How to create fabulous customer experiences

According to Bain and Co. 95% of firms say they are customer focused, with 80% claiming they deliver a superior customer experience. Asking the same questions of these firm’s customers the survey found that only 8% agreed they received a superior customer experience. (Closing the delivery gap)



So what can you do to make sure you are creating great customer experiences from the point of view of your customers?

1. Think Outside In

Most people will describe their business from the inside – mapping out a service or product for the company employees to understand. If you look at your business from the outside in then you will get into the customer experience – you will see what they see when they interact with any part of your business.

To do this you need to get into your customers mind space, environment and see the world through their eyes. Literally, find ways to live a day in the life of your customer.

When I worked as a brand manager at Birds Eye Walls, many years ago, we had to spend 1 day /evening a month doing something with our target customers – this included attending a knitting circle, helping a mum prepare dinner for her 3 kids and going to bingo. It was cheap, easy to do and generated a wealth of insight into our customers’ world which would have been difficult to gain from purely formal research.

2. Know your customers’ touch points

Touch points are all the moments at which your customer interacts with your company, product or brand. Look at everything with which your customer comes into contact - from your branding, communication channels, vehicles of delivery (face to face, online, mobile), marketing materials, processes (purchasing, invoicing, delivery) communication, follow up, customer service, people, signage, physical space.

Really get into detail here. Focus on the need or desire that the customer is trying to fulfill by using your service and then map the touch points by channel (website, phone, face to face etc) and by activity or tool (brochure, customer helpline, instruction manual, packaging etc).

3. Map the experiences

Once you know where, how and when your customers are engaging with your brand (or the industry that you work in), you need to get an experience of your own business or industry through their eyes. At each touch point ask what are they thinking, feeling, doing, seeing, and hearing.

This should not be an exercise based on what you perceive your customers to experience, it should focus on what they actually experience. So you need to be honest. You need to be rigorous. And you need to involve everyone in your business. Experience the touch points yourself, as a customer not as an employee or business owner. Use qualitative and quantitative data to get the facts in relation to the experience. 

4. Tear up your business model

There is no point in doing a customer experience exercise if nothing is going to change as a result. So it’s time to tear up the existing business model and processes (for a moment at least!) and see where and how you can enhance the experience. 

Ask - What works, what doesn’t? What imperfections have been overlooked? How can we find ways to go beyond expectations and thrill our customers? What would make their day? How can you make the interactions easier, faster, safer and more engaging for them?

You should develop a clear understanding of what each touch point is for (why it is there and what it is meant to do for the customer) and know how the individual parts interact with each other to build up a complete picture of the customer experience.

5. Develop the long term game plan

It is sometimes tempting to focus on one big market event, major launch or relaunch of a product or service and believe that this is sufficient to deliver great on-going customer experiences.

Experience is built up of small moments of wow. It’s the smiley face in your coffee, an unexpected gift, a new widget, a customer care employee that goes the extra mile and memories ignited through photos shared.

Developing a pipeline of moments for your customers throughout your touch points, enables them to discover and experience your brand over time keeping it fresh, engaging and one step ahead of customer needs. 

Image by Edanly

The happy secret to better work

This is a great video from TED crowd. Very funny and an important message about your future happiness! Here's a little transcript from the vid.

"90 percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain processes the world. And if we change it, if we change our formula for happiness and success, what we can do is change the way that we can then affect reality. 

Only 25 percent of job successes are predicted by I.Q. 75 percent of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels, your social support and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat....


If you can raise somebody's level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed. 

Your brain at positive is 31 percent more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed. You're 37 percent better at sales. Doctors are 19 percent faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative, neutral or stressed. Which means we can reverse the formula. If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work even more successfully as we're able to work harder, faster and more intelligently. 

 

Get your teams working brilliantly!

The success of your business is largely determined by the commitment, productivity and motivation of the people who work for you. Yet it could be that up to 60% of your employees, are underutilized in their roles at work. Creating a culture of excellence is essential to growth and achievement of your long term goals. Here's our thoughts on how to make this happen...

1. Stop demotivating people!
A research study published in Harvard Management Update (January 2006) showed that the majority of employees are very motivated when they start out and after less than a year, motivation drops dramatically. The main reason cited? The management style and overall behaviour of their managers. So as a business leader your job is not to motivate anyone - this is an intrinsic drive individual to each person. All you have to do is make sure you are not demotivating them. So here are some thoughts...

