The Customer Journey Revolution - How to create authentic & sustainable customer-centered experience

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D

o you remember Kodak, the inventors of the digital camera?

While Kodak is a brand probably not recognized by anyone under the age of 30, even fewer people realize that Kodak was responsible for the creation of the first digital camera; when the prototype was developed back in the 1970s, the unit was about the size of a shoebox, and sported a 0.1 megapixel lens. Unfortunately, Kodak’s board expected that the new digital camera would negatively impact the sales of their film division, and so exchanged potential long-term growth for short-term profits by shelving the concept. As a result, the once-global giant filed for bankruptcy in 2012, while almost every human on the planet now has access to a digital camera.

Over the last few decades, many companies have grown successfully due to implementing a strategy of operational excellence; a business growth model centered around continuous improvement by lowering operational cost and increasing efficiencies. A sound strategy to be sure, but with one very serious downside:

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“When your eyes are only focused on the organization, your ass is facing the customer” Yudai

Another example of Operational Excellence gone wrong is that of Electronic Arts, or EA. EA is currently one of the biggest video 04

game publishers in the world, and certainly a victim of its own success. The publisher released many AAA titles in the 90s and early 2000s, yet the last decade its focus moved from delivering an excellent product to being more profit-centric. As such, EA’s strategy seemed to become one of exploiting the consumer, by launching incomplete or buggy games, and having the consumer pay extra for content that was advertised as being part of the game. To no surprise, EA was voted the ‘Absolute Worst Company in America’ twice in a five-year period. The more EA focused on generating profits, the more consumers turned away from them, and will continue to do so.

Finally (and sadly), there’s the story of toy empire Toys years in operation, Toys

Us. After 70

Us had to close its doors for one immutable

reason - it failed to keep up with the times. Consumer needs and behaviors have changed significantly, but Toys

Us failed to keep up with

these changes. It’s difficult to compete in the era of Amazon, and failing to innovate and offer its customers the same ease of access and range of choice its competitors had, is what brought the toy giant to its knees.

From these examples, we can identify the number one reason why Operational Excellence strategies often fail - while it can assist many organizations with successfully developing a business-focused culture, it fails to take into account the one thing you go into business for in the first place: the customer. There is a plethora of benefits to implementing a sound organizational excellence strategy, but it is doomed to fail if it doesn’t put the consumer, and more specifically, the consumer’s evolving needs, at the heart of its implementation. Unfortunately, Operational Excellence strategies tend to lead to inward-looking cultures, all too frequently showing their proverbial ass to the consumer.

“A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of them all” Michael LeBoeuf, Business Author and Management Professor

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In today’s reality, every business can and should have the genuine desire to offer a truly satisfying customer experience. In this bookzine, we will explore some of the strategies and solutions to show you that it’s not an insurmountable task. Moreover, you’ll note that the brands that decide to adjust their focus accordingly are reaping the rewards.

Consider Amazon.com - their mission statement reads, “We seek to become earth’s most customer-centric company”, and it’s not just lip service, it supports this mission statement by introducing customer-centricity principles in each of the activities it undertakes, in each step of the value and supply chain, and in each decision it makes. A strategy that led the online retailer to achieve a market cap of $1-trillion in less than 24 years of operation.

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“We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.”

Jeff Bezos, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Amazon.com

Today, many managers recognize that business as usual won’t cut it.

Just like Copernicus realized a few hundred years ago that it’s not the earth in the center of the universe, management realizes it’s not the product, the process, or the technology at the center of the company - it’s the customer! (That’s not to say that the products/ processes/

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technologies aren’t a cornerstone of the company, but certainly not the core.) And if it’s not the customer and their needs at the core, move the customer to the core. It might seem easier said than done; even Copernicus faced quite some resistance in his thinking - almost like the organizations of today, which struggle to get the right buy-in throughout their business to change this thinking, and put the customer at the core.

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What does it mean to be a truly customer-centric organization? Simply put, it’s developing and executing a value proposition with the consumer at the center – customer centricity means offering a product, solution, process or approach that is designed to maximize the positive impact on the customer.

“Customers are our best teachers. Learning about your customer’s beliefs, values, and priorities teaches you which selling points you should emphasize.”

Dr. Mark Goulston, Business Consultant

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How does one get there? Well, in short, it requires (1) an obsession with your customer, (2) the will to be creative and innovative with the conceptualization of new products and services, and (3) the desire to get these solutions to market as soon as possible! This bookzine will explore each of these three tenets in more detail.

Extreme customer obsession

Extreme speed

Extreme creativity

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Extreme customer obsession 11

For many brands, creating a consumer-centric culture seems like a massive undertaking - and if not done on the back of a sound strategy, you may end up improving or changing the wrong facet of your business.

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Our extensive work in the customer experience field, for a multitude of brands across several categories, verticals, industries and sectors, allowed us to define what we call the ‘Consumer Centricity Model’. A model highlighting three important layers from both a consumer and an organization perspective. Being consumer-centric means you have to take a ‘consumer first’ perspective on each of these three layers. The core proponent of this model underscores the importance of understanding the consumer - but it’s not just about understanding, it’s about delivering on that understanding.

