4 questions to check… are you exploiting your complaints goldmine?

Have you got PPI? Do you think you might have had PPI? I’ve lost count of the times that some click-bait ad has popped up to ask me that question or, on some occasions, I’ve had to take a phone call from someone aggressively selling me PPI claims services I don’t need. Well, now the Financial Conduct Authority has got in on the act and enrolled none other than the Terminator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in an advert to urge people to get their claims in before 29th August 2019.

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Ryanair has a customer-centric approach, but it’s not what you think

I recently co-wrote a report on customer-centric strategy for NextTen – more on that later – that included Ryanair as a (positive) case study. The recent problems with pilot scheduling might cause me to make a hasty edit – but I think not: Ryanair is thoroughly customer-focused, but their low-cost approach illustrates the challenges of maintaining such a strategy when things go wrong. In fact, pursuing this strategy appears to be more likely to cause these problems.

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Shaving is boring? Not when you’re customer-obsessive

Photo by Christoffer Engström on Unsplash

The avid reader of these posts (and whoever you are, you’re keeping a low profile) may have noticed the odd, obscure music reference creeping in to the titles. I think this week I’ve found the most obscure one and you’ll have to read to the end to find out what it is. (Cheap trick, I know, but it’s slightly better than calling this post Five Reasons Why Shaving Is Not Boring.)

Tales from the sharp end #3

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Five objections to The One Rule

In last month’s post I identified The One Rule for strategy in a customer-driven organisation.

Everything relates to delighting customers

The use of the word delighting is important: it means achieving the customer’s desired outcomes.

The word everything is important as well as it’s likely to be the source of a number of questions or objections that might be arising. Let me deal with the ones that I can think of…

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The one essential rule for customer strategy

It’s not that complicated

I’ve been thinking a lot about simplicity lately, partly because simplification is a major outcome of knitting fog and partly because I am starting to feel a bit overwhelmed by articles with titles like ‘N top tips to improve your Customer Experience’ or similar where N is usually an odd number between 5 and 25 . If I add together the various Ns I have too many rules, tips and hints to keep in my head at once so, as an antidote to tip overload (the tipping point?) I have identified the one essential rule you must adhere to when defining – and implementing – customer strategy.

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My week in CX #7

In a week that has been dominated by the attack on Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament on Wednesday I, like the vast majority of Londoners, have just carried on with what I need to do. This week has involved monkeying around with surveys, talking about agility and generally getting distracted.

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Developing a new operating model: agile or fragile?

Designing and implementing a new operating model is one of the biggest challenges an organisation can undertake, and increasing pressures and strategic priorities mean that results need to be achieved in a shorter and shorter timescale. Do the agile approaches that have arisen over the last few years – mainly in the development of digital products and services – provide a way of meeting these demands and creating organisations fit for the future? Or does the slow and steady ‘classic OD’ approach provide a more lasting solution that fits with larger organisations’ ways of working.

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