customer-centric

NickB

Forget Chief Customer Officer, welcome to the new “COO”

There’s a problem with the Chief Customer Officer role and rethinking it as the “Chief Outcome Officer” (COO) can help everyone get on board a customer-centric company.

Although not yet present in every organisation, the idea of a Chief Customer Officer is beginning to take hold, with an increasing number of organisations making the appointment.

But in my view, there’s a problem.

When you appoint a chief anything officer you expect them to be the ultimate solver of the problems in their area. This is OK when you’re in charge of, say, operations or sales: most people would expect the Chief Operating Officer or Chief Financial Officer to be the ultimate go-to person in when something needs addressing in those areas.

But customers? Is that sales, marketing, your contact centre or billing. Do those functions report to the Chief Customer Officer now?

No, they don’t. Which makes the term Chief Customer Officer a misnomer in many organisations. They have influence over those traditional functions for sure but not really the authority. It’s frustrating for the individual and his/her team because they can see the opportunity but all too often without the ability to create meaningful change. It also goes someway to explaining why the Chief Customer Officer has an average tenure that is on average the shortest in the C-suite.

Eagle eye

As one of our NextTen Inner Circle members pointed out in an email recently, the holder of such a role has a focus that involves “hovering around like an eagle” with nothing escaping their sight. This is spot-on: customer issues are all-pervasive so in some sense we need an all-pervasive role or someone with a roving brief who can pounce on and sort out issues wherever they occur.

That may be fine in some organisations but in most it can lead to a role that’s undefined or underpowered or, even worse, where all the other functions think the customer is “someone else’s problem”.

The Chief Outcome Officer has a different focus. By moving attention from “customer experience” to customer outcomes, organisations can get a view of the value each part of the organisation creates for the customer. It is also a strong catalyst to move departmental focus from being excellent at “what they do” to creating excellent “outcomes” – because that’s the ultimate measure the customer makes when they make a choice to buy or not.

But there’s an even more important distinction: the new COO isn’t one person’s role,

it’s everyone’s job

Really?

Yes, in a genuinely customer-centric organisation, every role must have something to do with creating a positive outcome for the customer. Even when a role isn’t customer-facing, the role-holder should be able to have some line of sight to the customer and the outcomes they are contributing towards.

So how does this idea work out in practice and how do you embed this kind of thinking into the organisation?

My customer, your customer

The first thing a Chief Customer Officer can do is map the traditional organisational structure to a outcome driven structure. This is just another representation of how a company is structured but if the overall superior customer outcome is both the goal the customer seeks and the no 1 strategic differentiator, then surely this is a critical representation than companies need which defines how they operate.

This viewpoint will certainly excite the CEO and the strategists but how do you ensure it becomes everybody’s job?

The best way to create this momentum for change is through a programme of “employee engagement”, although personally I don’t care for that term as it suggests that you’ve already failed to get your people engaged. Leaving that aside, it is possible to use a programme to move the organisation towards an all-pervading awareness of customer outcomes.

I was involved in such a programme when I worked at BT. The MyCustomer programme was a multi-faceted affair that ran for a few years and, as the title implied, was intended to create a much greater sense of ownership of the customer throughout the organisation. It included various events including competitions (I’m pleased to say that the solution I sponsored is still in use today) and “back to the floor” exercises, but one of the most inventive was the creation of an employee-only help desk for dealing with customer problems.

This addressed the problem that I and, no doubt, many of my colleagues experienced when someone you met asked you what you did and, when you answered that you worked for BT, would launch into a diatribe about the level of service they had received. Using an internal helpdesk made it easier to offer to take ownership of the problem there and then. The unforeseen consequence may have been that people would avoid saying who they worked for, and I have no data on how many queries the helpdesk handled and from which parts of the organisation, but the emphasis was very much on everyone in the organisation having an impact on the customer.

It was such a good idea that I wish I’d thought of it.

Mind your language

But programmes come and go, and the number of conversations I still have about BT with friends and strangers suggests that they should have kept the MyCustomer programme running for longer to embed it firmly into culture and processes. This is the million-dollar question of course: how can you embed customer-centric behaviour and attitudes across the whole organisation after the programme circus has left town or even avoid the need for a change programme altogether?

