Tag Archives: Customer experience

Strong Business-IT Relationships Begin with Strong Communications


communication

(This post first appeared on the Business Relationship Management Institute blog.  Please visit the BRMI website for more information about this new resource.)

We learn a great deal about managing business-IT relationships  from our work and the people we work with. If our eyes and ears are open, we can also learn a lot from our personal lives. I’ve just returned from a short scuba diving vacation where one of the fundamental disciplines of Business Relationship Management was reinforced for me.

Looking for a New Service Provider – The Power of First Impressions

Every year around this time my wife and I head for Cozumel, Mexico. For me, this is all about 1 week’s scuba diving – a hobby (passion?) I’ve had for many years, and one of my favorite ways to relax and refresh. This was the 10th year of diving on the Cozumel reef system — the second largest reef system in the world.

I never tire of Cozumel, but last year, a diver I met told me about the amazing cenotes — large underwater caverns linked by tunnels that travel for miles inland. These are found on the Yucatán Peninsula, a 30-minute ferry ride from the island of Cozumel to the mainland. A unique characteristic of some cenotes is that although they are filled with fresh water, they are above sea level. This means that if you enter them and are able to access depths below sea level, the fresh water changes to sea water. Where the fresh and salt water meet is a phenomenon known as a halocline. A halocline creates some very strange phenomena for a diver — a sudden change in temperature and buoyancy, and stunning visual effects.  (For a great little YouTube video of the effects, see here.)

Anyway, I needed to find a highly qualified and licensed guide to take me to a cenote. Although I’m an experienced diver, I am not cave certified, so I did not want to go with just any bozo with a wetsuit and an ad in the yellow pages. Thanks to the wonderful world we live in, it did not take long to find a cenote guide who was highly recommended on sites such as TripAdvisor. I was pretty confident I’d found a suitable guide based on this research, but when I emailed him, my confidence factor began to increase.

The Greatest Danger With Communication is the Illusion That It’s Taken Place!

I credit Dan Appleton, a data modeling guru I had the pleasure to share a speaking platform many years ago with the wonderful quote in the headline above. One reason why my confidence in the dive guide increased was the quality of his initial communication. He laid out the options clearly. He explained everything by raising, then answering some key questions. For example, “Mr. Merlyn, if you are new to the cenotes, I recommend we go to Taj Mahaal or Chac Mool. Why do I recommend those? Because…”  He went on, “I recommend you take the 7am ferry. I know that’s very early to be getting up while on vacation, so why do I recommend such an early start? Because…”  And so it went. My follow-up questions were always responded to within 8 hours, and always with great clarity. I booked him.

As the trip approached, he communicated again, going back over the logistics, arrangements, and what I should expect. He even told me about the other diver that would be joining us. Every arrangement was validated and all opportunities for misunderstanding were reduced or eliminated. He said he’d meet me off the ferry — and not only did he do so on time, but he also recognized and approached me from among the several hundred other ferry passengers. (He’d seen an old photo of me from my scuba dive certification which he’d insisted on seeing before he’d confirm the reservation.)

After the trip, I went back to TripAdvisor to write my own review, and found myself re-reading the 60 or so reviews he already had out there — and nearly every one of them commented on his superb communications.

When your life is in someone’s hands, you need a very high level of trust and confidence. As a business executive, when your IT investment and competitive differentiation are in your Business Relationship Manager’s hands, you also need a very high level of trust and confidence. How you communicate with your business partner is key to building and sustaining that trust over time.

[For those interested, the other diver on this trip, Bruno, shot a video you can find here. Alex Mata, the dive guide is the guy with 2 air tanks, always leading the way. The diver you can see is me. Bruno was behind me, wielding the video camera and huge array of lights! We enter the halocline about 2:51 minutes into the video, though 3:57 and you can see the strange visual effects — quite disorienting! Fortunately, his superb pre-dive briefing had warned us to expect that he'd become all but invisible at the halocline, and instructed us to each swim to a different side of him so as to have some forward visibility. From 4:08 on you can see some nice shell fossils, stalactites and stalagmites.]

 

 

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Leveraging the Cloud to Accelerate IT Renewal – Part 3


This is the third and final part in a three-part post on how Cloud Computing can provide a fast path to “IT Renewal.”

What is IT Renewal?

