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Articles filed in: Strategy
Changing The Customer Experience Narrative
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
My husband, who is a doctor has been trialling ways to improve the patient experience at the practice where he works one day a week. There are many things about the experience that are out of his control. He can’t control how the receptionist speaks to the patient on arrival, cut the waiting time or shush crying babies in the waiting room. But there are moments in between where he can have an impact.
His intervention is simple. Instead of sitting behind the desk in the big comfy doctor’s office chair, he rearranges the furniture—inviting the patient to take the ‘big chair’ while he sits alongside them, (not staring at the computer) on the standard issue patient chair. The patient almost always asks why they are sitting in the big chair. This simple (and free) act changes everything about the consultation. The results are dramatic. Patient satisfaction is improved, they leave happier because they have been made to feel seen and understood.
We mistakenly believe that a great customer experience must be flawless. And knowing that perfection is impossible, we overlook opportunities to delight. The truth is that just as sand in our shorts can’t spoil a romantic picnic on the beach, even our most memorable experiences are not one hundred percent perfect. Customer satisfaction does not come so much from good experiences alone, but also from the stories people tell themselves about what happened. We don’t need to be perfect, we do need to work on giving customers moments to remember and recount—good stories to tell themselves.
It’s possible to create moments of delight that bookend the customer’s narrative. We have more power than we think to change the stories people believe in, value and share.
Image by World Bank.
Change Making
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
The story changes the value.
The value changes the perception.
The perception changes the experience.
The experience changes the outcome.
The outcome changes the customer.
The customer changes the story.
Image by Matthias Ripp.
The Potential Downside Of Maximizing
filed in Strategy
There’s a great cafe in East Melbourne where you can order half a sandwich. This addition to the menu seems trivial, but it tells us a lot about the values of the cafe owner. He knows that a peckish diner will order the whole sandwich and leave what she doesn’t want. Of course, this would generate more revenue for his business, but also waste food and sometimes induce guilt in his customer. This generous posture that gives rise to the half portion gesture doesn’t go unnoticed. The cafe hums with regular customers and benefits from repeat business, goodwill and word of mouth.
It’s tempting to squeeze out every dollar, fill every moment and exploit every advantage, but there’s usually an opportunity cost to doing so—a compromise that needs to be made as a result. In our drive to maximise efficiency, profits and productivity we often miss the chance to do what’s right, to notice significant details or to amplify the thing we do well.
Maximizing can lead us to focus on short-term gains instead of a vision for the future or to sacrifice what’s important for the sake of growth. More and better are not always an indication of having achieved the right outcome. The strategy of ‘enough’ can allow us to focus and flourish. In the end, it’s not possible to go in every direction. We have to choose the path worth taking and then decide how to show up on it.
Image by Postcards Inside.
How To Learn From The Customer Journey
Many of the businesses you will frequent today have no idea how you became a customer. What’s worse than not knowing what brought you there is either making an incorrect assumption or not having an interest in your journey at all. It’s easier than ever in an online world to understand where customers come from, but if we want to create and grow sustainable businesses, we also need to pay attention to what they do and why they come.
Whether your business operates online or offline it’s possible to get better at learning from the customer’s journey. Every day I see people walk into delis, boutiques and bookstores to browse, sometimes they leave without buying anything, but they always leave clues as to the purpose of their visit, their mindset or worldview. For example, consider the shopper who whips out his smartphone to snap a photo at the local bricks and mortar store to keep a record of the things he’d like to research or order online later.
Questions To Consider About The Customer Journey
1. What prompted the customer to visit today?
2. Where did they hear about you?
3. What did they look at, browse, pick up or buy?
4. Why did they buy?
5. What did they browse, pick up and not buy?
6. Why didn’t they buy?
7. Why were they researching or shopping?
8. How could you fulfil their needs and wants in the future?
9. What might make them return?
10.How can you create opportunities that enable you to get to know them better?
What we learn from our customers’ actions and reactions teaches us where best to focus our energy and why. Curiosity is an underrated business resource.
Image by Toshihiro Gamo.
