thing for the customer.
If you could outsource this now to a machine, what if you could ask chatgpt to improve the code or change the code to improve your user interfaces much faster than in the past, which creates a new benefit for customers they give feedback then you can react more quickly.
If you prefer to consume your information via video, here it is (approx 4 minutes). https://youtu.be/aetJ_nAhrZo
Let’s summarize: The use of chat GPT can significantly improve customer experience in various ways.
The emergence of smart chatbots allows for more conversational interactions with customers, increasing the quality of feedback received.
Augmented intelligence also speeds up work processes and help humans react faster to customer inquiries.
Additionally, conversation management is made more efficient through ChatGPT in reacting to customer reviews and posts on social media platforms.
Rapid innovation is also possible through AI assistants who can assist in coming up with new ideas for customer experience improvements.
Finally, application coding can be outsourced to machines, allowing for faster improvements to user interfaces, resulting in better customer feedback and quicker reactions to their needs. Overall, the benefits of ChatGPT in customer experience are numerous and can greatly enhance the quality of customer interactions and satisfaction.
As these interesting developments evolve I will bring additional developments to your attention. Thanks for reading!
Please subscribe to the channel, and like this article.
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Jim Lecinski, Professor, Kellogg School of Management
(Jim is the creator of ZMOTs and Micro MOTs as a VP at Google 2006-2018)
L.G. Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award (2022)
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But what exactly is Customer Journey Management? It’s the process of optimizing the interactions that consumers have in an experience across all touchpoints and channels.
This involves connecting the dots between customer interactions and the supporting systems and people that operate the internal processes.
Effectively you can’t be successful if you do one without the other.
By understanding the customer journey, businesses can identify pain points and areas for improvement, ultimately leading to increased customer satisfaction, lower costs and growing revenue (the triple crown).
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“This course provided a terrific holistic framework for how I can more richly think about how MOTs connect to Customer Experience and Customer Journey Management. It’s a terrific program that I’d recommend and encourage Professionals to strongly consider.”
Jim Lecinski, Professor, Kellogg School of Management
(Jim is the creator of ZMOTs and Micro MOTs as a VP at Google 2006-2018)
L.G. Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award (2022)
Even though Customer Journey Mapping (CJM) has become a popular tool among customer experience (CX) professionals, many organizations are still not utilizing it to its fullest. Oftentimes, the cause of this is a lack of knowledge about how internal operations and data are related to the customer journey. To gain a better comprehension of the customer experience, CX experts need to comprehend the entire process customers navigate when interacting with an organization. This includes not only their dealings with the organization’s products and services, but also the processes and systems that underpin those connections.
Overview
Earlier this week, I released a short video about Customer Journey Management and its benefits for organizations, with examples from Amazon, Starbucks, Uber, Netflix, Apple, and the Financial Sector. (see the 4 minutes on YT: https://youtu.be/an5tNYXXzHo)
Wow, what a response. I didn’t expect that. Many folks have tried and failed to deploy Customer Journey Map approaches effectively.
Here’s a summary of some of the five most significant challenges. In another article, we will discuss how to avoid them based on the best practices of those who have delivered success.
Some significant drawbacks can affect a company’s ability to provide a great experience to its customers.
🤝Customer Needs
One of these issues is a need for insight into the customer’s needs and desires. This can create an inconsistency between their services and products and the customer’s expectations, leading to disappointment and exasperation.
💖Personalization
Furthermore, not offering a personalized experience make customers feel disregarded and unappreciated.
🎸Co-ordination
Additionally, a failure to properly coordinate and integrate different channels and touchpoints can lead to an incoherent journey for the customer, making it difficult for them to get the assistance or data they require.
🏢Structural challenges
A hindrance is silo-based thinking; when a business has several separate systems and processes, it can take time to get a comprehensive outlook on the customer’s experience and to determine their path.
This can make it challenging to find and address any issues or areas that need to be improved.
✍️Connecting the dots
Understanding the link between internal operations, data, and customer experience is essential. By being aware of the overall process customers go through when interacting with an organization, and the systems and processes that back them, CX professionals can pinpoint pain points and chances for optimization within the customer journey.
Additionally, it is essential to remember that CJM is not a single-time task but rather an ongoing effort to be evaluated and updated routinely. It calls for the participation and collaboration of all levels of the organization. It serves to align initiatives from various departments to upgrade the customer experience and positively affect the business.
Conclusion:
Several specific actions will reduce the risk of poor CJM implementation. We will discuss those shortly by reviewing the best practices of companies that have delivered success.
If you want the inside track on that, subscribe and share this blog.
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Steve Towers walks you through a case-study in the creation of two pivotal tools, the Outside-In Strategic Matrix (OISM) and the Successful Customer Outcome Canvas (SCOC).
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