In the first post in this series, I discussed how information and technology are becoming ever more central to what an organization does and how it does it and how consumer technology is beginning to have a dramatic impact on enterprise IT. I referred to the actions an IT organization takes in response to these changes as “IT Renewal.”

In Part 2, I described three major opportunities for Cloud Computing to accelerate IT renewal:

  1. Finding and validating new business opportunities.
  2. Improving existing business capabilities.
  3. Transforming how IT capabilities are managed and deployed.

I wrapped up the second post focusing on opportunity #3 from the list, arguing that IT Management is becoming a distributed activity that exhibits many of the characteristics of complex systems, where:

  • Organization is a natural, spontaneous act;
  • Emergent structure trumps imposed hierarchy and control;
  • Creativity arises from variety and randomness;
  • Relationships, porous boundaries, free flows of information and self-reference are essential to survival and growth.

These complex system characteristics lend themselves to the use of collaborative approaches to managing IT work – what I referred to as the “Five C’s” of Information Management.

The “Five C’s” of Information Management

As the management of information and technology becomes increasingly distributed and complex, five types of management activity emerge as important to the way work is done:

  1. Collaborating
  2. Coordinating
  3. Connecting
  4. Co-creating
  5. Coalescing

Enabling the “Five C’s” in the Cloud

Because each of these activities is increasingly being conducted across time and space and across organizational boundaries, enabling them through flexible, scalable cloud solutions becomes an attractive proposition.

As an example, I’m currently working with a client who is refining their IT Operating Model so as to enable a new, growth-oriented business-IT strategy. They had determined that they wanted to support their IT work and forge stronger business relationships using Microsoft SharePoint. However, they are currently on SharePoint 2007 and recognized that they needed to move to SharePoint 2010 as their preferred collaboration and knowledge management platform. However, the upgrades to servers, licenses and related IT infrastructure was going to take 3-4 months, and a significant capital outlay. But, they did not want to lose the momentum they had already established in developing the new business-IT strategy.

As an alternative, we were able to set them up with a cloud-hosted SharePoint 2010 instance over one weekend, with zero capital outlay, and a very modest monthly cost that scales with the number of users, and therefore with the value delivered. Now, they are creating new levels of organizational clarity, establishing a continuously improving IT Operating Model, and experiencing new ways of working – collaborating, coordinating, connecting, co-creating and coalescing, against a set of Cloud-based software services.

Let’s take each of these in turn and see how they can help you “manage IT in the cloud.”

Collaborating on IT Work

Much IT work is performed through teams – increasingly distributed across geographies, organizations and time zones. This change forces a shift in work management from a document-centric (write-attach-email-review-attach-email, repeat ad infinitum) to a more collaborative Wiki-based approach, which has significant advantages:

  • Wiki’s are inherently non-linear and encourage a ‘constructive informality’ that improves quality over time, drives organizational clarity and reduces or eliminates redundancy and contradictions. Wiki’s (well-managed!) let you stop wondering, “Is this the latest version? What was changed since the last version?”
  • Wiki’s encourage multi-author collaboration. Whereas the typical document-centric approach has one or two main authors with everyone else in a review role, Wiki’s encourage a more collaborative approach to authoring – with higher engagement and understanding in the content.
  • A Wiki approach dramatically simplifies search and discovery. The ability to hyperlink, tag, and use a well-factored semantic Wiki leads to content that is far more accessible, intelligible and searchable for all stakeholders.
  • There are many good Wiki products available as SaaS, including SharePoint, Confluence, and MediaWiki.

Coordinating Activities in Time and Space

As IT work becomes more distributed, the need to coordinate activities in time and space becomes both increasingly important and challenging. And again, SaaS offerings are ideally suited to helping distributed teams coordinate their activities, including:

  • Real-time communication and collaboration – e.g., IM, Google Wave
  • Collaborative Project Management – e.g., Bamboo, BaseCamp
  • Desktop videoconferencing – e.g., Go To Meeting, WebEx

Connecting People and Ideas

The need to identify and connect people and ideas is important to innovation and learning. As IT work becomes more distributed, cloud-based SaaS solutions become effective ways of connecting people and ideas, through tools such as:

