Performance Perspectives

Category Archives: Lean

A Simpler (and Faster) Path to Cx

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Regardless of whether you’re a racing fan or not, chances are you’ve seen the below video as it made its social media rounds last year. As a junkie for organizational agility and speed, I never get tired of watching it. And if you haven’t seen it, by all means take a look, as it speaks volumes about today’s topic.

Those of us who spend time in and around Customer Service organizations see our fair share of big investments—new IT deployments, reengineering of back-office processes, upgrading our contact centers … the list goes on. With the introduction of each new Customer Experience (Cx) program, the size of the investment portfolio grows even further through projects like enterprise-wide journey mapping, training initiatives, new service channels, and improvements to research and data analytics platforms. Big projects are a reality for CCO’s and their leadership teams, and justifiably so. Maintaining customer support infrastructure is undoubtedly key to our long-term success.

But are we putting too much emphasis on our customer infrastructure at the expense of the smaller and more actionable practices that could generate more immediate results?

When Smaller is Better…

When asked to describe their Customer Experience initiatives, many CCO’s point to the “small stuff” as being key to the results they’ve achieved. In a world where everyone talks about “Big”—big data, big projects, big commitments—it’s these small, seemingly insignificant, practices, with not-so-small impacts, that are becoming the poster children of their efforts.

I’m talking about practices that don’t require an “act of congress” to implement—the ones that are just good common sense and take next to nothing to implement, except a little foresight and follow-through. Simple and easy, yet, still, an overwhelming number of organizations focus on the big solution being implemented and, in doing so, miss the opportunities to make a difference today.

Consider call/contact centers for a moment, where “big stuff” always takes center stage. How often do we hear “When our new CIS is in place,” “As soon as we implement speech analytics,” “Once we get that new IVR,” etc. But the reality is that most of what we need to make incremental—and sometimes big—changes is already there for those with the creative energy to act on it.

Fix-it-Fridays

A past client (We’ll call her Sarah), one I still regard as a brilliant Customer Service manager, was excellent at demonstrating this concept, i.e., using what she had available at her disposal today, combined with a real action bias to catalyze big change. One of my favorites was a practice she called “Fix-it Fridays.”

During the week, she would mine a few recorded calls for good examples of customer interactions that were “less than optimally handled.” This could mean the rep simply misunderstood the customer’s issue and employed an ineffective solution, or that a good solution was just poorly delivered and/or executed.

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Each Friday afternoon, she would get small groups of reps together (voluntarily, but usually enticed with a bit of free food or cake) to brainstorm better ways of handling these customer situations. They would listen to a sample call together and discuss how the rep handled the interaction. Then they (not the supervisor, QA manager, or trainer, but the front line reps themselves) would talk about how they would approach the call differently. Challenge and debate were encouraged. But it was also a safe and rewarding experience that left everyone, including the rep in the “case study,” feeling better equipped to deliver on their Cx commitment. As this manager used to say, “it’s a little like looking in the mirror when you apply your own service standards to the responses we deliver day in and day out.”

Many organizations use some variation of this in their centers. Nearly everyone has a QA/monitoring process in place (although many place their focus on procedural and policy compliance rather than emerging Cx values and standards). Most have decent follow-up mechanisms for supervisor coaching when problems occur. And (most of the time) when broad themes emerge, they work them into their ongoing training.  But all of this takes time. And, increasingly, such efforts rely on technology and infrastructure to mine interactions, which often means more time and complexity.

Sarah’s approach was focused on “time to market.” It didn’t discount the value of the existing process or the opportunities new technology can offer. Rather, it simply looked for ways to act more quickly. Perhaps, more importantly, she used her weekly forums as a way to teach staff how their Cx standards really were being applied, by immersing them directly, and by letting the team explore those standards in real time. The focus wasn’t on developing new policies or approving new scripts. It was about learning and applying good Cx.

Your reaction to this may be that you achieve these results through your QA process and ongoing coaching. But before your discount Sarah’s practice as run-of-the-mill, ask yourself:

  • How long does it take employees in your organization to act on a solution once it’s identified?
  • Do you encourage bad practices to be changed on the spot, sometimes on the basis of good instinct or common sense, or do all changes have to go through your business improvement processes and protocols?
  • Once a new approach is identified, how quickly is it shared and institutionalized?
  • Do your managers and staff feel empowered to take risks and deploy changes quickly?
  • Are small “experiments” allowed, knowing that most can be “unwound” if they prove to be less effective than anticipated?

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Examples like this abound throughout our customer service organizations—process fixes,touchpoint improvements, intelligence gathering techniques, and many more. And there is no doubt that the projects and initiatives we have in place to deal with these challenges will lead us to a more consistent and sustainable application of our Cx strategy. But without an equally ambitious focus on the smaller solutions, and a bias from the organization to support them, they simply won’t happen.

Commit today to making the small stuff an equal priority within your company. Ask for it, reward it, and manage to it. The wins may seem small at first, but stack up enough of them and you’ll discover stronger momentum and a faster ROI on your Cx investment.