The key for me is the way that leaders at all levels talk about their work and the things that they emphasise when they talk. Many years ago, I talked to an organisation who, according to their publicity, would bring to a halt any meeting that had not discussed customers in the first 15 minutes. I was applying for a job with them and never got to find out if it was true or not, but even if only partly true, it was a great story about where the customer figured in their priorities.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that you might need a real Chief Customer/Outcome Officer to set the tone and change the conversation but ultimately in a real customer-centric organisation the customer must belong to everyone.

NickB

Harnessing the power of purpose

Vision. Focus. Mission. Drive.

All words we often use to describe the qualities we associate with high performing companies or the people who lead them.

But if I had to pick the one quality that propels an organisation into genuinely high performance, it would be purpose. It encapsulates all the above terms and taps into a deeper motivation to “do the right thing”, whatever that might be.

But what is an organisation’s purpose? Recent conversations and news items – such as the statement by asset manager BlackRock’s Larry Fink that they would only invest in companies that contribute to society and deliver financial performance or risk losing their support, suggests that there is an awareness amongst the most numerically-obsessed that performance means much more than profit, ROCE, or other financial measures.

But it’s not easy.

Louche

Bar Italia in London’s Soho is more associated – in my mind at least – with the kind of louche nightlife portrayed in Pulp’s eponymous song – “…I’m fading fast/And it’s nearly dawn…” – than inspiring conversations about purpose, but I recently found myself having such a conversation at the more civilised hour of 11am with Gemma Cropper, MD of social impact consultancy Skating Panda.

I’ve observed and worked with organisations that have a clear purpose and those that have lost it somewhere along the way. In talking to Gemma, it was clear that social purpose is increasingly an area that organisations are interested in as they seek to improve the engagement of both their customers and employees. Often it can be driven by customers: for example, clothing manufacturer Nike had to completely change their supply chain after accusations of sweatshop conditions in some of their suppliers.

Employees will often drive the change and are after something more than a bit of “corporate social responsibility” which, however valid, can look like window dressing for an otherwise unattractive brand.

And with the developments in AI and robotics becoming a threat to jobs in all organisations in the coming years, employees will want to see a clear sense of social purpose in all major change programmes.

It can take years to bed an organisation’s purpose in – those looking for a quick fix will be likely to be disappointed – and if the CEO is only focused on the share price, the chances of success are minimal.

Tacked on

It’s a point echoed by organisational change consultant Belden Menkus in a recent paper where he points out the danger, when trying to re-discover an organisational purpose to differentiate itself from competitors, of it being reduced to a strapline or a shallow communications exercise.

In these cases, a wider social purpose can seem tacked on to an organisation or, even worse, a compliance box to be ticked.

Don’t confuse focus with purpose

What can organisations do to create or recreate a meaning that’s wider than a healthy balance sheet?

The first step is to make sure you’re not confusing purpose with focus. Having a focus on efficiency, sales growth, time-to-market or any other key performance indicator is essential in any high-performing company. Whatever is important to your performance needs to be a focus area for some or all of the people, some or all of the time.

But it’s not the same as purpose. Purpose is what gets you out of bed in the morning and makes you feel good about what you did at the end of the day. And although you may feel awesome about a day in which you shaved 3% off production costs or landed a million-pound sales deal, a life in which that’s all you can see may end up being less rich than it could be.

Understand outcomes

Often an organisation’s social purpose is a direct consequence of its operating model. As a pioneer of low-cost flights, SouthWest Airlines enabled people to connect more easily across a wide geography – the social benefit is easy to see as well as being attractive for customers.

So, an organisation’s purpose primarily needs to grow from an understanding of the outcomes it creates for its customers. And this involves thinking outside the immediate products and services it offers.

I’m privileged to work with a local music education charity – more on that another time – that offers great music lessons in the locality. In that regard, it’s no different from other purveyors of music education but what sets it apart is its purpose to offer a high-quality, rounded and multi-faceted music education to children and young people who otherwise would not have that opportunity. That purpose has propelled it from tiny beginnings to exciting developments that will increase its reach and impact.

The challenge for the charity will be to keep that constancy of purpose as it grows in the coming years.

Just start

Although there is the strong possibility that you may discover that your organisation does exist solely to make a shed-load of money for its directors and shareholders you shouldn’t – as Belden Menkus points out – wait for a directive from above. Start in your team to find out what it is that people feel passionate about in relation to the outcomes of the work you do.

And when you’ve found it, tell others. They might just share the same passion.

NickB

Ooh, Uber – look behind you!