  • Social Networking – e.g., FaceBook, LinkedIn, Plaxo
  • Mind Mapping – e.g., MindMeister, WebBrain, Bubbl.us
  • Virtual Electronic Whiteboards – e.g., FlockDraw, Colabopad
  • Social Network Analysis – e.g., Netminer, InFlow
  • Innovation James – roll your own using a combination of cloud-based services

Co-Creating Experiences

As business and IT converge, opportunities emerge to co-create experiences with customers, consumers, suppliers, business partners, etc. New types of SaaS solutions for co-creation include:

  • Modeling and Simulation – e.g., Creately, FlexSim, Second Life
  • Prototyping – e.g., iRise, Dreamweaver
  • Virtual Worlds – e.g., Second Life, There.com (currently closed)

Coalescing Around Ideas and Reaching Consensus on Decisions

With the increasing distribution of IT work comes the need to poll stakeholders, tap into sentiment, coalesce around ideas and reach consensus around decisions. And new approaches and supporting tools emerging into this space, including:

  • Polling – e.g., Survey Monkey, Kluster, IdeaScale
  • Group Decision Making – e.g., Resolve
  • Prediction Markets – e.g., NewsFutures

Summary

One the one hand, the increasing complexity of the world of IT management, and the convergence between the work of professional IT organizations and their customers and consumers can seem like a daunting challenge for IT leaders – a threat to the order, security and stability they have worked so hard to achieve over the last 50 years of enterprise computing. On the other hand, the shift to the “information prosumer” and the distribution of IT work is forcing a new way of managing IT activities – across organizational boundaries, across geographies and across cultures.

Just as these shifts are taking place, the Internet as a computing platform and the rise of Web 2.0 and 3.0 capabilities promise a new set of rapidly evolving tools – available as Web services – accessible from mobile devices – and affordable by even the smallest business or even the individual consumer.

I believe these Cloud-based IT management capabilities offer a way for IT leaders to step ahead – to take the lead in learning how to deploy and take advantage of these services – and help to drive business-IT convergence for their organizations.

Illustration courtesy of Suzanne Lebeda at Adirondack Artists’ Guild

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Customer Experience, Taming the Remote Control Madness – And a Tale of Advances in End User Programming


I rarely get so excited about technology that I post about it – that’s not this blog’s raison d’être.  However, between being snowed in (a rare occurrence in Atlanta, GA!), being really delighted with a great product that really solves a familiar and widespread problem, and enjoying a very positive series of customer experiences with the product’s vendor, I thought I’d break ranks, as it were, and talk about a product – and how it manifests the evolution of end user programming and what used to be called “user friendliness.”

The Challenge of ‘Best of Breed‘

I think everyone in IT has at some point wrestled with the choice between ‘integrated’ solutions and ‘best in breed’.  The analogy of home entertainment plays out well to illustrate the pros and cons.  I won’t go into this well worn territory – suffice it to say that most of us end up with best of breed, and pay the price of a coffee table full of remote controls and the minor maintenance headaches they bring with them (how many different kinds of batteries can remote control manufacturers find to make our lives miserable?)

An Early Solution

In 2006, my wife and I with our ‘empty nest’ decided it was time to downsize our living situation and move into a town house in a community with shared common areas such as gym, swimming pool, tennis courts, and so on.  To be frank, I was not thrilled with the downsizing plan, but managed to blackmail myself with the idea that we’d get the basement of said town house finished and turned into a home theater and a nice home office (where I spend much of my time).  Strangely, the basement in our town house is where the second story of most homes would be (don’t ask!) so the office has windows with great views into the woods.

With money saved by the down sizing, I went for a pretty high end (for the day) home theater, with best of breed components.  Given the state of the technology in 2006 (HDMI was not very prevalent then), I opted to have a local company source the technology and install it for me.  I also opted for a single remote – the Philips Pronto – a jokingly called ‘programmable’ device.  I remember watching the installation team set up my system.  It took the best part of the day, and for most of that time, one of the install team sat on the floor with a laptop and the Pronto unit, programming and testing to accommodate my flat screen TV, surround sound, Tivo, DVD, etc.  Eventually, they got it all working and – voilà – a single remote controlled everything.  Sort of.  It never did work quite right, but was close enough for my wife and I to live with it.