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The Consumer Centricity Model

THE FIRST LAYER: MOMENTS VS TOUCHPOINTS

Part of the first layer of the Consumer Centricity Model is identifying the customer’s moments of truth, which touchpoints (whether these touchpoints exist or still have to be created) align to these moments and most importantly, understanding the underlying customer needs in those moments. A clearer understanding of the customer’s needs and context will undoubtedly give your organization an edge as customer centricity has already started driving business transformation. A recent IDC FutureScape study predicts that “by 2022, 35 percent of Customer Experience-focused organizations will adopt ‘commerce everywhere’ business models, and generate 50 percent of their revenue through contextual discovery experiences”. That’s why we interrogate and analyze the customer’s needs, in order to play a larger, more contextually relevant role in their lives.

We identify these moments, touchpoints and needs by thoroughly mapping the customer journey. We can do this by starting from a blank sheet or by adding deep consumer understanding to existing (internal) customer journey frameworks. This is important to note, because we often see organizations spend a lot of time, money and energy on improving existing touchpoints, without having a clear indication of their customer’s veritable moments of truth. Too many companies suffer from having this blind spot, focusing too much on potentially irrelevant touchpoints. Don’t put the cart before the horse; first define the moments of truth before developing the relevant touchpoint, not the other way around.

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CASE How Gumtree went beyond its core value proposition eBay-owned classifieds website Gumtree wanted to grow within the automotive vertical. A community was set up to identify opportunities to get more consumers to visit the Gumtree platform when they’re in the market for a second-hand vehicle.

The used-car purchasing journey was mapped based on consumer stories and experiences collected through the Gumtree research community. At the start of the journey, a number of consumers cited that they experienced feelings of insecurity - they’re not petrol heads per se, so they have no idea what’s available in the market, or which vehicle would best suit their needs – so they needed support in understanding which vehicle would best address their needs before they could effectively use a platform like Gumtree. This 14

insecurity is compounded by the fact that once they found the vehicle they liked, they had to contact the seller; not knowing that much about vehicles, they have to speak to a stranger, someone they don’t necessarily trust, to conclude the transaction.

By conducting a thorough journey map, and identifying their customers’ pain points, Gumtree discovered that the most value they could possibly add to their customers’ experience was actually beyond its core value proposition of connecting buyers with sellers. The brand started supporting its customers by instilling a sense of confidence and security, and subsequently managed to grow their market share within the automotive vertical. An organization that is too inward-looking would never have caught these customer pain points - these moments of truth - and would instead have tried to improve touchpoints that didn’t need improving.

THE SECOND LAYER:

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NEEDS VS SOLUTIONS While the first layer of the model emphasizes the need to focus on your customer’s moments of truth in order to better identify (and potentially create or improve) the necessary touchpoints, the second layer seeks to help you understand WHY consumers experience things the way they do; in other words, it assists you in identifying your consumer’s intrinsic needs and wants. It’s not about your product, your feature, your service, or your solution. In order to move to a more customer-centric organization, your focus and attention ought to be on the underlying needs and wants that drive behavior; the behavior that ultimately makes your customers adopt your product/ feature/ service/ solution.

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Let’s try to make the theory a bit more tangible by putting you in the shoes of an organization that wants to improve its customers’ satisfaction levels. Take a closer look at this electric drill - if you were the manufacturer of this drill, what would you do to improve the quality of the experience when using this drill? (Consider the question carefully for a moment, your answers may be revealing.)

Typically, we receive responses that impact the product’s design and functionality, ranging from (1) closing it up to make it safe(r), (2) using 16

a plastic instead of a metal casing to make it lighter, (3) removing the cord and adding a battery for maneuverability to (4) installing a light so you can see where you’re drilling… All of these answers make perfect sense, but are they really helpful? None of these answers take into account the real reason a consumer might need a drill for, and that’s drilling a hole in the wall.

What does that mean for the creator of the drill? It means that they’re not purely into creating hardware, it’s much more aspirational than that: they’re enabling their customers to hang precious memories on their living room wall, they’re in the business of nostalgia, or at the very least, empowering its users to decorate their homes. It’s not about the product, it’s not about the solution - it’s about the customer’s underlying requirement; the customer wants to drill a hole in the wall, to get the job of bringing precious memories to life done (more on this in a moment).

Now that you’ve considered it from the viewpoint of the customer (why they need the product and its intended use), how different would your suggestions be in terms of its overall improvement? Can you see why it’s so critical to take the consumer as the starting point for whatever it is you do? We hope this example adequately highlights the issue - organizations have to be in tune with the needs of their customers.

Ironically, many companies have a mature process in place to measure touchpoints on an ongoing basis, as well as to manage and improve their touchpoint satisfaction. And therein lies the conundrum:

“You can’t fatten a cow just by weighing it” By tracking your current touchpoint performance, you can only improve what you’re doing already; but there may very well be needs or touchpoints you haven’t yet considered. These practices address the touchpoint performance rather than to understand your relevance at key moments in the customer journey. By simply tracking what you are currently doing, you can’t address these needs adequately. In the end, it makes for a conservative view, not at all in touch with your number one stakeholder: the customer.

