The Customer Experience Revolution, June 14 at Sheppard Mullin, San Diego, CA

3 Jun, 2012 in Books, Brand, Customer Experience, Event, Experience Design by

DATE: Thursday, June 14, 2012
TIME: 5:30 pm – 6:00 pm – Registration, Networking and Refreshments, 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm – Program
PLACE: Sheppard Mullin, 12275 El Camino Real, Suite 200, San Diego
FEE: Members – $35.00, Non-members – $45.00

Register for the event

The Customer Experience Revolution – Lessons about different and better from some of the best in customer experience

From their new business leadership book The Customer Experience Revolution – How Companies like Apple, Amazon, and Starbucks have changed business forever, Jeofrey Bean and Sean Van Tyne share their aggregate views of some of the best customer experience companies and the practices that make them better, different, and more valuable than their competitors.

These “experience makers” dominate their industries and change consumers’ lives for the better.  They have a different view of interaction between customers and companies and know that great branding, products and services, are not enough to create energized advocates and sustainable profitability.

The experience makers determine, develop and deliver extraordinary experiences.  Bean and Van Tyne draw from their research and live interviews with people from Apple, Amazon, and Starbucks along with San Diego-based Skinit, ComplianceMAX and LPL Financial.

“Delivering extraordinary customer experiences is becoming more and more important… We know from the data that people will pay for it.”

J.D. Power & Associates

Purchase your book in advance and Jeof and Sean will sign it after their presentation.

 

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Designing Great Customer Experiences with the Power of A/B Testing

27 May, 2012 in Brand, Customer Experience, Experience Design by

“Over the past decade, the power of A/B testing has become an open secret of high-stakes web development. It’s now the standard (but seldom advertised) means through whichSilicon Valleyimproves its online products. Using A/B, new ideas can be essentially focus-group tested in real time: Without being told, a fraction of users are diverted to a slightly different version of a given web page and their behavior compared against the mass of users on the standard site. If the new version proves superior—gaining more clicks, longer visits, more purchases—it will displace the original; if the new version is inferior, it’s quietly phased out without most users ever seeing it. A/B allows seemingly subjective questions of design—color, layout, image selection, text—to become incontrovertible matters of data-driven social science.”

- Brian Christian, The A/B Test: Inside the Technology That’s Changing the Rules of Business, April 25, 2012, 8:47 pm, Epicenter, Wired.com

According to Brian, “In Amazon’s early days, developer Greg Linden came up with the idea of giving personalized ‘impulse buy’ recommendations to customers as they checked out, based on what was in their shopping cart. He made a demo for the new feature but was shot down.Lindenbristled at the thought that the idea might not even be tested. ‘I was told I was forbidden to work on this any further. It should have stopped there.’”

Brian goes on and says that “Instead Linden worked up an A/B test. It showed that Amazon stood to gain so much revenue from the feature that all arguments against it were instantly rendered null by the data. ‘I do know that in some organizations, challenging an SVP would be a fatal mistake, right or wrong,’Lindenwrote in a blog post on the subject. But once he’d done an objective test, putting the idea in front of real customers, the higher-ups had to bend. Amazon’s culture wouldn’t allow otherwise.”

Putting ideas in front of real customers is the best way to find out what your customers’ desire and how much they will pay for it. A/B testing is an important step in determining, developing and delivering the customer experience. It is a effective way to improve the real world effectiveness of your experience design and ensure your customers are delighted.

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The Power and Financial Value of Designing a Great Customer Experience

20 May, 2012 in Brand, Customer Experience, Emotional Design, Experience Design by

Great designs create elegant and meaningful experiences for customers. And the design-oriented organizations understand the financial value of this:

 “Apple, the epitome of a design-led organization, now has a market capitalization of $570 billion, larger than the GDP of Switzerland. Its revenue is double Microsoft’s, a similar type of technology organization but one not truly led by design (just compare Microsoft Windows with Apple’s Lion operating system).” - Adam Swann, Welcome to the Era of Design, Forbes.com

Adam goes on to say that these “Design-oriented” organizations “put design at the heart of their company to guide innovation and to continually improve products, service and marketing. They recognize that a great design leads to differentiation, customer loyalty and higher profits.” And that “Thoughtful and innovative design makes us feel good. It is no surprise that we are happy to advocate them, talk about them in social media and can be fiercely brand loyal.”