Along Come the Upgrades…

Live with it, that was, until I needed to upgrade technology.  Add a Blue Ray player, for example, and that’s the end of single remote simplicity!  So, I decided to master programming of the Pronto device.  I was trained in IBM Assembler and Cobol early in my career, but never thought of myself as a programmer.  And programming the Pronto reinforced my “non-programmer” self-perception and my lack of  patience for the arcane or obscure.  I quickly gave up!  It was just too complex and time-consuming.  So I put up with 2 remotes – the Pronto plus Blue Ray player.  Then 3 remotes – the Pronto plus Blue Ray plus Roku.  By Christmas, we had decided to upgrade our flat panel TV with the latest 1080p Plasma.  Goodbye Pronto, hello 6 remotes!

Then Relief!

A little web research convinced me that the Logitech Harmony One was worth a try.  An Amazon ‘one-click’ and 48 hours later, and I was opening the box to my putative problem solver!  What a delight!  Everything from the easy-open, “green” packaging, to the instructions, to the slick look and feel of the device oozed ‘design thinking.’

Programming the device through a web interface (they must have a library of thousand of remotes and their code strings) was as simple as could be.  Once programmed, you have a touch screen device – select the activity you want (watch TV, watch Roku, listen to a CD, watch a DVD, etc.) and the right components are switched on in the right sequence and set to the right inputs and outputs.  If you need to, select the device you want, and the Harmony One remote behaves exactly like that device.  No more batteries – the Harmony One sits in a nice little charging cradle.

And a Reinforcing Customer Experience

Capping my delight, today I got an email from Glenn Rogers, Logitech‘s Director, Customer Experience, inviting me to provide feedback on “How are we doing?”  This was the most thorough and well-designed customer survey I have ever taken!  I’ve found some customer surveys actually frustrate me and lower my opinion of the company seeking input.  This was just the opposite.  They wanted to know about every aspect of how I researched, how I purchased, how I experience opening the package, installing the software, setting up the device, and so on.  I felt like they really cared about me as a customer and what they could do to improve my customer experience.

Not Perfect, But…

I don’t want to pretend that the Logitech Harmony One remote is perfect – there are some minor nits (fed back to them via their survey), but they really are minor.  This is a slick device in every respect and is a great example of how to make ‘programming’ not just user friendly, but actually user seductive!  Congratulations, Logitech!  Want to buy a bunch of old remotes, anyone?

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“Branding” Your IT Organization


I love this post on Attraction of Identity from my kindred spirit, Russ Aebig. (And not just because he references my work on Business-IT Maturity!)   Russ poses the question:

As an organization, who are you? What is your internal and external story?”

Russ goes on to say:

IT organizations typically are not oriented around branding and when pushed to think about it realize they have many disparate, confused, and mixed  identities, each shaped by recent events with their customers. From a brand perspective, there will be no clear message which the IT customers can positively associate with.”

The IT-Marketing Disconnect

Hallelujah!  And I’d go further to say that IT organizations typically have little to no sense of marketing, the core set of disciplines within which branding belongs. Many years ago, as an intern, I did a stint in both the sales and marketing organizations of a British computer manufacturer and quickly learned some of the key differences between these disciplines and how they play off against each other.  As a marketing executive defined it to me back then, “Marketing is about ensuring an environment in which your products (or services) sell!”  As such, marketing has much to do with understanding the market needs and dynamics, then shaping perceptions in that market so that your product’s (or service’s) ability to meet those needs is known and compelling.

Against that background, you can imagine the many shortcomings in how IT organizations:

  • Create deep understanding about their markets, segments, problems their customers want solved
  • Position their products and services in ways that can help solve those problems
  • Make it easy to find and engage in the IT organization’s available services
  • Price their services in ways that make sense to their customers and are “easy to do business with”
  • Communicate in powerful and positive ways to shape perceptions about how they are solving business problems and creating value

The Power of Branding

If IT organizations were automobiles, what make would your organization most closely equate to?  Would you be a Ferrari – extreme high performance, lots of pizazz, reserved for the enlightened few with the means to drive it?  Or perhaps a Mercedes – high quality, superbly engineered, high technology, style, and within reach of (some) mere mortals?  Or a Mazda – quality at an affordable price, with lots of innovation, to boot!  Or a Chevy truck – great value, solid dependable performance for going beyond the normal needs of a family saloon?