Or to stick with the cow analogy, even if you weigh a cow every hour, the numbers on the scale will not increase. On the contrary, trotting a cow on and off a scale every hour might even cause for it to lose weight. To fatten the cow, one must act and develop insights on the needs and behaviors that will make said cow gain weight.

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CASE Understanding the customer is not enough, you have to act on that understanding Europe’s leading leisure, travel and tourism company, TUI, understands customer satisfaction. Over the years they have built a very mature customer satisfaction practice that was deeply embedded in the organization. Ongoing feedback loops were installed and targets were set on touchpoint satisfaction for internal teams, suppliers and partners. However, they noticed a declining impact of improvements of touchpoint satisfaction on actual business results; somehow, they were not managing the most relevant and effective element of their customer experience.

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It was critical to understand the consumers’ journey, so we started collecting hundreds of stories and experiences over the entire travel experience - from the booking, to the actual holiday, to their return home. On the back of this, we were able to identify 36 different needs that customers experienced at various points in their proverbial (and actual) journey. From the earliest stage, consumers were requesting support to ensure that they made the right choice in terms of travel destination. Once booked, their holiday being a few weeks or months away, they wanted to hold on to that feeling of excitement, to look forward to their journey. And finally, once they returned home, how could they best hold on to that holiday mood, when the holiday is over.

These are a few needs that proved to be much more important for TUI to address, to dramatically improve the overall TUI experience. TUI realized that it is crucial to develop a superior understanding of their customers, but more importantly, to act and deliver on that superior understanding. This case illustrates how TUI differentiated themselves from a customer experi-

ence perspective, and how this wouldn’t be achievable if the tour operator only tracked the experience. A key ingredient here isn’t the satisfaction provided by touchpoints, it’s the performance of the company when it comes to addressing these needs.

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THE THIRD LAYER: LIFE VS BRAND It’s a strange world we live in when we consider that a drill company might not be in the business of manufacturing drills, but rather in the business of bringing memories to life, but it is the world we live in, as the French multinational insurance provider AXA came to understand very well.

With a new strategic ambition to transition from Payer - be there when things go wrong - to Partner - be there to help things go right - AXA has positioned itself as a brand that wants to go beyond purpose and become truly relevant in the life of its customer.

“We have the ambition to make AXA a partner capable of helping our clients believe a better life is possible.

This also embodies our company culture, which has made a small French mutual become a world leader in insurance.�

Thomas Buberl, CEO of AXA.

We already showed that it is critical to understand the moments of truth in the journey as well as the key needs and wants consumers may have in a category. However, a consumer is only a consumer for a few minutes each day; for the other 23+ hours, they are employees, employers, parents, children, members of a gaming community, members of a church - the list goes on, just consider the multiple roles and responsibilities you have to adopt in your day-to-day life, and how that shapes your specific needs and priorities. This is important to note because we not only have consumer needs within the traditional boundaries of a category, we also have myriad needs associated to the many and varied roles we adopt in life. As a brand, this means you have to exceed the boundaries of your category and become more meaningful in the lives of your consumers. That is why it is essential to stretch the model to shape the experiences that matter most in their lives, beyond specific moments, situations, or scenarios.

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Brands have to understand the consumer needs that trigger or surround their products and services. The more brands are aware of the broader spectrum of needs and wants, the easier it becomes to create relevance beyond the typical buying and consumption moments. AXA understands this and seeks to extend its role in its customers’ lives beyond the traditional grudge purchasing insurance is considered to be.

Being more relevant in the lives of their consumers ought to be a goal (and achievable) for most brands - just consider how popular detergent OMO switched their focus from promise to purpose and became 22

much more relevant in the lives of their consumers:

FMCG giant Unilever has taken many of these learnings to heart, having taken the time to move all their brands from being promise-led to being purpose-led. One of their brands is the popular washing detergent, OMO. OMO recently launched a very successful campaign, “Dirt is good”. What’s interesting about this campaign is that OMO didn’t focus on the superior quality of the product, but instead shared the message that it’s great if your kids play outside, that they can get dirty, and as such, they have the opportunity to learn more, to discover new things; OMO focused on the value of the child’s development, and on how empowering it can be as a parent. The campaign was incredibly well received, not only for sharing a rather empowering message, but for creating more relevance in the lives of their consumers - loving parents that want the best for their kids.

Over time, Unilever noted that all the brands that they had moved over to be purpose-led (as opposed to promise-led) tend to achieve greater financial and reputational results. They experienced greater brand growth and greater brand profitability.

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Ensuring that whatever it is you do for your customers is rooted within your brand purpose - it’s not just about selling a specific product or service, it’s about making the consumer’s life easier if they choose to adopt your brand - is the simplest and fastest way to transcend your category.

And so the model comes full circle as it ends where it started: it’s about understanding your customer’s moments of truth, understanding their intrinsic wants and needs, and finally being more relevant in their lives by acting on that superior understanding.