Understanding The Value Gap
You may have noticed how commonplace complimentary gift wrapping has become this festive season. In years gone by this service was offered by bigger department stores or as a fundraiser for charities in local shopping centres. This year though it seems that every retailer from the bookstore to the pharmacy has decided that complimentary gift wrapping might just be a way to differentiate. If the bricks and mortar retailer can’t be more convenient or cheaper, then it stands to reason that they need to add another service layer to their offering to address the perceived value gap. But just as the scripted, ‘have a great Christmas’ greeting you’ve heard the checkout operator repeat ten times before you reach him rings hollow—when everyone uses the same low-risk value adding strategy no experience feels authentic or unique.
It would be easy for retailers to panic in the wake of Amazon’s plans to reimagine the bricks and mortar shopping experience with Amazon Go. But it’s important to understand that there are as many reasons why people shop as there are to add value. Convenience, price and even service add-ons are only part of the value story. If we’re to truly differentiate our offerings we have to dig deeper and consider the value gap we’re hoping to fill for exactly what kind of customer. The good news is that not everyone wants to grab and go. There are people who want to shop locally or sustainably, and those who care about human connection more than the lowest price. You don’t have to market to everyone, but you do need to know the someone you’re filling the value gap for and what matters to them.
Image by Bill.
The Characteristics Of Successful Ideas
filed in Innovation, Strategy
In an era when we have self-driving cars and delivery drones it’s still possible to encounter:
Underwear with five uncomfortable care labels sewn into the seams.
A beautiful teapot that becomes too heavy to lift when it’s full.
Inconspicuous assembly instructions that confuse rather than clarify.
Sports shoes that give the wearer blisters until they’re ‘broken in’.
And breakfast cereals that are one-third sugar.
While we’re busy trying to create brilliant, breakthrough ideas that win, we often overlook the opportunity to make something that’s simply thoughtful instead. Thoughtful innovation requires us to do more than to meet spec. It demands that we empathise and anticipate. That we measure difference as well as data, intentionally marry functionality with delight and strive to go beyond the good enough.
Image by Bousure.
The Path To Business Growth
Sal was already sweating as she blustered into the gym on Monday morning. She sat down heavily on the bench in the changing room. The things she had hastily stuffed into her gym bag tumbled out as soon as she unzipped it. Sal stopped for a second, realising she hadn’t replaced the three-day-old sweat towel that had been there all weekend. She gingerly sniffed it and sighed, then returned to spraying deodorant on her feet.
Sal’s story is about a million miles from the perfect fictional narratives used to sell the fitness ideal in markets from sports apparel to workout equipment. Protein shakes to gym memberships. She will likely never become the woman represented by their avatar. And yet here she is, large as life with unmet wants and needs, hopes and dreams.
We find opportunities for business growth when we meet our customers where they are in the real world, instead of where we think they should be in our ideal version of it.
Image by Crossland Designs.
What Are Your Marketing Goals?
We devote a lot of time to growing our businesses—often around the loose metric of ‘more’. It’s worth defining what ‘more’ looks like for your business. You get closer to your goals when you match effort to desired outcomes, and you can’t do that without understanding which numbers you’re trying to move the needle on.
What are you measuring?
- Brand awareness.
- Market share.
- Brand engagement.
- Email open rates.
- Website visitors.
- Bounce rate.
- Social media shares.
- Customer acquisition.
- Conversion rates.
- Revenue.
- Profit margin.
- Return on marketing investment.
- Sales growth.
- Customer feedback.
- Employee engagement.
- Customer delight.
- Personal fulfilment.
- Legacy.
Sometimes the things that are top of mind are less significant than we realise and many of the things we forget to measure matter.
Image by Steve McFarland.
Worth Vs. Worthy
As business leaders and entrepreneurs, much of our energy and resources are spent understanding how best to communicate our value to customers. Many of the most successful companies flip this thinking on its head.
If we create things that are worthy of the time, attention and money of the people we hope to serve, we don’t need to spend so much time, attention and money trying to prove their worth.
Image by Susan Frazier.
Metrics For A Job Well Done
Every business has metrics for a job well done. We know when our sales are up and complaints are down. We can measure our organisation’s performance and success in a myriad of ways.
For many businesses, success is measured in efficiencies and financial targets. Others choose to pay attention to customer’s success stories. The old axiom that ‘what’s measured improves’ holds true. When we clearly define the path we want to take we have a better chance of following it.
Three Success Assessment Questions For You
What do our customers expect from us?
How can we help our customers to reach their goals?
How exactly will we know when we’ve succeeded?
Your customer’s success story is your story too.
Image by Brandon Binkwilder Santana.