If you don’t like the automobile analogy (which I use somewhat tongue-in-cheek) pick something closer to home – perhaps a retail store chain, or consumer service provider, or a hotel chain.  Do you want to be known for breadth of service, with all the bells and whistles?  Or tightly focused on some core competencies?  Are you an innovator?  Or more about the nuts and bolts services needed in day to day operations?  This kind of branding analysis and execution may lead you to recognize that you have more than one brand to your IT organization (think FedEx Express, FedEx Ground and FedEx Office!)  With different types of services, different value propositions, and different ways of engaging.

The key, I believe, is to be thoughtful, as Russ suggests, about your value proposition(s) – how you want them to be seen and felt.  This is not only “good marketing” – it’s also a great way to build alignment among your leadership team as you work through the definition of your organization’s mission, vision, values and brand messages.

Image courtesy of Lauren Fernandez

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Are You Falling Into the Customer Satisfaction Trap?


Customer Satisfaction is a slippery and potentially dangerously misleading concept!  I was reminded of this when reading an article entitled “Satisfaction vs. Loyalty” by William J. Cusick in the excellent publication, The Conference Board Review.  Cusick argues that customers who complete satisfaction surveys typically respond “satisfied” or “mostly satisfied” regardless of how they really feel.  He goes on to cite a study of people who had recently changed their banks.  In this study, 80% said they had been “satisfied” with their former institution, and yet they still chose to leave!

Why Do We Provide Misleading Customer Feedback?

According to Cusick, “because it’s easier!” How many times, in a restaurant, for example, when the server asks, “Was everything alright?” we respond in the affirmative when, in reality it was not ok, and we intend to never return?  Of course, there is a threshold of service below which we will complain – for some this threshold is lower than for others – but the reality is that we often don’t have the energy or motivation to provide honest feedback.

Poor Instrument Design

How many times have you chosen to fill in a customer feedback form only to abandon it in mid-flight because it’s design does not permit you to give the feedback you’d like to give?  I know that happens to me from time to time – the instrument design is totally inadequate and sometimes actually exacerbates my negative feelings towards the organization.

Lack of Follow-up

I think it is a well-worn and proven fact that a proper response to a customer complaint can help not only recover from a service or product problem, but can actually help build loyalty.  And yet so many companies and organizations fail to acknowledge, let alone respond to customer feedback.  (I will post in a couple of days on my experience with Get Satisfaction and a complaint I made about Bose Quiet Comfort headphones a couple of years ago – a very sad but fascinating story!)

Our Options – Exit, Voice and Loyalty

Providing feedback is subject to an interesting set of dynamics.  Many years ago I read a fascinating book on this called Exit, Voice and Loyalty, by Albert O. Hirschman.  In this book, Hirschman argues that members of an organization have two possible responses when they perceive that the organization is not performing – they can exit (withdraw from the relationship); or, they can voice (attempt to improve the relationship through communication, grievance or proposal for change).  Exit is associated with Adam Smith‘s invisible hand of the market. Voice, on the other hand, is political and can be confrontational.  Hirschman explores the dynamics and characteristics of “exit” and “voice,” and the interplay of these choices with “loyalty.”

The book has helped me recognize my responsibility in “voicing” any concerns I have with an organization.  It also reminds me when and why to “exit” a relationship, taking into account my concern for loyalty to that organization.  In the case of flawed customer feedback, the loyalty factor is so low that people can’t be bothered to provide real and useful feedback.  They may, in fact, deliberately withhold feedback feeling that the organization doesn’t even deserve it!

Customer Satisfaction vs. Customer Experience?

Another problem with Customer Satisfaction is that even if feedback is provided, it may not tell you what you really need to know.   A couple of years back I had to make a service call to a software provider.  They used remote access to figure out what was wrong and correct it.  I was asked to complete a follow-up survey that wanted to know if the call had resolved the problem.  It had, but my “Customer Experience” was far less than positive, but they could not have known that from my response to their survey.  The reasons were:

  1. I never should have had the problem with their software in the first place.
  2. In finding and fixing the problem, they made no attempt to help me become self-sufficient in fixing the problem in the future.  I knew this was likely to be a recurring problem (as it subsequently proved to be!) and did not relish the pain and wait times associated with reaching their customer support desk!

