Scenario One: Products
A few weeks ago I received an LinkedIn message from one of my network - an invite from a technology provider to their open house on a Friday afternoon in downtown Vancouver. The invite indicated that at the event I would get to see some cool technology (product) and a chance to meet others in my industry. This sort of invite is quite common in the AEC industry and probably in many other industries across the broad landscape of the local and global economy.
However, it is out of place in present times that we live in, where every Internet-savvy person is an informed person (customer), information on technology or products are available at their finger tip, hawking product / technology is for the dinosaurs. People buy products for a specific reason, to experience something that is an output of that product.
“We're no longer in the business of selling products; we're in the business of selling experiences,”
Brad Rencher - EVP and GM of digital for Adobe - boldly asserted during the 2016 Adobe Summit opening day keynote session. “Products are just along for the ride…. This is our new reality.”
Yes, the reality of business today is to create experience. Products are and technology are there to create an experience. Experience that are consistent, continuous, and compelling Making the technology transparent to the customer and relating it the experience, not directly referring to the technology that powers the experience.
Scenario Two: Service
The other day I called an office furniture installer to follow up on the assignment that they had compelled the night before for my client at a large Canadian banks’ downtown Vancouver flagship branch. When I asked the person who was the owner of the company how is the business doing and he responded with a long vent of how the large furniture manufactures do see value in their services but they drive all the business through the dealers and that the dealers drive down cost of installation leaving not much of a margin for the installers like him who are at the bottom of the food chain.
My question to the person at the end of the vent was what makes you different from your competition? I heard a long pause.
The issue here is that is that there is no differentiator between the different service providers in the industry. None of them stood out – none was exceptional – not one thing - nothing that makes any one from the industry stand out. They all (small and the large; the partnership and the corporations) deliver service the same old way and sometimes successfully sometimes not – spotty customer service.
The question the person put to me at that point was what would make the firm be different?
The solution is to invest time and money to create and craft a customer experience journey for the delivery of services. An enhanced customer / user experience is a journey which are opportunities for an enhanced customer / client experience delivered through digital technology. User / Customer Experience is key and critical to business and these journeys need to be designed so that every touch-points you engage the user / customer ensures a positive experience.
Why craft a customer experience as we do business in a global environment of the digital economy where, it is reported that, 70% of the companies on the Fortune 1000 listed 10 years ago have vanished and in an environment where no business is too big to fail or too small to succeed, where technology and society are growing at a faster pace than organisation and corporation can catch up.
Technology is the industry of disruption in the digital economy. Digital is no longer the shiny front end of the organization – it’s integrated into every aspect of today’s companies. Every major industry in the globalized digital economy has been impacted in small and great measures- see chart below.
The integration of digital into organisations; corporations; government; associations will continue relentlessly as leaders remove the barriers that are keeping them from maximizing the potential impact of new digital technologies driving growth in a connected world though an “enhanced customer experience."
Brian Solis indicates in his book “X: The Experience when Business Meets Design on the importance of experience design and the role it will play in business today and it is imperative to go beyond focusing on building products and services if you’re looking to create the most valuable relationships with customers
In an Mckinsey & Company article: Developing a customer-experience vision, the authors indicate:
“To provide a distinctive experience for customers, an organization must unite around the goal of meeting their true needs. Done well, the effort can power a vast amount of innovation.”
We all know how airports are great place to take-off for A vacation but the experience is not always satisfying. Brooke Boyarsky, Will Enger, and Ron Ritter in their article cite the story of one US airport’s efforts to define a distinctive customer experience.
They illustrate how such a transformation can take shape. The key according to Mckinsey is to:
· Define Aspirations
· Understanding customers and their journeys
· How employees deliver
· Creating a shared aspiration
· Executing change
The success of implementing a customer /client/ user experience is linking the customer experience to value - value created by an customer experience.
HBR in their article: The Value of Customer Experience, Quantified illustrates through two different revenue models- one transactional, the other subscription-based that customer experience drives sales and membership.
The creating of a user, customer/ client experience is to build and explicit link to value by:
· Directing investments to where they have the most impact;
· Designing a road map with early successes to self-fund improvements;
· Calculate each initiative’s expected value, time to capture, and cost to implement;
· Separating initiatives to help balance the portfolio
· Designing a balanced road map that will signal success and fund itself.
User / customer / client experience is not just limited to the digital or retail environment, it extends to every aspect of every business that exist today and its survival depends on deliver an user / customer / client experience.
There was time when business was not personal, it was business. Today business is personal as we are trying to build a relationship with our customers. Building relationship starts with understanding what people want and then making sure they get that. Colin Shaw in his post - Get Personal, It’s Business! – explains further – “It also means getting to know them well enough to discern what they want (as well as what they don’t). Neither of these things happens while discussing business, but instead by making an effort to connect on a personal level.”
Creating an User Experience is personal to the customer is all about:
· Crafting a journey where every touch point designed and that at the end of the journey the customer / client is left with a positive emotion, observation or reaction as a result of each engagement throughout the lifecycle of the interaction.
· Creating user experience is to create a competitive advantage by putting customers first and creating value at every point of their journey/s.
· It's about helping users / customers / clients get to a place they can't get to without you talking about the product or the service.
Our customer / client is “always on”. We can be too. We need to change the very nature of customer service and engagement in our organisations, redefining what it means to provide service or a product.
Are you making Customer Experience the differentiator between yourself and the competition?
Are you in the business of experience?
if yes, what sort of customer experience are you delivering?
If not, what are you doing to make your organisation relevant to the present times.
I like to hear from you?