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THE CONSUMER-CENTRICITY MODEL IN ACTION: During a journey-mapping exercise, we take the entire customer experience into consideration, from cradle to grave, then split it up into its various phases. For instance, if a customer wanted to buy a drill, the journey would start with a discovery phase - why do they need a drill.

From there we move to the try/buy phase, where the customer has done their research on the desired hardware (whether asking a friend or reading a review online to examining options available at the local hardware store). Once the consumer is confident with their decision, they may buy the product and use it. If they run into any issues, they may seek support on how to best use the product. In the drill example, we can already identify several phases in a single customer journey.

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Added to this, each one of these phases can be broken down into smaller ‘Jobs To Be Done’. The ‘Jobs To Be Done’ theory is a group of principles that allows an organization to identify potential areas for improvement and innovation - whether in their product, service, or marketing endeavors - by focusing on the various ‘Jobs To Be Done’ by the consumer when they consider making a purchase or any brand-related activity. Jobs are functional activities along the customer journey.

For instance, during the ‘discovery’ phase, the consumer may realize they need a drill, interrogate which drill may best suit their needs, do research on the various models of drills available to them, and make a shortlist of identified drills they’d prefer to use, then look for hardware stores or websites that have these specific drills in stock.

That’s a single phase with multiple Jobs To Be Done attached to it. Once we’ve done this, we ask the original question again - What can you do to improve the quality of the experience when using this drill? The answers to these questions highlight the underlying need for convenience and/or accessibility - it highlights the need for consumer empowerment, and in the example of the drill, the need to feel at home. When you’re evaluating each Job To Be Done separately, you might say ‘Making the product simpler to find’, or ‘Include aspirational messaging in its marketing campaign’; a far cry from the original ‘solutions’ offered in the first round of answers.

As another layer of intelligence, we can add the emotionality to each phase, and each Job To Be Done. In other words, we can track the ‘Jobs’ consumers have to do that they enjoy, as well as the ‘Jobs’ that potentially induce anxiety or frustration. In the drill example, it’s easy to see that having finally drilled the hole in the wall may fill the customer with emotions such as pride, or relief, while the initial phase of finding the right drill for the job may induce anxiety or frustration.

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CASE Finding the critical ‘Jobs To Be Done’ for improving the KLM experience Through its customer experience tracker, KLM - the flag carrier airline of the Netherlands - discovered that the quality of the transfer experience needed attention. KLM wanted to identify the source of the issue as a starting point for the involved teams to take action. For this we engaged a group of frequent travelers and asked them to take us along on their transfer experiences. At any point they felt positive or negative related to transferring, they had to share their experience on the spot through pictures, video and providing context as to why it mattered.

Considering the transfer experience takes place in between flights, we mainly expected pictures of people in the airport, yet interestingly, we received 26

many pictures from people that were still aboard the inbound flight. It was evident from their stories that transfer anxiety starts before the actual transfer experience - they did not know which gate would be the one they should go to, to catch their transfer flight, and they were uncertain if they’d have enough time to make it to their transfer flight.

Instead of improving existing on-the-ground touchpoints, it was evident that the more critical aspect was creating an improved experience on the inbound flight. In other words, KLM had to get involved earlier in the customer journey and needed to develop new experiences on the ‘fight transfer anxiety’ Job To Be Done of their transferring passengers.

Instead of improving existing on-the-ground touchpoints, it was evident that the more critical aspect was creating an improved experience on the inbound flight. In other words, KLM had to get involved earlier in the customer journey and needed to develop new experiences on the ‘fight transfer anxiety’ Job To Be Done of their transferring passengers.

“On aircrafts that are equipped with internet connectivity, passengers can now retrieve information about their upcoming transfer. They will also be notified in case of a cancelled or delayed onward flight which will cause missing the connecting flight. Whenever rebooking options are available, the passengers will be redirected to KLM.com to complete the rebooking while they are still in the air. This makes that we empower passengers to take control of their journey.”

Charles Hageman, Customer Journey Manager Flight at KLM

The learning here is that as an organization, you create a culture and practice of consumer obsession. If we are obsessed with our customers, we are better able to identify the opportunities to add value at a micro- and macro-level. We are better able to improve existing touchpoints, or better yet, innovate and implement new touchpoints much to the customers’ delight. We are better able to assist and guide them through each Job To Be Done, and each phase of their journey. We are better able to service them with solutions that actually address a need, and in so doing, becoming a much more integral part of our customers’ lives.

*Example of journey map for illustrative purposes only

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Extreme speed In this fast-paced environment, it’s not enough just to understand your customer, you have to act on that understanding… and you have to act on that understanding quickly! When defining your Customer Experience program, you will eventually need a practice and process for detecting, innovating and implementing relevant experiences - and you have to be swift in your approach. Speed is key. If you want to beat your competitors to market, if you want to improve your organization’s internal clock speed and time to market, you have to adopt an agile and fast approach. Even if you see you’re going to fail, by failing faster you can save yourself and your organization a considerable amount of time and money.

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The most cogent approach would be to install Service Design practices instead of the traditional stage gates processes and also apply these principles in your Customer Experience research program. Adopting Service Design principles means you are adopting a holistic, customer-centric approach to innovating and implementing new products and services, underscored by a sincere, empathetic understanding of your customer’s needs.