I’m sure they recorded me as a satisfied customer, and rewarded their support desk for a job well done.  But in reality, I had a poor customer experience, and would never do business with them again, nor recommend them to my friends.

What Experience Are Your Customer Receiving?

How well are you really surfacing your customer’s satisfaction with your product or service?  How do they feel about their customer experience?

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Deming’s 14 Points Revisited: Part 4


Web - Quality 1This post picks up on Parts 1, 2 and 3 and examines the third of Deming’s 14 Management Points, which urges:

Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.”

This is one of the fundamental issues in quality management, with the quality movement shifting from quality control to quality assurance over the years, in part thanks to Edwards Deming and his peers during the latter part of the industrial revolution.

Testing – Value Add or Overhead?

This is a tough question I’ve had to address.  For example, I’ve facilitated IT groups where the issue of the value of testing, and how to manage it has been an important point of contention in organization and governance design.  I believe that ultimately, testing is overhead.  In that assertion, I distinguish between “inspection of final product (testing) from activities such as prototyping, modeling, running experiments – which to the contrary can be a real value add to IT discovery, solution delivery and support.  I also distinguish activities such as structured walkthrough‘s etc., which have more to do with building quality in than with inspection of final product.

Note that Deming does not suggest eliminating inspection – he urges eliminating the need for mass inspection, and “ceasing dependence” on inspection.  As such I acknowledge there’s such a thing as “necessary overhead,” but that need should be monitored and reduced over time, as built in quality improves.

The Genesis of “Design Thinking”

Today, the movement referred to as “Design  Thinking” must welcome Deming’s admonition to “build quality in!”   But I don’t see evidence of a lot of Design Thinking in most IT organizations.  It is also often lacking in vendor products.

Design Thinking and Enterprise Architecture

One key role that, as I’ve said in many posts, is woefully under-served in terms of its potential to make a real difference to return on IT investment and the whole user experience, is that of the Enterprise Architect.  A key to the junction between problem analysis and solution design, including solutions on a grand scale such as enterprise architectures, the Enterprise Architect should be a conduit to inject Design Thinking into IT products and services.  And, with a nod to Deming, “building quality into the product in the first place!”

Image courtesy of Nanophase Nanoengineering Products

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At Tale of Two AT&T’s – And a Lesson in Integration!


attThere are many reasons to rant in this world – customer service is often not what it needs to be, and sometimes getting simple things done takes way more effort and is far more frustrating than should be the case.  As a blogger, I try to resist the temptation to use my blog as a venting platform, but every now and again I find myself getting so steamed, I have to rant!

I feel some justification in this case.  It was exactly 1 year ago today that I extolled the virtues of AT&T’s U-Verse service, and exactly 1 month later that I reported my first glitches, which were a result of AT&T’s lack of integrated billing.  This lack of integration (1 year later, no less!!!) bit me again and cost me hours on a phone being routed from person to person in AT&T trying to achieve a very basic need.  My company is moving some voicemail servers, so I needed to change the phone number that my office line call forwards to on busy or no answer.  Simple, right?  You’d think so.  I assumed this could be done on line (which it was for my wireless service) but for the land line that was not the case.  Note, my land line is not on U-Verse, but AT&T seems to have a hard time figuring that out.  It has literally taken me 3 weeks to reach the right person to make this change – a time-frame exacerbated by the fact that I travel and there are fairly narrow windows when I can spend time making this type of service request.

It all came to a head yesterday when I eventually reached a service tech who took all the details, then figured out (what I had told him at the start of the call) that I was referring to a land line.  “I’m sorry, I can’t help you with this, but I can pass you on to the person that can.”  I quickly objected, telling the service rep that I’d been down this path several times, and was either passed on to a line that was (a) never answered, or (b) rang twice then dropped, or (c) was another rep in the same department who was equally unable to help me.  He assured me that he would get me to the right person.  I was put on hold, and… you guessed it, found myself in the same U-Verse hole I’d started in!

Eventually, I did get to the right department, and the requested change to my call forwarding number has been made.  I’m sure the folk inside AT&T are thinking, “What’s the big deal, landlines, wireless and U-Verse are separate organizations with separate systems?”  But from my perspective, part of the AT&T value proposition is a single provider supposedly creating an integrated, uniform and satisfying customer experience.  Nothing could be further from the truth!  Three different web-sites, different billing systems, different support systems, and zero appreciation or concern for the customer experience.