• Set a purpose which inspires people and goes beyond profit and making money
• View your employees as a group of customers
• Tell your employees what they "want" to know not just what they "need" to know
• Address poor performance - there is nothing more demotivating to someone working their pants off than a colleague who does nothing and gets away with it!
• Recognise people for a job well done - praise does not breed complacency it re-inforces success.

2. Be clear about what you want from people
Involve people in defining the sort of business or team they want to be and the targets they want to set for themselves. Focus on outcomes that are essential to meeting your inspiring business purpose and make sure everyone is clear on what these are. Understanding the level of performance required gives people a sense of achievement when they meet it.

Set specific goals in 90-day increments - this enables you to monitor progress and experience wins on a routine basis.

Share, share and share. You can't overcommunicate your expectations.

3. Define repeatable models
Whether looking at your sales and marketing strategy or your core business model, defining repeatable processes which people can understand and work to will improve performance. Many people shy away from processes fearing that these will kill creativity, constrain people and drown the organisation in bureaucracy. Indeed this will happen when the process becomes the end point rather than a clearly defined structure for doing what works best, and when you don't involve people in defining how they do it best.

Think about it. If you have a sales person who consistently over achieves his sales targets by 25%, would you not want to understand how he does this and get others to follow the repeatable steps?An effective process improves each individual’s performance by establishing a common base of best practice for everyone. It also enables greater visibility of activities that work and don’t work and how people are delivering against expectations.

4. Train people
Whenever I work with organisations who want to improve performance I ask the same questions - Do you know what skills and competencies are needed to meet your business purpose? Do your people have the skills, knowledge and competencies to achieve your business purpose? For many the answer is well...not really.

Many organisations don't understand the nature or purpose of training. There is a plethora of research supporting the ROI of training. A US Department of Education survey in 2003 showed very interesting results - increasing an individual’s educational level by 10% increased productivity by 8.6%; increasing an individual’s work hours by 10% increased productivity by 6.0%; and increasing capital stock by 10% increased productivity by 3.2%

Training should be used to enable people to obtain new skills and knowledge, re-enforce existing skills and knowledge, be aligned to the business purpose and be measured.

5. Build resilience through Coaching
Consider ongoing coaching to drive performance. External coaches are often used by high performance organisations to help embed behaviours and attitudes over time. There are various individual and group coaching solutions available which can help to achieve the desired skills and competencies for high performing teams.

Coaching can help push people beyond their limits, expand skills, build confidence, maintain focus and address the real barriers to achievement - e.g. limiting beliefs, motivation and commitment. Coaching enables a person to review what works and what doesn't work for them. When it comes to world-class performance, resilience and self-discipline are just as important as mastery of the technical skills in question.

Avoid meeting death with these 9 tips

How many times have you been to a meeting not knowing why you are there, spent a few hours in discussion, played buzzword bingo and walked out non-the-wiser as to what will happen next and how the business will move forward? Meetings have been so abused in business there are now several apps which help you calculate the real costs of your meetings.

However, meetings can be extremely valuable means of building trust, forming relationships, enabling focus on a particular challenge and getting people to collaborate to solve a problem. Use them to engage, involve, discuss and discover. Here are some thoughts on how to run Awesome meetings...

1. Plan, Plan, Plan
The secret to good meetings is what happens before and after. Clearly define the purpose, plan the details and ensure you know what you want to have happen as a result of the meeting. If it is just for information sharing consider what other channels exist to communicate and save face time for real engagement.

2. Give everyone something to do
Rather than have one person chair the meeting have a revolving chair so that each person is responsible for keeping the meeting on track. In group work make people assign a time-keeper, facilitator, presenter etc. People don't like doing it but knowing they have a role makes them step up to the task.

3. Engage the senses
We interpret the world through our senses. Good meetings should aim to engage our sensory experience (visual, auditory and kineasthetic are the most common). Get people standing up and moving by having issues/ challenges/ tasks around the room. Use visual images and videos in presentations, avoid too many bullets. Tell stories.

4. Give people time to reflect
We all have different learning styles. Some of us like to get stuck in and do things others like to step back and reflect. Rather than one meeting consider holding two shorter meetings, allowing people time to reflect in between. Allow people time to do their thinking up front (especially important for introverts)

5. Bring a "Plus One"
Bring people who are not related to the team or task into the meeting. They can often bring a fresh perspective.

