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‘Inside-out’ or ‘Outside-in’; how Business Process Re-engineering and Six Sigma promise but fail to consider the Customer.

BPR, Six Sigma and Lean are constrained by their inside-out view of business processes, being aligned more to a cost cutting than a value-creating or maintaining agenda. Indeed, the limitations of a purely cost cutting focus has been recognized by management gurus, Hamel and Prahalad (1994), who argue that re-engineering – when applied as a cost cutting tool – leads to ‘corporate anorexia’, and that corporations ‘can’t shrink into greatness’. Instead, they argue, companies should define their competencies and try to use them to aggressively and proactively define the future of their industries and markets
How Laying off people can have a Silver Lining

Laying people off (making people redundant) is never an easy task. However, when you are faced with this task, how can you make this cloud have a silver lining and improve your Customer Experience? To answer this question let me draw a parallel with one of my business experiences and show how this unpleasant task could improve your Customers Experience.
One of the secrets of a great Customer Experience….

A few weeks ago we conducted our annual “Customer Experience Study Tour” in London England. This is where we take delegates to visit a number of leading Customer Experience companies for a behind-the-scenes look at how they approach the task of building a great Customer Experience. Companies include Pret-a-manger, Virgin Atlantic, Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, Dell Computers, T-Mobile, Lexus Cars, AOL and Microsoft.
Why Companies Have No Sense!

How many senses do you have? The answer six! Sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and common! How many senses do you use when planning your Customer Experience? If you are like many of the companies you haven’t really given it any thought. In my view your company therefore doesn’t have common sense!
The Need for Customer Insight to Support the Full Customer Experience

The customer has come of age with in corporate competitive strategy. Every successful big business has recognised that they need to listen to the “voice of the customer” in some form or fashion. The notion is so strong that almost all organisational change management methodologies incorporate a “voice of the customer” component. The message being that big organisations are purposefully moving towards the customer. In order to do so it is, of course, crucial to understand what customers think – to listen to them. Essentially this is the function of customer insight. No big news there. The interesting paradox is that often times the customer insight that these companies rely on is not complete. The research often only investigates the factors in customers’ rational decision making- even when they are intending to delve into attitudes and motivations.
The Credit Crunch A Time to retreat?

I always remember watching a film of a racing driver in the late ‘50s. He had just won a race where there was a fatal accident. He was asked, “After seeing the accident, did you slow down?” His reply has always stayed with me. He said this: Whenever there is a bad accident, other racing drivers slow down. I don’t. I see this as my opportunity to win. I accelerate and drive harder than before. As others slow down, I pull ahead of them and win. This, for me, is the same as the credit crunch.
Customer Experience Council

One of the big problems any organization faces is how to get their people to look at the customer’s end to end experience through the eyes of the customer, when they are only responsible for one part of that experience, i/e call centers or shops. As we know, when a customer starts their experience, many different parts of the organizational structure are effected and in so doing gaps and overlaps can occur.
Customer Retention: I could be dead for all they know...

It never ceases to amaze me how organizations pour money into attracting new Customers, but comparatively spend little on retaining them. Everyone knows it costs far less to retain an existing customer than acquire a new one, some say it is 5 times more cost effective. Why then is there an obsession with acquiring new Customers and such scant regard given to existing customers? In this article we’ll get to the root cause of this dichotomy.
Reality TV is educating people on how to complain successfully

I’m sitting writing this on a flight from Heathrow to New York – on my way to conduct our first Beyond Philosophy seminar in the USA. As I entered the terminal at Heathrow it reminded me of the Reality TV show I’d caught a glimpse of the previous evening. At check-in I overheard an argument between a passenger and the check-in clerk. I won’t bore you with the details, but it was the closing line that had such great significance……”You did this for a passenger last night on TV so why are you telling me that you can’t do it for me now? Do you only act nicely to customers when the cameras are around?”
Saying one thing, doing another

Half the customer experience is about emotions. So does your organisation measure the emotions you're evoking in your customers? When were your measures last reviewed to check they are still the right ones and changed if necessary.
The Branded Customer Experience - We never say no

You hear customers point out the inconsistencies - "I would like a non-smoking room, are there any available?" The employees replies" no, I'm sorry they are all gone" - and inevitably the customer says "but I thought you never said no"?
Are You A Coward? I Was.

Over the last month, I have come to hate emails and voice mail; not because I get 100 emails every day but because emails and voice mail are fast becoming the tool of the coward. At Beyond Philosophy we worked with a client a while ago whose account managers and sales teams never used to speak to anyone! They just used to send emails. If the customer called in they were greeted by voice mail which were kept on all day. You see the sales teams were all busy doing “real” work. The customers were just interrupting them. Surely this must be the height of “inside out” behavior.
Why Airlines are More Interested inThemselves Than Their Customers.