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Inspire the Creation of Great Experiences

13 May, 2012 in Culture, Customer Experience, Experience Design, Leadership, Quotes by

There’s work and there’s your life’s work.

The kind of work that has your fingerprints all over it. The kind of work that you’d never compromise on. That you’d sacrifice a weekend for. You can do that kind of work at Apple. People don’t come her to play it safe. They come here to swim in the deep end.

They want their work to add up to something.

Something big. Something that couldn’t happen anywhere else.

Welcome to Apple.

This is written on the wall at Apple. This is how Apple inspires its employee to dream and bring their very best to work everyday. To take chance – calculated risks – to do something wonderful.

If you want your company to create great experiences for your customers then takes a page from Apple and inspire.

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Customer Experience is a Journey – Not a Destination

6 May, 2012 in Brand, Culture, Customer Experience by

Too few companies are even managing their customer experiences. Customers are having experiences with their brand, message, and business – but they are not listening.

A few companies understand the importance of purposely determining, developing and delivering a great experience for their customers. They also understand that this is a continuous process that requires dedication.

Markets change, technology change and peoples’ needs and desires change. To consistently deliver a great experience for your customers, you need to understand your changing market, technology and customers’ desires. You need to continuously monitor your market and technology and consistently communicate with your customers about what they like and don’t like and what they want next.

Companies that consistently deliver a great customer experience know this is a journey and not a destination.

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Great Leaders have a Fundamentally Different Understanding of the Company Experience

29 Apr, 2012 in Culture, Leadership by

On April 23, 2012, Geoffrey James posted 8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Bosses. In this post, Geoff shares that the best managers have a fundamentally different understanding of workplace, company, and team dynamics. Geoff interviewed some of the most successful CEOs in the world in order to discover their management secrets. In this post, Geoff shares that the “best of the best” tend to share the following eight core beliefs:

1. Business is an ecosystem – see business as a symbiosis where the most diverse firm is most likely to survive and thrive. Create teams that adapt easily to new markets and can quickly form partnerships with customers, other companies … and even competitors.

2. A company is a community – see your company as a collection of individual hopes and dreams, all connected to a higher purpose. Inspire employees to dedicate themselves to the success of their peers and therefore to the community–and company–at large.

3. Management is service – set a general direction and then commit yourself to obtaining the resources that their employees need to get the job done. Push decision making downward, allowing teams form their own rules and intervening only in emergencies.

4. My employees are my peers – treat every employee as if he or she were the most important person in the firm. Excellence is expected everywhere, from the loading dock to the boardroom. As a result, employees at all levels take charge of their own destinies.

5. Motivation comes from vision – inspire people to see a better future and how they’ll be a part of it.  As a result, employees work harder because they believe in the organization’s goals, truly enjoy what they’re doing and (of course) know they’ll share in the rewards.

6. Change equals growth – see change as an inevitable part of life. Don’t value change for its own sake but know that success is only possible if employees and organization embrace new ideas and new ways of doing business.

7. Technology offers empowerment – see technology as a way to free human beings to be creative and to build better relationships. Adapt your back-office systems to the tools, like smartphones and tablets, that people actually want to use.

8. Work should be fun – see work as something that should be inherently enjoyable–and believe therefore that the most important job of manager is, as far as possible, to put people in jobs that can and will make them truly happy.

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Five Design Principles to Make a Great Customer Experience from Citrix

22 Apr, 2012 in Brand, Customer Experience, Emotional Design by

Citrix Design team put out this great video, Why Design Matters to Me – Using Design to Make a Difference, where they explain five design principles to craft the total experience that your customer has with your company:

Make it Simple by reducing the amount of information that people have to deal with and create content that is clear, meaningful and jargon free.