But again, speed is key. Critical in a Customer Experience research program, or fundamental Service Design, to gain speed is adopting an outside-in view. An outside-in view helps address any potential issues

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INSIDE-OUT THINKING VS OUTSIDE-IN THINKING Improvises processes, policies, people and systems, but does not improvise the Customer Experience

Improves processes, policies, people and systems which also improves the Customer Experience

Focus is on shareholder returns, not Customer Experience

Maximizes benefits for the customer

Improves internal efficiencies but may negatively impact the customer interaction

Improves the specific internal efficiencies that are known pain points when interacting with a customer

Cost-cutting measures that often negatively impact the customer

Cost-cutting measures that aim to improve the Customer Experience

May be the incorrect process, policy, people or systems to change

You’ve listened to the affected customers, so you are implementing changes to the customer-identified processes, policies, people and/or systems

by systematically looking at the entire organization from the viewpoint of its customers. Let it come together with external and internal knowledge, to build even more powerful consumer journey maps.

The benefits of ‘outside-in’ thinking include: • Minimizing the number of customer complaints • Increasing the overall satisfaction levels of each customer’s experience • Satisfied customers tend to refer more business to a consumercentric organization • Satisfied customers tend to support a customer-centric organization more frequently • Customer acquisition and customer retention in turn is much higher • You may be quicker and more agile in your implementation

Having a truly outside-in view of your organization may also mean dissolving organizational silos, and the true promotion of cross-functional teams. A cross-functional team may include several members of other parts of the organization, that specialize in different disciplines.

The benefit of a cross-functional team is that this team of people brings their different functional experiences to the group to work towards a common goal. Moreover, a cross-functional team also tends to be much faster when ideating new concepts as it’s not stuck in a standard, rigid groupthink mentality.

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Consider the following Customer Experience research program roadmap: CX STRATEGY

CX DEVELOPMENT

The first phase in your Customer Experience research program consists 32

of developing a Customer Experience Strategy starting from existing (business) knowledge, topped with deep consumer understanding. So before talking to consumers, you leverage your existing knowledge. Whether it’s through previous research, conversations with customers, or overall expertise in the category, most organizations already have a wealth of knowledge available to them.

The second level of developing a sound Customer Experience Strategy highlights the essential need for mapping the customer journey (beyond your own products or touchpoints); from a truly human perspective we have to look at the different Jobs To Be Done our consumers have to complete within a category, and then prioritize these Jobs to best define the moments of truth. Remember the Gumtree approach - by interrogating the entire customer journey, and identifying its customers’ moments of truth, it could develop touchpoints that addressed their customers’ most pressing needs, and subsequently helped it to grow within their desired vertical.

With this goal in mind, it’s time to ideate (or brainstorm) new solutions (or touchpoints/ features/ products/ services) to address the identified CX TRACKING

needs - but ideation means nothing without implementation, so move on to the prototype phase as quickly as possible, in order to breathe new life into the idea, and launch it to the market. The ideation and prototype phase ought to be a fast, iterative process with short and quick feedback loops, alternating consumer perspectives with the business perspective, moving from rough ideas to full-fledged concepts, to rapidly creating prototypes because you’ve fine-tuned and optimized the concept at every step of the process. By following these steps, implementing and executing them quickly, you can broaden your reputation as an innovator, save your organization money, and expand your organization’s consumer base.

Too many organizations sit on an idea for too long, only to be outperformed by a competitor that was faster to launch a version of their product to the market. BlackBerry is a sterling example of a business that sat on a great idea for too long, allowing competitors like Apple and Samsung to flood the market with iPhones and Android devices.

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BlackBerry’s market share disintegrated with each passing day, RIM going from reporting profits in excess of $1.9 billion to a deficit of $5.8 billion in less than 5 years.

The lesson here is to do your level best to launch even a minimally viable product to your customers, to glean their feedback in order to improve the product/ service. We could write a whole bookzine on this topic alone! In fact we have, it’s called Innovation Envy and 34

you can download your free copy here:

To win speed, you have to install the right culture; you have to start working cross-functionally and install that practice of experimentation - the organization needs to have the courage to develop and launch prototypes of these ideas, even if only to conduct further exploratory research and experimentation. You win speed by rapid iterations in this experimentation process and by getting a product or service to market to test and improve. Even if it fails, you’ll fail faster, learn faster, update iterations faster, innovate faster.

CASE How Induver installed a new digital strategy that guaranteed fast adoption and future-proof service levels Induver, a Belgian B2B insurance broker with a focus on medium-sized enterprises, wanted to prepare its team for a digital transformation process imperative for the industry.

As a starting point, we introduced and installed a human-centric approach, putting customers and employees at the core of the strategy. In line with service design principles, Induver developed a consumer-centric digital strategy consisting of parallel tracks, operating at different speeds. This was critical to the process, as it was the only means to truly bring relevant and future-proof service levels to its customers, and to ensure the internal stakeholders’ lightning fast adoption of this radical business transformation.