Did you have a good flight?’ This is the usual question that everyone is asked when they come back from a long distance vacation. This year I have decided to write an email and send it to everyone so I don’t have to repeat the answer 34 times! For an industry that has so much potential for making people happy, I am constantly surprised by their ‘inside out’ attitude towards customers. For those of you who haven’t read our book, ‘Building Great Customer Experiences,’ our fifth philosophy for Building Great Customer Experiences is: Great Customer Experiences are built ‘outside in’ rather than ‘inside out’.
People Are Your Greatest Asset - Rubbish! The Right People Are Your Greatest Asset.

The companies recognized in the Times ‘100 Best Companies to Work For 2004’ survey have put in a great deal of effort to achieve this. They know that employing the right people and creating the right environment will absolutely affect your Customer Experience. In my experience, most organizations spend more time in caging their people in than they do in freeing their potential.
Offshore Outsourcing - A Good or Bad Idea?

In a world that is commoditizing rapidly, even jobs are feeling the effect. For instance, the commodity of answering the telephone and providing “Customer service” is now the subject on many company agendas, as many turn to outsourcing as a way of reducing costs. It feels like a week doesn’t go by without another company announcing they are outsourcing their call centre to India. But how does this outsourcing affect the Customer Experience? In our work with company board members we are quite often asked our view on this subject. For me there are two answers - a theoretical one and a practical one.
Who cares what Women think, Business is a Man’s world…?

And that’s what too many people are still saying - if not out loud, then at least in their minds. If only they knew how much business they were losing because of this attitude. In my view, women are one of the most under estimated resources and channels in the business world today. They are a massive source of talent - particularly because they are generally more “intouch” with their feelings than men and, critically, because they make most household buying decisions as consumers.
Revealed – a simple formula for success! Exceeding Expectations

Customer Delight = Customer Expectation plus 1. This was the simple formula for delighting your customers that Ken Blanchard informed us of in his book “Raving Fans”. For me this is a great formula, but in itself it also raises a number of questions. For example, to deliver a plus one, to exceed something, you must know what that something is in the first place… so do you? Do you know what your customer expectations are at each moment of contact?
The DNA of Customer Experience: Chapter 1

How Emotions Drive Value
The Value of Emotions in the B2B Customer Experience

The three values of emotion From our business to business research we found three core values of emotion. These we define as follows: Intrinsic Value, Add Value & Risk assesment
Experience is Perception

Experience is Perception About 25 years ago Lucozade changed their brand image from ‘Lucozade aids recovery’ to ‘Lucozade replaces lost energy’, shifting their target market from the sick to the sporty. The effect was dramatic, UK sales between 1984 and 1989 tripled to £75 million. Same drink, different experience!
Best Practice: NPS Survey Integrated with Account Planning

Goal: Build customer experience metrics discipline into customer-led account planning. Individualized coaching to Sales/Account Managers to enable all accounts to complete the NPS survey; and successfully communicate results and action plan to customer, and integrate into account planning.
Naïve to Natural

Aim for "Natural" Customer-Centricity—So Ingrained You Don't Have to Think About It By Colin Shaw, Beyond Philosophy In our research, I have found that the great customer-centric organizations are either comparatively new organizations that have started with a blank sheet of paper or ones with a leader who fundamentally believes the customer should be at the heart of everything the business does. Unfortunately, this does not apply to the vast majority of organizations. To create a customer-centric organization, the first thing you need to do is understand where you are today and then move onto deciding where you want to be, to enable you to define what you need to change.
Mind the Gap: How You and Your Customer Perceive Performance Can Be VERY Different

I t ’ s Al l a b o u t P e r c e p t i o n Think about how you perceive your company’s performance. Now consider what your customer would say about your company’s performance. Customers have an entirely different perception – a perception that ultimately determines whether or not they choose your service or product and whether they’d recommend your company to others. The more you know about your customer’s perceptions, and how they make their purchasing and business decisions, the more successful your company will be.
Putting Promoters to Work: A 360% Increase in Revenue Over Three Years (A Case Study)

A Fortune 500 sales team, in the high tech industry, selling to a leading retail company was tasked with dramatically increasing revenue over a three year period. Sales management already knew the customer was experiencing performance problems and were concerned there might be relationship issues, but were unclear of the exact impact on revenue. Sales management was extremely motivated to learn and apply any new tools to help them meet their revenue stretch goal.
Second Life, Internet Communities and the Next Wave in Customer Experience

Second Life, Internet Communities and the Next Wave in Customer Experience Imagine an island off the coast of Britain with a population of 11 million - growing at the rate of at least 1 million citizens per year - where the first language is English and the vast majority of the population are within the age range 17-30. Would you be interested in marketing to this group, could you afford not to?

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