6. Genuinely involve people
Meetings can often be railroaded by the loudest voice and brainstorming can exclude the reflective, introverted members who have valuable contributions to make. Along with group work consider structured paired work, silent mindmaps (where people write down their ideas on a group worksheet and build on others ideas) and brain train (where each person writes down an idea and passes it to the next who builds on the idea, who then passes it onto the next).

7. Give people homework
The subject of the meeting should not be a secret. Get participants to do some pre-meeting preparation. Give them research or feedback gathering tasks and have them present back in the meeting - formally or in a group.

8. Get feedback
Ask people how they felt the meeting went. You may want to do this anonymously so that people can be honest.

9.  Do what has been agreed
All too often we agree actions and never hear about them again, until the next meeting where the same issue comes up. Allocate enough time during your meeting to agree realistic actions - what will be done, when and by whom. Check that it is achievable - dont just assign a task and hope for the best. Then keep the participants updated at regular intervals on what has and hasn't been done. Be honest.

Discover your business purpose

If you are setting up a business or are already in business and not sure that you have a clear purpose here are some thoughts on how to discover it. We say discover, because the "why you exist" is inherent in your organisation. You may not be aware of it or you may be painfully aware of it but have moved away from your core purpose due to market, competitive or financial pressures.

1. Involve everyone in your business

Often the pressure to make money, find new customers and stay in business can blur the very purpose of your organisation.  The people working at the coal face, who deal with customers or handle your products and services on a day to day basis can have a clearer view of what the business is about. In addition your people are an inextricable part of your current and future business. Involving them in discovering your business purpose ensures alignment, commitment and motivation to deliver it. 

2. Ask some questions

·         What do we stand for?

·         Why do we exist?

·         What change do we want to make? (to people, the market, the planet, society)

·         What problem do we solve?

·         What values inspire the way we work?

·         What do we want to be remembered for?

·         What are we proud of? 

3. Articulate it emotionally

There will be a theme that emerges from asking questions. Write it down. Make it as emotionally engaging as possible.

4. Test it

·         Does it have substance and meaning? 

·         Is it inspiring to those inside the company?

·         Will it be valid 100 years from now?

·         Is it authentic to your company/brand?

5. Make it Live!
 

Many organisations have mission statements (essentially an expression of purpose). But if your mission statement sits on the wall, in the bottom draw of people’s desks, or is plastered on mugs and screen savers without being demonstrated in all that you do, it is simply a platitude. Organisations that really embrace their purpose don’t have to write it on the wall for people to remember. It is part of the very fibre of the organisation, implicit in activities and processes of the company and the behaviour of the people.  To get to this level everyone needs to continually focus on how their decisions, activity and contribution fit with the business purpose.  

You may be wondering - How is purpose different from value proposition? You are right in thinking they are inextricably linked. Your value proposition is the demonstration of the thing that you do best and the benefit that you deliver which solves a customer problem. The purpose of your business is the why behind your value proposition. You can therefore have 2 companies with the same or similar purpose but who deliver their value proposition in very different ways. 

Photo by: Gematrium

The stone cutters

Whilst writing this months newsletter I remembered the old story of the stone cutters. A great metaphor for the importance of purpose.

A traveller came across three stonemasons hammering chunks of granite. To the first he asked “my dear fellow what is it that you are doing?”



The man continued his work and grumbled, “I am cutting stones.”

The traveller moved toward the second of the three and repeated the question. This time the man stopped his work, ever so briefly, and stated that he was a stonecutter. He then added “I came from the north to work but as soon as I earn ten quid I will return home.” The traveller thanked the second mason, wished him a safe journey home and headed to the third stonemason.

He asked the same question. The worker paused, glanced at the traveller and then looked skyward. He said “I am building a cathedral.” He continued, “I have journeyed many miles to be part of the team that is constructing this magnificent cathedral. I know how important it will be one day and how many people will find sanctuary and solace here. I know this because the Bishop once told me his vision for this great place. He described how people would come from all parts to worship here. He also told that the Cathedral would not be completed in our days but that the future depends on our hard work.” He paused and then said, “So I am prepared to be away from my family because I know it is the right thing to do. I hope that one day my son will continue in my footsteps and perhaps even his son if need be.”

"Cathedrals are incredible testaments to human endeavour. It is not only their grandeur or splendour, but the thought that they often took more than fifty years to build. Those who designed them, those who first worked on them, knew for certain that they would never see them finished. They knew only that they were creating something glorious which would stand for centuries, long after their own names had been forgotten.....