What sort of experiences do you create for your customers?  Does the customer experience you create keep them loyal, happy and expanding their relationship with you?  Or, like me, are they ‘running for the door’ and actively looking for an alternate provider who will deliver on the promise of their value proposition?

Best Buy and Web 2.0


bestbuyI’ve posted quite a few times on Web 2.0 capabilities as a way to drive new energy, and even innovation, into an IT organization and the company it serves.

The Wikinomics blog (full disclosure – this is affiliated with nGenera Corporation, the company I am with) just posted a very nice piece on how Best Buy is using Web 2.0. The piece features a great little YouTube video – well worth the 4.33 minutes it takes to watch.  (Look for some quick clips of Don Tapscott, Chairman of the nGenera Innovation Network.)

Your IT Organization as a “Geek Squad”?

As you check this out, think about Best Buy’s “Geek Squad” – how could this use of Web 2.0 play out for your company, and how might you position your IT organization as your company’s “Geek Squad”?

Of course, a few years back, no self-respecting CIO would want to think of his or her organization as their “geek squad” but I think Best Buy has successfully legitimized the term.  Their Geek Squad (a Best Buy subsidiary and a registered trademark/protected brand) has been a valuable differentiator for Best Buy – by and large enhancing the shopping experience, adding value to the store’s capabilities, and helping consumers install and use many of the products that Best Buy sells.

Are your IT staff seen this way?  Are they a differentiator and a value add?  Do they enhance the value of IT’s products and services?

Your Web 2.0 Experience

How does the social networking experience in your company match up against the Best Buy experience?  How could you get closer to the benefits Best Buy is touting in this video clip?

Social Networking for IT Organizations in a Recession


social_networking3

I’ve been thinking about a couple of things my CIO clients are wrestling with, and how these might be better approached jointly rather than as separate challenges.  These are:

  1. How to strengthen Business-IT Relationships in the context of the current economic climate.
  2. How to experiment with, learn from and foster Social Networking in the business context (rather than the more common “Facebook-like” personal context.
  3. How to sharpen and refocus the role of IT for the global recession.

Business-IT Relationships and the Current Economy

The abstract notion of “business-IT relationships” becomes more tangible when we thing in terms of role.  The CIO can be thought of as the “über-relationship manager” - responsible for the relationship between IT and the Executive Leadership.  The good news is that this relationship is key to shaping, understanding and enabling the overarching enterprise strategy.  The bad news is that there is often a large gap between this strategic intent and the actual strategy as enacted by business unit management.

A second layer of business-IT relationship management is needed at this second layer – seasoned IT executives (often on a CIO succession track) who face off with business unit leaders and, just like their CIO bosses, are responsible for shaping and understanding their business unit’s strategy.  The role responsible for this management layer is the IT Relationship Manager (actual titles vary considerably).  They are also responsible, with the CIO, for reconciling between strategic intent at the top executive layer, and current strategy at the business unit management layer.

From my experience, this Business Unit Relationship Manager role typically does not work very effectively.  The competencies essential for this role to thrive include:

  • Deep business knowledge and insight
  • Analytical skills
  • Sufficient IT expertise to keep it all real and current
  • Strong communications and change management
  • A goodly dose of innovation
  • Decent level of finance and accounting

This is a rare combination, with limited training and development sources available.  (I must plug my company, nGenera, here for being a pioneer with our highly regarded Relationship Management Professional Development Programs).

In a down economy, the Relationship Manager role is even more important.  They have to surface and “sell” innovative opportunities that can grow market share in a recession, create new top line growth, and innovate products, services and processes that provide exceptional customer experiences.  At the same time, they have to deflect all the low value demand for system tweaks and enhancements that don’t lead to these types of growth oriented opportunities, and actually add cost while consuming scarce resources without adding much value.

Experiment with, Learn from and Foster Social Networking

I’ve posted before that many of the more innovative and visionary CIOs are driving Social Networking and Web 2.0 into their IT organizations and their businesses.  Some are still struggling with this, looking for the “killer application” that becomes the tipping point for this brave new world of IT possibilities.  I believe that strengthening Relationship Management performance might be an ideal “killer app” for social networking.

