Be Different or be dead

February 20, 2017

Why real passion is key to delivering amazing service

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Why real passion is key to delivering amazing service.

Many organizations today declare they are in the business of providing memorable customer experiences; they believe that delivering an amazing experience to their customers is the vital strategy to gain a competitive advantage over others in their markets.

And there are a plethora of opinions of how to build a customer experience (CX) strategy, for example this is one of many takes on it.

If customer experience refers to the sum of every interaction a customer has with an organization, both pre and post sale, the customer experience strategy defines the actionable plans in place to deliver a positive, meaningful experience across those interactions.

And a number of inputs to building the strategy are mentioned including competitive insights, customer research, customer behaviour facts, market data, and the service strategy of the organization which is necessary to define context for the CX piece of it.

This sounds like a complicated (and expensive) piece of work for any organization who believes a ‘meaningful experience’ is the key to building a successful and sustainable service organization.

I don’t think it’s all that complicated; I believe there is a special ingredient to mixing a brew of remarkable customer experiences. And I don’t think extensive studies of your competitors, customer behaviour and the market are required to do it.

In fact I believe you can have a mediocre service strategy and know absolutely nothing about what your competitors are doing in the CX space and still deliver mind-blowing experiences for your customers.

Experiences happen with engagement — I believe that at its most fundamental level, experiences in any organization are created when an employee engages with a (potential) customer.

There are other moments of engagement that are facilitated by technology. People calling into a call center who have to engage with an Integrated Voice Response (IVR) system, who are on a website and need to use the chatbot, search or cart-building functions all come face-to-face with a piece of technology substituting for a human.

DIY is becoming a larger piece of the human-organization pie and has been given a major boost by COVID-19 which stripped most organizations of employees and has created a burgeoning online transaction business.

Technology facilitated interactions are on the rise, no question about it and that are likely to continue to increase in the future.

The critical ingredient in human-to-human contact is emotion.

But I believe, however, that they should be architected from the human-human connection in any event — how humans engage with other humans should be the benchmark for designing technology-human engagement.

Of course this is a very contentious point because the main driver behind technology-human substitution is cost reduction.
Technology is used not to create human based experiences for people but to replicate what people do at lower costs. And the problem has always been that costs are reduced but it drags the CX down with it.

Emotion defines the experience — So what is at the heart of the human-human moment that influences the experience?

If the moment is replete with descriptors like caring, politeness, respect, understanding, patience, responsiveness, trust, interest, feelings, and empathy on the part of the moment provider chances are the customer will have an amazing experience in contrast with a moment characterized by words such as frustration, anger, dominated, ignored and unfulfilled.

Emotion is the common denominator of both delightful and painful moments so the challenge for any organization who covets the most amazing CX provider award is to architect every moment with emotion.

Every customer moment must be infused with emotion.

What emotion element(s) should be infused into call center moment, the server moment in a restaurant, the complaint-handler moment, the website chatbot moment, the website buy moment, the website search moment (one of the most frustrating moments for me personally), and the product return moment?

Emotion is the strategy — If customer moments are infused with emotion, it really doesn’t matter what your competitors are doing or what the textbooks say about consumer behaviour. Your customer will love the experience.
Nor does it matter what the strategy of the organization says.

Emotion-infused moments will keep customers committed to you; they’ll come back for more moments and will encourage their friends and family to do so as well.

A vague imperfect strategy fuelled with emotion moments will deliver amazingness involuntarily.

If you want a mind-blowing CX strategy, focus on emotion and nothing else. It should be a single driving force behind your recruitment strategy, not just for positions that interact with customers, but also for positions that design technology moments.

I would recruit someone for a web design position, for example, who gets emotion infusion over someone who doesn’t have the perspective of trying to make a technology moment as human as possible.

Final thought — be careful of those who suggest that you need to pump up your customer service training program as a solution.
The fact is that you can’t train someone to deliver customer emotion-moments; honest emotion and care for their fellow humans can’t be taught.

It’s something that people are born with and the challenge is to find more of them than your competitors.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 2.20.17 at 05:44 am by Roy Osing
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February 6, 2017

5 simple ways employee incentive programs can work more effectively

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5 simple ways employee incentive programs can work more effectively.

Incentive programs are capable of achieving not only improved operating and financial and performance, but also “fun” in the workplace with an accompanying boost in employee morale.

But there’s a HUGE caveat: to be effective incentives must be driven by the strategy of the organization; they should never have a “life of their own”.

To make incentives an effective tool, follow these 5 rules:

▪️Introduce a strategic filter to evaluate the worth of any incentive proposal. If a proposal can’t pass the strategic alignment test, modify it so it complies or don’t introduce it.
An incentive plan not directly linked to the business plan will create dysfunction and confusion in the workplace.
Incenting sales to flog products, for example, when the strategy is to build intimate customer relationships might make sales happy but it produces zero return on investment as a tool of strategy.

▪️Don’t copy what others do. Me-to incentives are boring and show employees that your not really interested in creating something special for them.
Morph what “the incentive herd” is doing into an approach that ONLY you provide.

