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. 

 

Keep the faith and get real

Admiral Jim Stockdale, was a United States military officer held captive for eight years during the Vietnam War. Stockdale was tortured more than twenty times by his captors, and never had much reason to believe he would survive the prison camp and someday return home. Yet he never lost faith during his ordeal. He never doubted that he would get out, that he would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of his life.

But there were many that did not survive. They were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come and go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.

They failed to confront the reality of their situation. They simply hoped that the difficulties would go away. But having to face reality eventually became too much.

Stockdale knew he was in hell, but, rather than bury his head in the sand, he stepped up and did everything he could to lift the morale and prolong the lives of his fellow prisoners. He created a tapping code so they could communicate with each other. He developed a milestone system that helped them deal with torture. And he sent intelligence information to his wife, hidden in the seemingly innocent letters he wrote.

One of the many reason Stockdale is so admired by his fellow prisoners is that, in order to avoid being used as propaganda he disfugured his face. On one occasion he inflicted a near-mortal wound to his person in order to convince his captors of his willingness to give up his life rather than capitulate. The enemy backed off in its torture and harassment of other Americans it was holding as a result.

Stockdale had unwavering faith that he would get home and he eventually did 8 years later. His faith was paradoxically balanced with a very different mindset towards adversity than that of his fellow captives. He accepted the reality of his situation and used that reality to develop strategies for survival.

Keeping in mind Stockdale's approach to his situation ask the following about yourself or your business...

• What pain have I not been paying attention to? 
• What's the dialogue that I need to have that I haven't had so far? 
• What decisions have I avoided this week/month?
• What do I now need to do differently?

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.

Get stuff done - real life tips

Do you have an ever growing to do list? Are you managing mutiple tasks at the same time and seem to take a long time to get everything done? Dr Edward Hallowell a physchiatrist and author identified a condition called "attention deficit trait". A workplace phemomenon that leads to distractibility, restlessness and impulsiveness caused by having too many tasks to do. 49% of us are interrupted by distractions every 15 minutes resulting in a third of us not being able to get our work done and 1/4 of us not being able to think creatively.

Over the past few months I decided to put into practice some new strategies, based on sound psychology and coaching principles to improve my productivity, creativity and passion for work. Here are some of the things that have worked for me which may help you too.

1. Focus on why
When you link daily tasks to something meaningful you are more motivated to make it work. Think about the purpose of your organisation or your role in the organisation. Think about what that task contributes to your purpose. If the task does not make a difference then don't do it. If it does than think about it in the context of achieving your goal. That report you are writing, that meeting you need to arrange, that data you need to mine will take on more momentum if it is seen as an important part of making your goals happen.

2. Do what's important
You can spend your whole day engaged in busy activity without actually moving forward. You need to find a way of doing the most important. The problem, when you priorisite (as I have always found) everything can seem important and most people will end up with 25 priorities - just another to do list with a different name.

So I started putting tasks into piles -  MUST DO and NICE TO DO - and really challenging myself to ask how essential each task was in achieving my goal. When I really put the musts down on paper it helped me to gain clarity on what I needed to do - and there were far fewer musts than nice to do's. Interestingly I started getting through more of the important tasks and was able to move onto more of the nice to do's. I was also able to let go of tasks that really contributed little to the overall outcome.

3. Eat a frog for Breakfast
This comes from a Mark Twain quote. If you have to eat a frog (which may be a daunting thought for many!), have it for breakfast and the rest of the day will be free from worry. Effectively you need to do the biggest/ the scariest/ the least liked task first otherwise you will worry and procrastinate over it all day. In my own experience, though tricky to stick to, its incredibly effective. The additional benefit is that those big scary tasks, when done straight away become less onerous, less daunting and far easier.  

4. Find a place to put mental distractions
Distractions are inevitable. Whilst you can shut yourself away from colleagues and family to get stuff done, you can't get away from your own mind that easily. So here's an exercise that can help.

Think about all the distractions that you want to put aside for a period of time to get something done. Focus on them intently. Now think about where you want to put these distractions. It could be anything - a box, a room, a basket, another country! When you have a place focus on what that place looks like - what colour, shape, sound, temperature it has. When you have a clear image you can mentally move the distractions to this place. When you are ready to deal with the distractions you can let them out.

5. Keep track
Keep a log of everything you do and what distracts you. Whilst you may have a timesheet if client facing or feel you have a grasp on what you work in the week, you'll be amazed at what is really going on when you honestly track it.

6. Take a break
This may seem counter intuitive, but there is only so much our brains can handle when immersed in a project. Taking 5 minutes to do something else, change your perspective, get fresh air, go for a walk can give you much needed perspective and renewed momentum to get the task done.

7. Allocate realistic time
Often we try to snatch time inbetween meetings, late at night or whilst doing other things. We block time out for meetings but few of us schedule time for actual work and stick to it. If you have something important to do block time out in your diary. Treat it like a real meeting  - with yourself. Then only focus on the task in hand.

8. Work out how you personally get things done
There is lots of advice out there about getting stuff done. Often you have the best answers yourself. Neurolinguistic programming is all about modelling the stuctures of behaviour. It's about finding out how you uniquely do things and then repeating that model. Here's an exercise...

Think back to a time when you were the best you could be at getting a task done. Think about how you got the task done. What happened to make you start the task; what happened when you worked on the task; how did you finish the task; what helped you and hindered you in getting the task done? When you understand what it is you personally and uniquely do to get something done then you can apply it to any new task. Here's my personal model for getting big stuff done (whether I have a week or a day to do it this is what works best for me)...

• Focus on why I am doing it - the benefit
• Allocate time to start
• Do some research - get inspired
• Write down ideas
• Do something else
• Come back to the task and get 25% of it done - doing more research and ideas
• Do something else 
• Come back to the task and get 95% complete - remind myself why I am doing it
• Do something else
• Come back to the task - check the 95%, complete the 5% and check it.  

Which marketing channel is right for your business?

Which marketing channel to use is a constant challenge for many businesses, especially with the increasing opportunities in mobile and inbound marketing - the options can seem endless, confusing and daunting. Choosing the right channels, however, lies in defining what "effective" commucation means for your business and there are a number of things to consider. 

1. Objectives: What are you trying to achieve? This has to be the start point and is often given fleeting thought. For each and every communication you need to think what do I want my target audience to do as a result. Then you can ask which channels could help me do it. If you are building relationships then online/ off line editorial and email marketing (along with a raft of other channels) will be key.

2. Target audience reach: Whichever channel you use, it needs to be able to get to as many of your target audience as you need to get to achieve your objectives (and within your budget). Some channels lend themselves to certain age groups, demographics and needstates. If you are targeting youth then mobile and social media are a must. If you are selling landscaping ornaments to the over 60's then print is a very relevant channel.

3. Budget: As mentioned above. If you have no marketing budget then email marketing and social media are going to be must haves. But even if you have a large budget you still need to make sure you are achieving the above, in order to maximise the efficiency of your spend.You need to look at all the options and work out what is the most cost effective way of reaching your target audience and achieving your objective. You dont need to get into complex ROI's to get an idea. Look at how many of your target audience will be exposed to your communication, how well the channel helps you achieve your objective (give it a score) and then work out the cost per communication hit.

4. Creative Content: And lastly, perhaps most importantly, the effectiveness of a channel is directly related to the quality of its content. Blogging, without interesting, engaging, value added content won't get you very far. Emails that spam or sell too much will not build relationships. Print ads that are bland, uncreative and don't inspire desire will fail, regardless of how much money is thrown at them!