Imagine a community of Relationship Management practitioners, sharing war stories, ideas and applications of their art.  Imagine Wiki’s containing internal (and external) best Relationship Management practices, pointing to tools and templates such as customer profiling, business case development, strategic account management and so on.

Imagine this community expanding over time to incorporate IT savvy business leaders, building on each other’s ideas and creating momentum for innovative and high value IT-enabling opportunities.

Sharpen and Refocus the Role of IT for the Global Recession

So, three separate challenges – converged, might make for a potent brew.  I believe there’s a potential “virtuous cycle” here – one that can be initiated relatively easily, inexpensively, and with very little risk.  In fact, I bet for many organizations, this is already happening – it’s just not be channeled and amplified into critical mass.

What do you think?  Are you doing any of this?  How’s it working out?  How could it be amplified?  As alway, comments are most welcome!

One Guru Disects the “Anatomy of a Wow” Customer Experience


My friend and colleague Frank Capek has just summarized his 25 years of learnings from his work on Customer Experience Design.  I think so much of Frank’s work, and believe this is so important, I thought I’d point you all to the post.

As a related aside, I’d like to share a couple of “wow” experiences I’ve had in the last week.  The first was delivered by Moen, the faucet company.  My kitchen faucet was getting a little hard to turn.  I went to the Moen web site and got my first small “wow.”  It is beautifully laid out.  I was quickly able to get a description of the problem, the recommended solution, and a real bonus – a nicely animated lesson in how to replace the cartridge in the faucet.  The site helped me find and order the right cartridge.  All well and good.  The replacement part arrived a few days later, and I was able to replace the part in about 20 minutes – a painless process thanks to the animation and clear directions that came with the part.

While I was replacing the cartridge I noticed that the lever was loose (the faucet is a single lever type, with an integrated spray attachment).  Anyway, replacing the part solved the “stickiness” in the handle, and all was well.  However, a couple of days later, I noticed that the lever was again loose.  I removed the Allen screw, applied a good dollop (an engineering term!) of Loctite thread compound.  A couple of days later, it was loose again.  I went back to the web site, but could not see any particular reference to the loose screw phenomenon, so I wrote a support request (again, easily done) describing the problem.  The next day, I got an email telling me that the parts I needed were being shipped to me post haste.

A couple of days later, a replacement Allen screw, plus several other parts associated with securing the lever, turned up in the mail – again with clear instructions.  No cost – no hassle.  Just exceptional customer service.  I replace the screw and related parts, and that solved the problem.  I was absolutely delighted about every aspect of my interaction with Moen.  In Frank’s words, I was ‘wowed!’

In the same week, I had read a review by the wonderful Walter Mossberg on Photo Books.  These are a fun way to assemble photos into a hard back or soft bound book.  He pointed out that Apple’s iPhoto had a gizmo built in, and that you could easily assemble a book (or calendar) and send it to Apple for processing and printing.  I’m already an enthusiastic iPhoto user, but had never tried the photo book feature.  So I did – quickly assembling a surprise book for my wife.  The process was easy and fun.  I ordered the book from Apple and was delighted when the finished product arrived through the mail about 10 days later.  Unfortunately, within minutes the pages separated from the hard back binding.  Bummer!

I got onto Apple’s web site, quickly found the place to register the problem – again, a beautifully designed site that made the whole process easy.  I got an immediate acknowledgment (nothing new there!) but a day later received a personal email from a support representative (named!) expressing deep regret that this had happened, and letting me know that a replacement would be shipped immediately.  The “wow” came 2 days later – while the original order was shipped by mail (my request, being a cheapskate) the replacement came by FedEx.  Once again, Apple proved it really is a class act.  of course, I’ve gone on to assemble and order several other items!

It’s experiences such as those delivered by Moen and Apple that go well above what we’ve come to expect – that differentiate them in the market place and keep us customers going back time and time again.  And, to one of Frank’s points, these were not “accidents.”  I know from years of experience, that Apple engineers the “wow” into virtually everything it does.  Similarly, as I’ve told friends about my Moen experience, they tell me of similar experiences they’ve had with the company – consistently exceptional customer experiences.

As an IT organization, how have you “designed” an exceptional customer experience?  How could you create more “wows” for your business partners and customers?  Check in on Frank’s blog to get some pointers on what it takes and how to achieve it.  It will be well worth your time!