Over on the Duct Tape Marketing blog, John Jantsch stirred up a good conversation in a post about marketing as a system that has an “end in mind.” I commented there, and I see a kinship in John’s thinking to the conversations we’ve had here.  I’ve spoken often about using a target experience as a clear ‘end-in-mind.”

Beginning at the end.

Ever since I read Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People more years ago than I’d care to admit, I’ve known I was an end-in-mind girl. As a manufacturing leader I wanted to understand how my customers would use my product. As an M&A person I wanted to see an essential value customers would pay for that was unique to each business we reviewed. As a marketing executive my team focused on how a customer’s life would be better if they used our products or services to solve a need, problem or desire.

Over time, I learned that if some of us had a clear end in mind and made decisions in alignment (or as John would say, “in a system”) to reach that end, we’d have a pretty good performance win. Typically my team got a bonus; we certainly high-fived our success. Eventually I learned that if all of us across the company worked toward the same end in mind, our performance payback would be even greater.

Photo: brtsergio

Those experiences were simply the best; I bet you’ve got one in mind too. Covey was right. And so is John.

The shared journey (or what’s in the middle)

It all sounds so logical. Yet this “system” John describes so well: smart, well intended people all doing things that work toward a common vision of a customer’s success – is something to wrestle with, isn’t it?  A client & now friend of mine once said: “This is simple. It’s just not easy.”  At least not common!

As leaders, what if we could get perfectly clear about the customers who drive our growth & profits? Then what if we knew – ideally – what should happen and how they should feel from the moment they realize a need through the purchase, and on to how their needs change over time?  If we could enroll our peers across the organization in that shared journey, aiming on that end-in-mind, I know great things would happen.

What end-in-mind is your group or company working toward?

photo by Sarah G

We asked 644 leaders:  In your organization, who has the primary responsibility for defining customer experience objectives and strategies?

43% said CEO or Senior Management is responsible for customer experience strategy.

25% said everyone is responsible for customer experience strategy.

These two were the top vote getters.  Other participants threw sales, marketing or customer service into the ring, but none of the other responses garnered anything more than 8%. I think it’s appropriate that people tagged senior management with the responsibility for overall strategy (customer experience strategies or otherwise). This post over on Retail Customer Experience is a one of many I’ve read pinning responsibility at the top. That’s the uncontroversial, almost expected news behind this stat.

The thing to ponder here is that 25% said everyone is responsible. I worry when I hear everyone is responsible for something. That usually means nobody is accountable. Shared responsibility is good. No accountability is a leading indicator of a missed goal. I wonder if those organizations could be more effective if there was a clear understanding about who is setting direction.

Do you agree with the research? Who within an organization is ultimately responsible for the customer experience strategy?

Bringing the customer’s point of view into company operating decisions has become a such a common business goal that we now have Voice of the Customer as an official-sounding way to describe this thinking as a strategic research discipline.  Leaders in marketing, sales, service, operations and product all strive to better understand what customers think, do and want. Their companies do everything from capturing daily events to investing in large scale research studies.

After capturing all these lessons from customers, how many leaders actually act on what they learn?

Too few leaders act on what they learn.

We asked 644 leaders to rate their organization’s performance on this statement:

“We translate what we learn from customers to future product, marketing and operations decisions.”

Among leaders who say their organizations have a common understanding of customer experience, just 30 percent said they completely agree.

That’s less than a third that say their organizations consistently act on what they learn from customers. Ouch. Think of all the customer actions observed, feedback solicited, advice given, questions asked, support given.  Think of all the dollars and time and thinking invested in what organizations learn from customers.

I see a HUGE opportunity to improve future customer experiences here.  And a lot of money laying on the floor.

The same old thinking gets you…

…you know the Albert Einstein lesson: it gets you the same old results. (Another fact for your day: Einstein’s “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”  is so often discussed that the quote generates 181,000 results on Google.)  Sometimes “common sense” seems an oxymoron.

Why do you think this rich vein of opportunity is left unattended by so many leaders?

vv

Over on his Customer Excellence blog, Eric Jacques sparked a discussion about the benefits of a consistent vs a personal experience. I tossed in a comment there, and thought it would be fun to continue the conversation here.

Is a “personal” experience always better?

Instinctively, you might think ‘of course.’   Yet the question reminds me of a leader I met a while ago.

The scene: I was the keynote for a leader meeting, where I was asked to talk about the performance payoff for customer experience.  Well into the conversation, someone in back raised his hand:

“What do you do if your customers don’t want a customer experience?”

The group chuckled. But I was curious. “Say more.” I asked.

“I’m the regional VP of sales for a national packaging company. We deliver a GREAT customer experience! We tour the operations where the packaging will be used. Do custom design. We offer to inventory the packaging, and deliver in small batches over time.”

Frustrated, he continued: “Now, more and more often, customers are turning away from us. They’re putting their business out to reverse auctions on the web. They don’t want a customer experience!”

Of course this leader’s customers did want an experience.  They wanted an experience that was consistently IMpersonal, fast and price driven.

The painful (perhaps) but necessary (always) choice

His company was left with a choice: shift the experience offered to match the what their customers had come to value, OR continue offering a highly personalized experience to a new set of customers that would value (and pay for) it. Continuing to invest in delivering a highly personalized experience to his current customers would be a leak of both revenue and profit from his company.  By the end of the conversation, no one was chuckling.

While personal intuitively seems always better, to truly know we must understand what needs we’re solving for which customers. And perhaps it makes my point too well, but I’ll bet this Virgin Mobile ad evokes a reaction from you:

So!  How personal is the right personal for your customers?

Previously, on ’stat of the week’

We’ve covered some provocative stats pulled from the Aveus study Finding the Performance Payoff in Customer Experience. I shared that whether (or not) an organization has a well-understood definition of customer experience is such a strong indicator of performance that we used it as the primary distinction in the findings. For fun and for clear reference, I called these groups “Haves” – those that have a definition that everyone in their organization understands – and “Have Nots” – those that, well, you get it.

What does success look like?

This week’s stat is all about outcomes.  We asked leaders to tell us the metric their organizations most often point to as evidence of success.

It seems logical – even obvious – to assume that profit or shareholder return in some form would be any organization’s definition of success.  Yet the “OF COURSE it’s profit” reaction I expected to have when looking at these findings didn’t match the reality of what I saw.

Haves were singular in their measure of success. The distance between profit and customer service as #1 and #2 choices was substantial.

Have Nots are different.  They use revenue growth and profit as outcome measures on an equal basis.  Since we learned earlier that Haves are twice as likely to beat their profit targets, this bifurcated focus for success seems to drain more than it strengthens performance for these organizations. Ow.

The back domino

The primary outcome for which an organization strives is just that – it is an outcome.  Organizations don’t do profit.  They make decisions and take actions that one by one over time result in profit.

An analogy is helpful here:  imagine a line of dominos, stood carefully on their ends in a defined line.  An organization’s primary desired outcome is its back domino, falling when movements in front of it are done well.  We call this result metric “the back domino.”

What’s your back domino?