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The project started with a strategic workshop where we defined Induver’s future-proof purpose and its BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), which was tested against the needs and wants recorded in the pre- and post-sales journeys of its customers and internal stakeholders. These prioritized needs steered the business’ transformation process onto different development tracks: what needs to be done to digitize in the short to mid term to satisfy the stakeholders’ evolving needs, while creating new business models that deliver against the BHAG and the most fundamental customer needs?

In an ideation workshop, we worked with the teams responsible for these tracks using the ‘Today, Tomorrow and The Day After Tomorrow’ framework, where we could create concrete feature lists for each track, all of which could be linked back to concrete consumer needs during a specific moment in the journey. While customers still experienced Induver’s high service level, internal stakeholders craved digital tools to ease the job and bring true added value to customers. The perfect conditions to enter a new era fast!

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The Customer Experience Development phase is all about experimentation - employing iterative ideation, testing, and tracking processes in order to come up with market- (potentially world) first solutions (and doing so quickly). ‘Agility and flexibility’ is the name of the game.

At the end of the Customer Experience research program roadmap, we have tracking. It’s an important facet, because surely you want to know if you’re having an impact on your business or your customers with the new experiences you created, and you want to understand what that impact is, and how to improve accordingly. Tracking, when combined with the preceding phases, can become an invaluable problem-solving tool.

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How truly customer-centric research improved the customer experience at SkyTeam SkyTeam is a global airline alliance, consisting of 19 member airlines, each with their own strategies, processes and cultures. Collectively, the alliance covers more than 1,150 destinations, which translates to 14,500 departures daily. In this complex, ever-changing environment, SkyTeam faces the ongoing challenge of trying to keep the customer at the center of their work.

Together with SkyTeam, we launched a customer-centricity project for SkyPriority, SkyTeam’s priority service for high-value customers. As part of the project, we created the means to track the experience of these high-value customers in real-time via a proprietary app; an innovative approach designed to evoke a feeling of customer-centricity through the research process.

We understand that high-value customers often have limited time. As such, we decided to only deploy ultra-short micro surveys, and research participants only supply feedback on the touchpoints they actually experience. As soon as a participant enters an airport, they are reminded on their smartphone that they

can share feedback throughout their entire journey. As soon as they share an observation, it is uploaded to a dashboard along with the thousands of other responses, where the SkyPriority team from any of the 19 airlines can see it and act on it. In addition to the survey questions, participants can also upload pictures and comments, so SkyTeam is not only asking questions, but also actively listening to its customers.

The program has allowed tens of thousands of passengers to share real-time feedback from their SkyPriority experience as they travel. This in-the-moment approach allows SkyTeam to experience the journey along with their customers, leading to more relevant data. It has given airline managers a view on the reality of SkyPriority and allows them to address shortcomings immediately.

Thanks to this project, SkyTeam has its finger on the pulse of their customers’ needs and wants. In return, SkyTeam’s customers can see that SkyTeam is the alliance that truly listens to what they have to say, the good and the bad, and actively delivers on its promise to provide a more seamless end-to-end travel experience.

“At SkyTeam, our position is to help member airlines to offer customers a more seamless travel experience.

With the SkyPriority panel project, we can offer our members crucial real-time feedback, allowing them to improve the customer experience.”

Mauro Oretti, Vice President of Marketing at SkyTeam I N S I T E S C O N S U LT I N G

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Extreme creativity When it comes to developing your Customer Experience strategy, your technology and your data are your enablers, but your creativity is your driver. If you want to excel, you have to be creative.

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“If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative” David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy & Mather

Creativity in and of itself is a fairly critical aspect, because as consumers’ wants and needs change, being more creative in your approach means you can stay abreast of these changes more quickly and easily.

Creativity and collaboration go hand-in-hand, and unlock additional benefits you may not have considered: collaborating and ideating with a customer helps you identify quick wins; ideating and collaborating with colleagues help you harvest and improve existing ideas 40

that are inevitably floating around the organization, even though these ideas haven’t been acted on or implemented previously. This has given rise to crowdsourcing initiatives. Using a crowdsourcing service means that many businesses can overcome their own limitations and bridge their own knowledge gaps, by relying on the collective creative intelligence of the crowd. By engaging in this form of crowdsourcing, you can maintain a task-based and project-oriented focus that accommodates the emerging rapid-cycle way of doing business, affording a particular degree of organizational agility. As such, the creative crowd has the capability to fulfill growing demands for fast solutions to business problems. Moreover, as part of its very nature, it exposes a concept to a widely diverse array of individuals with various skills, perspectives and experiences that are not bound or limited to adhere to organizational structures.

“Don’t just think outside the box - lose the box!” eÿeka, online crowdsourcing and co-creation platform

According to Forrester, out of every 100 people, 90 can validate a concept, they’re spectators. 9 can curate concepts, but only 1 can truly create.

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Developing new ideas is a skill on its own. For these types of challenges, we include the eÿeka community, a global network of 400,000+ consumers that enjoy engaging in creative assignments. The eÿeka community is comprised of designers and copywriters and other creatives - amateurs and professionals alike that address all types of creative challenges, from product and service innovation to communication, activation, and packaging.