We may not need any more cathedrals but we do need cathedral thinkers, people who can think beyond their own lifetimes." Charles Handy

Beyond Smart: 5 strategies to achieve team goals

Working with teams can be tricky. It is challenging enough to achieve your own goals let alone align a group of people with their unique motivations, beliefs, personal objectives and experiences to a single goal, and one which may not be at the top of their list of priorities.

Whilst we are advocates of setting SMART objectives as a means of achieving team goals, SMART is simply a structure for thinking about and planning your goals. It is not the whole story. And because it has been used as a blunt instrument in the management world the mere mention of the word can be met with groans of despair by teams across the UK.

Here are 5 things you need to do to help teams achieve your business goals in addition to SMART.

1.  Give people something worth being part of

Jim Rohn once said "You want to set a goal that is big enough that in the process of achieving it you become someone worth becoming." You don't have to be the CEO to do this. Regardless of the size of your team or your level in the organisation you work with your team to set a vision that is meaningful, important and motivating. Generally – this is not going to be expressed as making more money, getting more customers or being number one.
If you can help people relate goals to purposein the work that they do then you will stand a better chance of keeping them engaged and focused on achieving their goals.

2. Your team has the answers, involve them

Involve people in goal setting and decision-making, particularly if they are on the front line, they have a significantly better perspective on what's really going on. Each person will bring a different perspective, experience, skill-set and knowledge to a particular problem.  Give everyone the chance to be heard. Listen intently, especially to the negative (yes some people are life's moaners, but the vast majority of negative feedback is valuable information about your business) and the quiet ones.

When goals are set from the top, with each manager setting goals for the next person down, then you may be setting your business up to fail. Goal setting like this leads to silo thinking, with each person only looking at their corner of the business at best and active sabotaging of your business goals at worst.

3. Start with what you want to have happen

What is the change that you want to make? What do you want to be different about the current situation? You should seek to describe the type of change and the number of changes in detail with you team. Really get into the detail of change. So instead of having a team goal to “develop a work plan by Q3”, your team may get to a goal such as “develop a simple, living plan, which makes it easy for others to understand what we do and work with us”. In this way your team will help you to define the benefits of the goal that will solve a particular problem.

It is also more motivating to focus on the benefits.  Research indicates that the more time you spend focusing on the benefit of the goal the more likely you and your team are to achieve it. ("Letting Good Opportunities Pass Us By: Examining the Role of Mindset during Goal Pursuit." Journal of Consumer Research: December 2010.)

This is the specific part of SMART taken to another level.  

4. Keep your goals alive

You set goals at the start of the year with or for your team, or at the start of a project and then you spend the rest of the year doing other “stuff”. By the time you get to the end of the year you open your bottom draw, pull out your goals and work out if you have met them or not. Sound familiar?

If something is important enough to be a goal make it visible to everyone. It keeps the goal top of mind for your team and it tells others of your intentions. In a number of research studies, going public was found to be motivating in helping people achieve their goals. (Self reinforcement effects: An artefact of social setting. Journal of applied behaviour analysis 1985).

Turn them into a living plan with mini-steps, timescales and measures and keep this somewhere visible too. 70-75% of people experience the world through their visually so bring your goals and plans to life. Use a variety of imagery, colour, fonts and media to bring your goals to life. Keeping your goals visible will also stimulate your team to review progress on a regular basis, but make sure you also allocate specific time to do this.

5.  Reward, reward, reward

How often do you tell people they have done well? Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly? We hear managers say they only praise when the team has done exceptionally well i.e. if they are simply doing a good job this is what they get paid for, so none necessary.

But praise and reward is exceptionally important in valuing people (especially when it is combined with the ability to challenge unacceptable behaviour). There is a correlation between praise and repeating desired behaviour. Research supports the use of external incentives such as encouragement and social approval in building internal motivation. (David Beswick, Management implications of the interaction between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic rewards. University of Melbourne).

Creating an environment of authentic reward is one in which people enjoy working. You may also want to consider letting the team determine how they would like to be rewarded for achieving certain sub-goals.  For each step the team or an individual takes in achieving your business goal, make sure you encourage and praise.

Don't be afraid to talk to your staff!

I work with social businesses, charities and commercial organisations and spend a good deal of time looking at positioning, messaging and creating dialogue with both internal and external audiences.

In my experience all organisations face the same issues when it comes to internal communication with some exhibiting elements of good practice, but mostly it's hit and miss.

Information sharing tends to be ad hoc and operational or undertaken as a “new initiative”, rather than part of the company ethos. It tends to be untargeted and not always relevant to what staff want to know.