At this time of year, at least in the UK, we love a pantomime villain that we can hiss and boo at every time they step on stage. With impeccable timing the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has delivered everybody’s favourite panto baddie, Uber, a slap in the face.  They declared what everyone already knew: that it is in fact a transport provider not an information exchange.

We have an example of what we might call ‘outcome-based justice’. In this case, if a business delivers customers’ desired outcome of ‘getting me conveniently from A to B’ it’s probably got something to do with vehicles that go from A to B rather than the provision of information. Except Uber never wanted to be positioned like that – and the reasons have become very clear!

The big benefit is that it nibbles away at those smug statements that consultants make to the effect that Uber is a taxi company that doesn’t own any cars – still true, but somewhat less paradigm-busting that it might appear.

Uber may have to face the inevitable. Its reaction to this, and other rulings, suggests it may be starting to do so, despite fighting it tooth and nail over the last year. It’s gained its growth precisely through focusing on what customers needed, then having the ability to think creatively about how that might be delivered.

The downside is that its pricing model (also a customer outcome – we like convenience, but we also like cheaper) which is a direct result of its low operating cost means that it has limited competition from other, differently-regulated providers. This lack of competition is bad for consumers in the long run.

Until there’s a reliable teleportation technology available, we humans are stuck with vehicles to get us around at a faster-than-walking pace. It will be interesting to see if a more level playing field will allow other transport providers to innovate. We are already seeing route planning app CityMapper experimenting with on-demand bus services in London – this time an information service operating in partnership with a transport provider (Transport for London).

Perhaps the famous pantomime audience shout of ‘look behind you’ should be directed at Uber to see who’s competing innovatively for the never-ending customer requirement of being moved around.

The ECJ’s ruling may not be good for Uber but it will be better for customers in the long run.

NickB

Putting compassion into customer experience

BBC Radio 4’s ‘Money Box’ isn’t often where you go for a scoop with political ramifications but today’s announcement by the programme that families on Universal Credit will miss out on payments over the festive period adds some excitement to what’s often a ‘worthy but dull’ feature in the Saturday schedule.

Leaving aside the politics, this is a story about service design that’s anything but customer-centric.

And if you’re on a low income, it sucks.

Because December happens to be a month with 5 weeks in it, anyone with an income paid weekly may go temporarily go over the threshold for paying the benefit. The Department of Work and Pensions helpfully informs you that this might happen and gives you instructions on what to do.

So, what’s the problem? Anyone with a grip on budgeting should be able to cope, yes?

Well it all depends on what your perspective is.

If you’re designing a service from a provider perspective, you tend to have an idealised view of how customers or service users might behave. In this case the ‘ideal customer’ will be a sensible, cool-headed type who can ‘do the math’ in order to make sure that a four or five weekly pay packets spread out nicely over a month. That sounds like a service designed by someone comfortably on a monthly salary, not by someone in a ‘hard-working family’ who’s ‘just about managing’ – take your pick from the pack of vacuous political clichés.

In fact, Universal Credit is a service that appears to be designed around a monthly income model. The problem is that, if you’re in a job that’s low paid, you’re likely to be weekly. And possibly with a highly variable pay packet if you’re enjoying the exciting world of zero hours contracts. The outcome you want is some degree of financial stability.

Genuinely customer-centric design would match benefit payment to weekly income, meaning that the claimant could have a reliable view of their income every week. (In a world where online payments are er, universal, this seems entirely appropriate.)

Genuinely customer-centric design would also not make people wait six weeks before getting paid or require them to wait up to 5 minutes to talk to a human being.

Genuinely customer-centric design wouldn’t have the Children’s Commissioner saying that the impact of universal credit had not been tested on families with children.

The intention of Universal Credit – a simplified benefit system that avoids people being better off not working than working – is fine. The implementation, however, seems to ignore the needs of those who it’s intended to benefit.

When you design a service, you need a profound understanding of how real customers behave and what their desired outcomes might be.

There’s another word for this quality: compassion.

NickB

Bad boys? Dove and the problem with reputation

The recent furore over Dove’s Facebook ad – where a black woman ‘changes’ to a white, then Asian one as she removes her t-shirt – appears to be a result of a thoroughly misinformed piece of decision-making.

Dove’s subsequent ‘apology’, claiming that they had ‘missed the mark’ struck many as less then wholehearted, apparently compounding the initial error.

However, as commentator Richard J Hillgrove suggests in Drum, this could just be part of a cynical strategy

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