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CASE How McDonald’s involved the creative Eÿeka community to shape a more personalized experience for its customers McDonald’s, one of the world’s most popular quick-service restaurant chains, wanted to create a more personalized experience for its customers across Europe. Moreover, the brand wanted to engineer a fresh way of engaging with its internal stakeholders.

It was this corporate need and question that drove the quick-service restaurant to engage with global creative crowdsourcing agency eÿeka in order to find answers. The creative community was tasked with addressing the following question: what could McDonald’s do - big or small, every day or occasionally - to prove that it genuinely cared for its customers, and how could the restaurant make each of its customers feel more special?

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In 2015, eÿeka arranged a competition among its 400,000+ creator base to frame the challenge, and rewarded participants for suggesting tangible solutions. 167 participants from 40 different markets ventured 217 potential solutions to the stated challenge. Interestingly enough, only a minority of these participants were European citizens with many interesting ideas coming from markets beyond Europe. For example, a 23-year-old creator based in the Philippines thought about a role to assist customers to navigate the kiosks in the restaurants. McDonald’s has now a new position of Guest / Customers Experience Leaders in lots of markets.

McDonald’s compiled a booklet with a selection of the best topline ideas it had received from the community; a visually striking resource that also answered the question, “How do we engage our internal stakeholders differently?”.

The booklet outlined the best suggested ideas to address the challenges, and elaborated a bit on each in terms of its implementation and potential outcomes. McDonald’s then leveraged the booklet in local workshops organized in six different markets across Europe, where internal stakeholders refined the ideas to better fit their specific market needs, creating prototypes and rolling these out locally. The resulting new services are evoking much delight from new and existing customers. This creative tact has also improved internal stakeholder engagements, proving that it’s more than possible to outsource creativity, while making (and owning!) that impact.

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“This was an extremely rich project and collaboration with eÿeka. eÿeka’s community ideas gave us a strong springboard and we keep working on the personalization concept across all touchpoints: experience, food, digital and mobile apps.”

Christine Antoine-Simonet, Senior Director, Global Consumer Insight & Strategy at McDonald’s Corporation

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One of the many benefits of taking the creative crowd-sourcing approach is that the feedback and engagement transcend the industry, and can be applied to (almost) anything. Consider the following case where eĂżeka incentivized its network to imagine a breakthrough in after-sales service that would wow Volkswagen customers with its human and personalized experience:

CASE How Customer Experience became a core differentiator for Volkswagen Volkswagen are aware of the trend that more and more markets are becoming increasingly homogenic; as such, the vehicle manufacturer understood that the customer experience was a core element to distinguish themselves from 44

their competitors.

The objective of the research project was to come up with new consumer-centric Customer Experience solutions. Here it was crucial to start from the consumers’ perspective; to identify the consumer needs in order to come up with truly disruptive and new market innovations. The other objective was to make an impact throughout the Volkswagen business. The research program could not solely focus on the customer needs and pain points; it also needed to make a business impact, creating tangible value during the journey. We had to install a truly consumer-centric mindset for Volkswagen Poland. And, of course, the solution had to be scalable - something that could easily be rolled out to other brands in other markets.

For Volkswagen, the research program focused on rolling out a consumer-centric strategy - starting with journey mapping with the focus on the needs during each step of the journey (not the existing touchpoints) as a starting point for ideation and idea selection.

During the first phase, we harvested knowledge: we went through previous research, trend research, desk research, competitor analysis; we even visited the dealers and conducted in-depth interviews. We needed to get a benchmark for existing customer satisfaction levels, but also get a better understanding in terms of the barriers that may prevent enhancing the experience.

Following extensive interviews with Volkswagen personnel, the various dealerships and, most importantly, the consumers, we could map the ten core needs experienced by virtually every buyer. The research team took these ten needs and plotted them on the customer experience journey, which translated into 26 additional Jobs To Be Done.

Based on three dimensions, we worked with Volkswagen to identify the core jobs to focus on, and in partnership with eĂżeka, the group could develop 11 concepts (based on the inherent consumer need, while maximizing brand impact) that address the requirements for each functional area.

These 11 concepts have been prototyped and are currently in a live test environment in the Volkswagen home concept store in Warsaw, Poland. Together with real consumers in a real sales environment, testing and optimizing them, all the while gathering business results that will help us roll out these features in the wider network.

This form of crowdsourcing creativity has become more prevalent in recent years, especially because it’s a powerful tool to innovate new products and service. And that’s the name of the game - innovating, not renovating.

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LEARNINGS FROM THE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC APPROACH Copernicus caused quite a stir when he shared his observations and theories with his peers centuries ago; the Copernican revolution sparked a scientific revolution, the effects of which are still felt and celebrated today. Copernicus paved the way for future scientists, changing the way they think about their profession, and how they approach - greatly benefitting - the global scientific community.