Any internal communication needs to ensure employees participate in information creation, receive and assimilate information easily and have the ability to share messages peer-to-peer. The long term trends have moved from “tell and sell” to “consult and involve” - from high reach, low effectiveness channels (email, print) to low reach and high effectiveness channels - 2007 McKinsey and Coy.

In addition most organisations are missing a huge trick by not adopting a more "engagement" approach, especially with front line staff. Employees and volunteers often have a better handle on customers and organisational issues than management teams and are better placed to solve these issues. Actually involving front line staff in decision making and giving them opportunities to influence improves business performance, motivation and customer experience.

Ultimately any internal communication should seek to develop an on-going dialogue with staff, rather than be seen as a communication "initiative". And to do it well organisations need to commit appropriate time and resources at all levels in the organisation.

Are you having enough tough conversations?

In personal and professional life how often do we simply "let things slide... this time". Potentially because it is easier, we have too many other priorities, we are scared of conflict, don't want to hurt the other person or we kid ourselves that it is not such a big issue, really.

The problem is that this apathy can allow insignificant issues to fester and become real problems; problems that affect individual and team performance, and ultimately undermine your role as a leader.

Having tough conversations can be hard but how you approach it can make all the difference. Here's our top tips:

1. The starting point is your intention. Ask yourself, is addressing this issue in the best interest of the team, the organisation, the individual? If it is then be brave and have the conversation, regardless of the potential ramifications.

2. Be sure to challenge the behaviour (not the person) - so let them know what is working well, what they are good at, what you value in them. Then address the issue - make sure you can evidence it with examples.

3. Don't allow the other person to deflect the challenge. Often, when confronted with a behaviour issue we will try to turn the tables on someone or something else (aka Jim from the Apprentice). Stay on point, don't get drawn into any other discussion.

4. Make sure the challenge is understood - ask for feedback from the person on the behaviour being challenged.

5. Plan a path forward with the person. Get them to come up with thoughts for making the change and suggest ways in which you could support this.

25 interview questions with a difference

Interviews as a tool for selection suffer from a basic problem. When asked what they would do in a particular situation, candidates will often give the answer which they feel the interviewer wants to hear. Most responses are pre-rehearsed (if the candidate has done their homework) and may not give you as interviewer an insight into some important attributes of character, ethos, committment, motivation.

I saw these 25 interview questions on hiring-Hub today, and thought they might throw up some interesting and spontaneous responses.

1 What is your current boss doing wrong?
2 Tell me about a time you misjudged a person.
3 Do you check your emails when you’re on holiday?
4 If the day was 25 hours long, what would you do with that extra hour?
5 Do you have a role model? If so, who is it and why?
6 If you could try any job for a week, what would you do?
7 What circumstance brings you here today?
8 If I gave you £5000 right now, what would you do with it?
9 How do you stack a dishwasher?
10 How do I rate as an interviewer?
11 What would your work colleagues say about you?
12 Why did you choose to wear that shirt today?
13 In your view, what are the major problems in our industry?
14 Rank these in the order of importance: power, health, status, wealth.
15. What is your biggest achievement?
16 How would you react if you discovered that a colleague doesn’t like you?
17 Give an example of when you have learnt from a mistake.
18 If you did not have to work, what would you do?
19 Who in the public eye would you most like to punch?
20 Why is your best friend your best friend?
21 Tell me about your biggest failure.
22 What did you have for breakfast today?
23 Who has made the biggest impact on your professional life, and why?
24 If you were me and I were you, why wouldn’t I hire you?
25 You’re stuck on a desert island, but items such as food and water were taken care of, what two items would you want to have with you?

Are your meetings working?

How many times have you been to a meeting not knowing why you are there, what the meeting is about it, spent a few hours in discussion and walked out non-the-wiser as to what will happen next, and how you can move your business forward.

We have spent decades of wasted time in long drawn out meetings across many businesses we've worked in, and so decided to come up with our own process. Meetings should be inspiring, meaningful, action focused and a massively good use of time, when done properly!

The secret to good meetings is what happens before and after. Clearly define the purpose, plan the details and ensure you know what will happen as a result of the meeting.

The important thing to remember is that there are multiple channels for communication. Make sure you are using face time wisely. Use it to engage, involve, discuss and discover. Don’t pay lip service to people’s ideas and thoughts. If you ask someone for their ideas make sure you are set up to do something about it.

See our meeting manager tool PADDLE TM .

And don’t be stuck without one!