#NoBullshitCX #20yearsFuturelab “See the bigger picture.” Remember last week’s column on the outsider’s perspective? Here is another story about it from our work for the contact center of a car manufacturer. We reviewed their overall CX strategy (more on this topic later) and looked at the way they operated–from a customer perspective. Knowing how often companies run on the“we always did it this way” principle, I asked as many “stupid questions” as I could. Why Do you do things this way? Which data informs these processes? Who actually does what? While the answers were mostly logical and suffi ..read more

#NoBullshitCX #20yearsFuturelab “Ask stupid questions.” Einstein famously remarked, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”A US newspaper publisher reminded me of this quote when they contacted us, a European company, to help them navigate industry disruptions. Why us? Apparently, a streak of nigh-identical US strategy consultants failed to deliver any results. They needed a fresh perspective. Of course we were not complete newbies: previous projects for publishing houses allowed us to gain knowledge of the industry. It was the market that was new for ..read more

#NoBullshitCX #20yearsFuturelab “Consumers should care. Check that.” Ever tried to convince engineers they are doing something wrong? When we advised a global electronics manufacturer on their innovation process, I thought their heads of R&D would bite my head off for even thinking of changing it. The company was, after all, known for their cutting-edge technologies devised through blue-sky research. What do these consultants know about engineering anyway? However, the issue at hand was not bad engineering, it was poor commercialization. Too many innovations didn’t find traction with custo ..read more

#NoBullshitCX #20yearsFuturelab “Don’t think. Ask!” Think you know your customers? Think again. When we started to work on a Voice of the Customer (VoC) programme for a large building materials producer, we arranged a kick-off workshop to develop the roll-out plan with a local team. Their sales manager confidently claimed: “We know what our customers want. They demand top quality, rapid delivery, and low prices. Until we have resolved our logistical issues and built a new factory, they will be unhappy.”But our VoC pilot painted a different reality. Turned out, customers could tolerate delays ..read more

#NoBullshitCX #20yearsFuturelab “Question (almost) everything.” Are you innovating “a faster horse”?A few years ago, I worked with the world leader in logistics supplies. They wanted to refresh their innovation process. Until then they typically interviewed all their customers once a year with a 200-question-long survey and held co-creation sessions with some of them. The process worked as such(although that questionnaire still makes me shudder). Unfortunately, they were creating insights and innovations in a very narrow field of vision this way. We needed to upend the process and see what was ..read more

#NoBullshitCX #20yearsFuturelab “Unhappy customers cost you more than you think.” A customer is worth more than you think. In my previous column, I mentioned the surprisingly high lifetime value of individual customers–once you really get an understanding of the whole picture. The first time I realized was in the early 2000s, when we designed customer experience strategy for a Japanese luxury car brand. When we ran workshops with the dealers to gather their input and discuss our ideas, their initial reaction was quite negative. “We have been selling cars here for a hundred years. Who are you t ..read more

#NoBullshitCX #20yearsFuturelab “Don’t stick to the seemingly obvious.” Feedback is not about the averages. When I presented customer feedback to a global leader in steel manufacturing, the management team was very happy with the overall scores (which were pretty decent). They were especially pleased with the page where we had grouped the results based on the contribution of the customers. The larger the contribution, the better the score! This is of course what we hoped to see: our biggest clients were the happiest ones. A group of customers that each contributed over a million margin per yea ..read more

“Just be honest.” It’s Valentine’s Day, so don’t throw tomatoes at me for this cheeky title, I am only joking. But am I though? It’s not the first time I used romantic analogies when getting CX concepts across. I called out “one-night brands” for not fulfilling their promises to the customers. I explained NPS by means of an old joke “I heard in the pub that you were a great lover”. I even likened Voice of theCustomer to marriage as opposed to dip-in-the-dating-pool approaches of marketing research. As the analogy seems to work, I want to take it to its ultimate conclusion: Most companies still ..read more

“Customers don’t bite. Most of them.” Talking to customers is vital for customer-centric product management. But for those who aren’t used to direct customer contact, it can be daunting. When I worked with a leading Greek bank, I trained a team of twenty or so product managers, giving them homework to do in between my visits so we could develop the new approach together. One of the tasks was “to talk to a few customers.”Each manager had to bring informal feedback from a couple of conversations to exchange and discuss. But when I returned, nobody–not one of them!–had talked to even a single cus ..read more

#NoBullshitCX #20yearsFuturelab “Just be honest.”  It’s Valentine’s day, so don’t throw tomatoes at me for this cheeky title, I am only joking.  But am I though? It’s not the first time I use romantic analogies when getting CX concepts across. I called out “one-night brands” for not fulfilling their promises to the customers. I explained NPS by means of an old joke “I heard in the pub that you were a great lover”. I even likened Voice of the Customer to marriage as opposed to dip-in-the-dating-pool approaches of marketing research.  As the analogy seems to work, I want to take ..read more