Focus on Human Goals by understanding what your customers’ need and want – their primary goal, preference and biases.

Inspire Delight – make it fun and create personal touches that make it memorable.

Exhibit Craftsmanship with exceptional quality in every detail with skill and artistry.

Deliver Unique Value by understanding what makes your company better and different and ensures that it is reflected in the experiences you design.

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From Customer to User Experience

15 Apr, 2012 in Customer Experience by

When our experience design team is creating solutions – and that is exactly what great experience designs do – we ask ourselves three questions:

  • What market problem are we solving?
  • What customer pain are we relieving?
  • What user goal are we achieving?

It all starts with the marketplace. What is going on in the market that you are looking at? What does this market need to be successful and advance itself? What is the problem that is in need of the solution that you are going to provide? Step back and get to know your market in context of all markets then look inside the market and across it. In many cases the solution that you will bring to this market already exist – maybe in a different form – in another market.

Markets are made up of customers. Understand your customers in context of the market. As part of your solution, what is the customer pain that you are relieving? You need to know your target audience – you need to define them and differentiate them from the other customer profile in this marketplace. Break down your understanding of your target customers’ business goals and workflows to diagnose the pain that your prescription will relieve.

Customers are made up of end-users. I hate the term “user” by the way – these are people who have objectives and goals that they need met. Get a deep understanding of the activities that these people are doing, break down the tasks and design efficient, effective and delightful experiences for them.

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A Modest Increase in Customer Experience can Result in Significant Gains

8 Apr, 2012 in Analytics, Customer Experience by

“Customer experience leaders have more than a 16 percentage point advantage over customer experience laggards in consumers’ willingness to buy more, their reluctance to switch business away, and their likelihood to recommend.”

- The Temkin Group  ROI of Customer Experience report

This March of 2012 report provides analysis of 10,000 US consumers and 3,000 UK consumers, identifying the financial benefit of improving customer experience. According to the report, a modest increase in customer experience can result in a gain over three years of up to $382 million for US companies and up to £263 million for UK firms.

Companies that want to see these gains need to start by determine the business impact that customer experience has on their specific business.

“Willingness to buy more” is an indicator of customer satisfaction and “reluctance to switch” is an indicator of loyalty. But it is the “likelihood to recommend” that indicates a true advocate for your business.

Only by creating a customer experience strategy with a program embed with metrics and measurments can a business achieve a great customer experience.

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How Do You Make Your Employees Customer-Centric?

1 Apr, 2012 in Customer Experience by

If you want a customer-centric company then you need to create a customer-centric culture. You need to create an environment in which your employees are empowered to be customer advocates – where they know they can make crucial customer decisions on their own that the company will support.

This culture does not happen by chance. Companies have to build this trust with their employees. Companies have to establish a high level of employee satisfaction, loyalty, and company advocacy to energize the employees to be an engaging customer advocate.

How do you know if your company has created an environment for customer centricity? Ask them. According to  Priceless Professional Development, through research, Gallup determined that high performance teams and the strength of the workplace can be assessed with these twelve questions:

The 12 Best Employee Engagement Survey Questions

  1. Do I know what is expected of me from work?
  2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
  3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
  4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
  5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
  6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
  7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
  8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel important?
  9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
  10. Do I have a best friend at work?
  11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
  12. This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

This Simple 7-Point Employee Engagement Survey ‘Moving Fast and Strong’ Plan

  1. Ask your employees to rank the 12 questions, 1 – 5, with 5 being Strongly Agree.
  2. Rank employee responses. Make the two lowest scored answers your top priorities.
  3. Enroll a cross-section of employees and managers to develop an action plan.
  4. Implement the action plan.
  5. Survey your employees’ responses to the twelve questions each year.
  6. Review the results and go back to step 2.
  7. Keep working until you get ‘Strongly Agree’ answers to all twelve questions.

 

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