Customer-Insight Driven

Let's see what I can do in 140 words!

You may have read one of these posts mentioning our Hierarchy of Engagement. 

I like to think of each level of the pyramid as representing proportions of an employee base. At the lowest level are all employees who are aware of customer feedback. However, not all of them will understand what it means, and not all who understand will believe, and so on.

At the pinnacle of engagement, then, are employees who truly believe that being customer-focused makes a difference and take action - the right kind of action. These are true customer advocates, and, unfortunately, they are a subset of employees.

The good news is that the percentage of employees at each level does not have to mirror the triangular shape of the pyramid (it’s a marketing graphic  for goodness sake). In reality, the most effective, customer-centric organizations probably have an isosceles trapezoid of engagement.

This is a false dichotomy. My previous blogs on service-dominant logic tried to make this point in a broad, theoretical way. This post will try to give a concrete illustration of those arguments.

Let's consider two identical products created by two brand-new companies. One company launches the product with a technical sales staff and a prevasive marketing campaign highlighting the core features and functionality of the product.

The second company hires a sales staff focused on value-based selling and conducts a targeted marketing campaign focused on how the product meets the core needs of target customer.

Which company's product is more likely to have long-term success in the market? The second company.

Why? Because customers buy more than the product when they are buying a product. Customers buy value, and that value is NOT inherent in the product. It comes through the customer-centric service, sales and marketing around the product.

The second company realized that their product could only have value when it solved a customer need, so they targeted those customers and proposed the value to them. Customers can then accept the value propostion by acquiring the product. That is customer-centricity, and that is the ONLY way products succeed in the marketplace. There is no way to separate the two.
 

Another in my 140-word series.

As customer experience professionals, we often conduct customer surveys that primarily ask customers to provide answers from a defined set of response options. While I do believe we need to do more qualitative, ethnographic research, I want to take a different direction with this post.

Instead, my hypothesis is that our focus on closed-end survey questions leads us to ask "bad" questions outside of surveys. This hit me as I read this summary of Killer Questions by Phil McKinney. Good survey questions basically ask customers to confirm or disconfirm a hypothesis (our support is great, do you agree or disagree?). These questions are fine in a survey, but we need to use more investigative, Socratic questions within our organizations to drive the learning and innovation necessary to create the customer-focused strategies our companies need to thrive in the marketplace.

Another post in my 140-word blog series (it's harder than you think!).

I once wrote a post on the importance of testing your hypotheses. In it I mentioned the importance of a culture of testing and inquiry. The problem is that many meetings consist of opposing belief statements that are resolved by majority rule instead of actual testing and validation.

Here is my simple idea for creating a stronger culture of inquiry:

• Replace "I think..." with "My hypothesis is..."

If I hear, "I think we can grow market share by offering better support," I immediately think whether I agree or not. If I hear, "My hypothesis is that better support would result in growing our market share," I immediately think about the customer feedback we can use to test it. Maybe this only works for analytical types, but try it for a week and see what you think.

P.S. For a fun meeting game, count how many times "I think..." is used in your next meeting or add it to your business buzzword bingo sheet.

Entry # 2 in my macro-microblogging series.

The Service Recovery Paradox says an effective problem resolution can result in a stronger customer relationship than if the problem never happened. A strictly efficient, time-to-resolve mindset will result in few observable instance of this paradox. But combining timely and effective resolution with soft skills aimed at tapping into these 6 psychological phenomena that drive positive customer behavior will greatly increase the chances of experiencing it.

1. Build a relationship by listening, understanding, and taking appropriate action
2. Clear memory of the failure by creating a more recent positive emotional memory
3. Establish mutual understanding by exhibiting sharing and caring behavior
4. Drive customer desire to reciprocate by exceeding customer expectations of the interaction
5. Build customers' trust and confidence in the company through professional behavior
6. Implicitly ask for forgiveness by admitting the company's role in the failure

This post is the beginning of a series I'm titling, "Troy's Macro-Microblog." I use Twitter some but do not post very frequently. I struggle with the 140 character restriction, but I also find the restriction helps me be more concise and focused, something many of you know I struggle with given previous multi-part blog posts! So, I decided to launch a series of blog posts restricted to 140 words. Not sure how long I can keep this up (I just used 90 words introducing the series), but here it goes!

Post #1: Cynic vs. Skeptic in fact-based decision making
Post #2: Soft skills and the service recovery paradox
Post #3: Creating a culture of customer focused inquiry
Post #4: There is such a thing as a bad question

A cynic wants to put down any idea that is not theirs or they don’t already believe in.

A skeptic wants to find a solution but will require reasoned support that solution, even if it's theirs. That's a key differentiator: If you don’t hold your own ideas to the same standard of proof that you hold other people’s ideas, then you are a cynic.

Cynic: “That will never work because I don’t think it will work.”

Skeptic: “I think X and Y could cause a problem. Do you agree or disagree? Why?”

Fact-based decision makers have to be skeptics, but it is too easy to become a cynic, and that will destroy a healthy, fact-based problem-solving culture.