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Like the Copernican Revolution, the Customer Journey Revolution will undoubtedly ripple well into the future, with many organizations having to evolve if they wish to stay relevant in the hearts and minds of their customers. Thankfully, there are several benefits to your organization for implementing more consumer-centric principles, and establishing a consumer-centric culture; it needn’t be a difficult or time-intensive process. By tearing down the silos within your organization and creating cross-functional teams to create buy-in and facilitate collaboration, you can adapt to a changing world more rapidly. Remember:

Extreme customer obsession

Touchpoints are important, but if they’re not informed by the customers’ moments of truth, these touchpoints are largely irrelevant. It’s important to not only have a superior understanding of your customer, but to act on this understanding - addressing their needs and wants accordingly. And remember, no matter which touchpoint you’re creating or improving, or which moment of truth you want to address, be sure that the customer’s voice is the most important voice you listen to - always lead with the customer in mind - you have to be obsessed with your customer. If customer-centricity is rooted in your brand purpose, you become more relevant in their world, and play a much more meaningful role in their lives.

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Extreme speed

You have to be agile in your approach, especially if you want to keep up with the world beyond your boardroom - you have to be faster and more flexible with whatever you do. Test first, and test fast! And if you fail, fail fast. An agile organizational culture which empowers cross-functional teams to employ an iterative ideation and testing process, is vital to win you some speed, and a core ingredient of success. Here it’s crucial to adopt an iterative mindset moving from harvesting the known, mapping the journey, ideating and prototyping to then tracking and optimizing accordingly. A great way to do this is ensuring you’ve deployed a research program that caters for flexibility, agility and speed.

Extreme creativity

To be creative means to adopt an intelligent naivety when it comes to the ideation and development process. And if you don’t think you’re creative, use your partners - your employees, your customers, even creative crowds. By harnessing the power of this collaborative creativity, and harnessing the power of creative crowdsourcing, not only will you be better able to deliver creative products, services, and solutions, it’s a sure-fire way to win with your customers.

Innovate, don’t renovate!

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REFERENCES BETTENCOURT, L. A. (2010). How to go from Customer Needs to Breakthrough services.

Retrieved from “Service Innovation” ULWICK, W. U. (2016, October 25) The book reveals the business implications of Jobs Theory and explains how to put Jobs Theory into practice using Outcome-Driven Innovation.

Retrieved from “Jobs to be done” CHESBROUGH, H. (2010). Rethinking business to grow and compete in a new era.

Retrieved from “Open Services Innovation” FURR, N. & DYER, J. (2014) Creating more relevance among your customer base in the age of disruptors and startups. Retrieved from “The Innovator’s Method” STICKDORN, M (2010) How to design and market services to create outstanding Customer Experiences Service design thinking is the designing and marketing of services that improve the Customer Experience, and the interactions between the service providers and the customers.

Retrieved from “This is Service Design Thinking” CHUE, M (2018, April 27). Examples of how 5 different Blue-Chip organizations launched campaigns with the express focus on Customer Centricity, and how they reaped the rewards.

Retrieved from: https://blog.digimind.com/en/insight-driven-marketing/execute/5-winning-customer-experience-examples-to-inspire-your-brands-marketing-strategy/ HOLTERHAUS, J (2018, August 7). Practical guidelines on implementing CX principles in a retail environment. Retrieved from: https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/customer-experience-examples/ BERNAZZANI, S (2018, September 26). Examples of good customer service and the related principles and learnings from these consumer engagements. Retrieved from: https://blog.hubspot. com/service/good-customer-service MORGAN, B (2017, July 17). Examples of Customer Experience Innovation, and how to grow from existing to new markets. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2017/07/17/5-fresh-examples-of-customer-experience-innovation/#297ddb5b5c18

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Christophe Vergult Managing Partner Christophe is Managing Partner at InSites Consulting and passionate about Customer Experience management. He is a partner for companies that want to drive consumer centricity through their CX practices, lifting on 20 years of experience in Customer Experience research.

Christophe@insites-consulting.com

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Delphine Vantomme Senior Business Director Tech & Services Delphine is Senior Business Director at InSites Consulting with 15+ years’ experience in rolling out VOC programs. She brings strong consumer-centered thinking to innovation & change programs in fast-paced environments.

Delphine@insites-consulting.com

Alex de Coning Marketing & Communications Manager Alexander is Marketing & Communication Manager at InSites Consulting and has been working in the public relations and media industry since 2001. He has won several awards for his writing and editorial work, including a Prism award for Columinate-InSites Consulting’s 2014 Financial Jargon campaign.

Alex@insites-consulting.com

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Marketing@insites-consulting.com @insites

B

eing a consumer-centric organization isn’t just the

domain of a select few; every business that has the genuine desire to offer a truly satisfying Customer Experience can and should achieve this goal. In this bookzine, we will explore some strategies and solutions to show you that it’s not an insurmountable task. Moreover, you’ll note that the brands that decide to adjust their focus accordingly are reaping the rewards. Why not you?

ABOUT INSITES CONSULTING From the start of InSites Consulting in 1997 until today, there has been only one constant: we are continuously pushing the boundaries of marketing research. With a team of academic visionaries, passionate marketers and research innovators, we empower people to shape the future of brands. As one of the top 10 most innovative market research agencies in the world (GRIT), we help our clients connect with consumers all over the world.

www.insites-consulting.com