Week 8, 2020
Customer Experience: Systems, Experiments, and Agility
Each week I share three ideas for how to make work better. And this week, the spotlight is on Customer Experience (CX). Specifically, on how to future-proof your CX in a world of constant change.
Why am I writing about this? I spoke at MarketingOops! 2020 earlier this week (my deck, here). The topic was Customer Experience. And what follows is a selection of ideas — principles, really — that can help organizations create and sustain great customer experiences.
Let’s dig in.
1. Think in Systems
The world’s most successful companies don’t think of their CX as journeys from point A to point B. They think of them as “Flywheels” — self-reinforcing feedback loops in which each step — each interaction — reinforces the next. It’s how they harness the stabilizing and compounding effect of complex adaptive systems. And it offers the rest of us a chance to understand the meteoric rise of companies like Amazon, Uber, and Netflix.
For more on this, check out Jim Collins’ monograph Turning the Flywheel. Alternatively, see w312019 for a short introduction to the concept.
2. Validate with Experiments
Flywheels are mental models that must be validated through rigorous and continuous experimentation. The world changes. As do our customers’ experiences. This is why the world’s most successful companies stay humble. Their success notwithstanding, they know all to well that they cannot predict what their customers want. They’ve been surprised too many times to think otherwise. And so they experiment. And they experiment a lot.
For more on this, check out this HBR article on Booking.com. And for a practical explanation, watch “Design Like a Scientist” from Netflix’s Navin Iyengar.
3. Organize for Agility
Companies like Google, Facebook, and Booking.com field tens of thousands of experiments each year. This is a technical feat to be sure. But importantly, it’s also an immense feat of organization. Just think of the level of autonomy, trust, and alignment this must require! It’s no wonder more traditional predict-and-control-style organizations struggle. They’re simply not cut out to experiment at the scale of these frontrunners.
For more on agility and transformation, check out PepsiCo’s Responsive Ways of Working. Alternatively, check out my treatment of the same in w32020.
CX Transformations typically involve the mapping of one or more customer journeys. The aim is to identify any and all potential problems, gaps, or blocks that customers may encounter when interacting with us. And the result is typically used to inform a Transformation Roadmap for the next N months. And that’s great. It’s time well spent. But we tend to forget that your CX maps have an expiry date. The world keeps turning. And what was once an accurate depiction of our CX might well be out of date 12 months down the line.
This is why I shared the principles above. In an age of constant and continuous change, these ideas can help us future-proof our CX and make sure we keep it fit-for-purpose over time.
That’s all for this week.
Until next time, stay calm.