▪️Use one-time contests liberally in the workplace. They surprise employees and encourage greater participation. I introduced ‘dumb rules’ contests to identify internal rules and policies that customers hated. It worked; employees had a blast, we made significant progress “cleansing our internal environment” and customer service results improved.

▪️Communicate the achievers far and wide in your organization. You want to maximize involvement and realize the corresponding benefits.

▪️Measure and track the benefits of each incentive program. Learn from how they perform; eliminate the losers and keep the winners.

Avoid jumping on the incentives bandwagon unless you put the discipline in place to reap the benefits.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 2.6.17 at 05:27 am by Roy Osing
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January 30, 2017

10 simple ways to successfully stand out from the boring crowd

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10 simple ways to successfully stand out from the boring crowd.

People always ask me how they can stand out from the crowd.

These 10 ways worked for me: 

1. Ask yourself the question “How can I do this differently?” Just having the subject top of mind will lead you in the right direction. Ask yourself this question everyday!

2. Purge every aspect of copying from your being. This is tough because it’s almost second nature to benchmark best in class and apply best practices.
We have been conditioned to believe that we are better off when we follow the best in the herd. Nonsense. All we have done is temporarily change our position in it.

3. Look at what everyone else is doing then do the opposite. Amazing results are achieved by contrarian acts.

4. Learn to focus on the few critical things you need to be successful. It’s so tempting to chase the possibilities that are out there but the problem is that you are busy but ineffective in delivering quality results. Different people are mindlessly focused on a few critical things that are not on anyone else’s radar.

5. Shed the CRAP that gets in the way of your ability to focus on your key priorities. Holding on to “comfy food” may satisfy your appetite but it won’t enable your quest to stand-out from the herd.

6. Hook up with weird people. If you’re going to seek stimulation from others, lean in to people who don’t follow the rules and have off the wall views.

7. Be the first to take on new projects. Covet opportunities to offer standard solutions to radical problems that have not been addressed before. Your solution to a new problem will carry the different tag.

8. Loosen up on planning; tighten up on execution. Most people think the value is in the plan; don’t go with them. Jump in to the messy inelegant world of implementation where results get delivered. Different people get stuff done; they don’t sit around pondering possibilities.

9. Be imperfect (a lot). While others are seeking the impossible dream of perfection, different people are achieving results. Get as much stuff as you can just about right and hit the ground running.

10. Recover when you make a mistake (and you will, that’s what execution artists do). Fix your mistake (because that’s what people expect) and surprise them with something they DON’T expect. You will be remembered for your risk taking and brilliance of recovery. Your mistake will quickly be forgotten.

There is no scientific formula to get you out of the herd of commonality but these 10 steps will do the job.

I know. They worked for me.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 1.30.17 at 05:02 am by Roy Osing
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January 23, 2017

7 proven ways to keep your competitive advantage

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A competitive advantage is hard enough to create; it’s even more difficult to keep.

It’s inevitable. Once you carve out your uniqueness in the market, the ‘competitive hordes’ see it and copy what they like.

Everyone loves benchmarking the best, so once you step out and lead the pack, expect others to dissect what you’ve done and pick out their favourite morsel.

There is no preventing this. It’s one of the few things in business that can be predicted with certainty.

Once you’ve done your work, it’s not over. You have to keep your feet moving.

You need to put in motion actions that will sustain your market position.

These 7 tactics will help.

▪️Monitor the execution of your strategy monthly. Be obsessed with your performance. Dig into the revenue numbers. If you fall short, determine exactly why. And then take immediate action to resolve (and monitor that).

▪️Assess the value you provide. Is your value proposition still relevant? Are you continuing to address a real compelling need your target customer group has expressed?

Many companies have died by becoming complacent and assuming they continue to be relevant. They see margins decline and see it as a cost problem. It rarely is. It’s a revenue problem. They slash and burn their organization but spend no time assessing relevance.
They often cut out service and marketing capabilities that are sorely needed to rebound.

▪️Create a strong social media presence to monitor what people are saying. Act immediately on any concerns raised over your performance.

▪️Test your competitive claim with both customers and employees. Successful organizations have a clear statement of how they are different than their competitors. They answer the question “Why should I buy from YOU and not your competition?” in a compelling way.

Your positioning statement must meet the test of “Is it relevant?” (does it continue to address the high priority needs of the target group) and “Is it true?” (do you actually do what you claim?).

▪️Stay close to your main competitors. Their actions in the market are useful in assessing if there are actions you need to take to sustain your momentum. Look for any activity they have had with your customers.

▪️Continue to bear down on delivering memorable experiences for your customers. Competitive advantage is more about how people FEEL about you than the cleverness of your product.
Emotional experiences produce unforgettable memories which translate into your customers never wanting the exit door to find someone better.

▪️Review your marketing plans and programs to ensure you are moving inexorably to ’ME’ and away from flogging to the masses. A focus on the individual drives you to create unique solutions for them personally. Catering to the masses dilutes your customer attention rate and your brand; heroes for people earns the right to do business with them for a long time.

Keep the move to ME going!

Driving your competitive stake in the ground is merely the beginning of a never ending journey of continual renewal.

Stay with it.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 1.23.17 at 04:49 am by Roy Osing
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