Bob Champagne is Managing Partner at onVector Consulting. Bob has over 25 years designing and delivering performance management and governance solutions at the Enterprise and Business Unit levels of the organization. Bob can be contacted at bob.champagne@onvectorconsulting.com or through LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/bobchampagne 
onVector’s Line of Sight solution suite has been utilized by its client organizations to establish the critical linkages between strategies, initiatives and KPI’s; enabling better alignment, higher levels of performance and a faster path to ROI. onVector’s Line of Sight methodology has been adapted to facilitate the unique management and governance needs of many strategic initiatives across the organization, including Customer Experience.

 To learn more about Cx Solutions available through onVector, including:

  • Cx Readiness Assessments
  • Cx Program Startups
  • Cx Alignment & Standards Development
  • Rapid Touchpoint Renewal
  • Cx Management & Governance Solutions

visit us at http://onvectorconsulting.com/cxsolutions

 

 

Governing Cx through Line-of-Sight

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line of sight gearsAn end-to-end approach for managing customer experience strategy and delivering on its promises...

Over the past 24 months, Customer Experience Initiatives (Cx programs, as they have come to be called) have climbed to the top of the radar screens of most leadership teams. Organizations are abuzz with projects to identify “touchpoints,” map “customer journeys,” and strengthen their customer-facing business processes. Alongside these initiatives are even larger investments in acquiring the data and analytics required to feed and sustain these service improvement strategies. >>Next>>

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Crowdsourcing Through A Crisis

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The collapse of a conventional service model, and the rise of a new one…

One of the exciting things about my line of work is that we see lots of new ideas and ways of doing business. Not all of them make sense at the time. Some just have to evolve. But over time, we witness step changes where bleeding edge becomes leading edge. And what causes that to occur is that a brand new “use case” emerges for a solution or technology that has been waiting for its time.

Silence in the dark…

During hurricane Sandy, many of us in the northeast were starved for information. Millions of customers were without power, gas stations were out of service, grocery stores were closed, and just about every part of life as we knew it shut down. For many, it was a “mini Katrina,” making us reflect on what life must have been like in New Orleans in 2005. For others, it was the real thing.

It’s hard to get real upset about things when you look at them through such a lens. In large measure, folks affected by Hurricane Sandy were pretty patient, at least in the early going. But over time, that patience waned and the demand for information escalated—information that never really materialized. For the most part, customers understood they weren’t going to get specifics, but they wanted something. What they got was nothing.

The sum total of the narrative was:

  • “This is an unprecedented event”
  • “It’s not our fault”
  • “We’re all doing the best we can”
  • “It will be a minimum of 7-10 days before things return to normal”

On day one, that may have been an appropriate response (or at least somewhat understandable), but with each additional day, that response created more and more frustration.

A core competency becomes irrelevant…

Ironically, Utility companies pride themselves on service excellence, and for the most part do a fairly good job of it. Most have made dramatic strides in terms of customer experience. Sure, there is a lot more they can do, but for the most part, the nature, speed, and quality of service have all improved. Most have invested significantly in upgrading core service and delivery channels (Call Center availability, CRM technology, metering and billing systems), and have expanded the range of service options (web, mobile, kiosks, etc.)

And as you might expect (since it is one of their biggest drivers of satisfaction), most have gotten better in terms of outage notification, communications, and restorations. Most major utilities have online outage maps available that provide location, current status, and restoration times. Infrastructure has gotten better with expanded use of distribution automation and switching technologies. The logistics of managing restoration efforts has improved. And customer communications (both proactive and reactive) have expanded. After all, it is (and should be)a core competency.

But eight weeks ago, none of this really mattered. Sandy was an unprecedented event. The foundation for most of the improvements referenced above was compromised by the storm. You can only provide information you have, and the damage assessments had only just begun. Even if you possess the technical and informational resources required to provide updated outage maps, doing so assumes that customers can get online to view them. Most outage notifications require a phone call. Most phones today are VOIP and require power to function. Ironically, the call centers were generally available and functional (the three times I called, the call was answered in less than twenty seconds), but with none of the other parts of the process working, the reps just became another “talking head” for what we already know (or didn’t know)—The storm was an unprecedented event. It was not their fault. They had no information. And it’s a waste of your (and by inference their) time to contact them for more information before 7-10 days had passed.

Electric power is an interesting kind of product. You don’t think about it much. In fact, studies have shown that the typical customer only thinks about their utility 6-9 minutes a year. You could say it’s like “air”—you only think about it when you can’t get it.  And when it’s unavailable, it certainly occupies a lot more of your mind-space. Most complaints and pockets of significant dissatisfaction can be directly ascribed to extended outage situations. And those impressions last a lifetime.

So while utilities have invested heavily in service improvements, one could argue that their systems have been designed for everything OTHER THAN that which poses the most significant risk to satisfaction and loyalty. But again, it’s a bit of a Catch-22. Designing a system for a low-probability but catastrophic event that most likely will render the system itself useless, seems somewhat circular and, ultimately, futile. Or does it?

Customers take matters in their own hands…

In circumstances like this, some customers intellectually understand the position the utility is in. They may not like it, but the more it becomes clear that they are asking for information the company simply doesn’t have and/or can’t provide, they will come to understand that continued efforts to obtain such information are pointless.

During the storm, many customers turned to online news, discussion boards, online forums, and social media for their information with varying degrees of success. What many wanted to know was whether work had begun in their area, whether the source of the problem had been identified, and a better (if not definitive) sense of restoration time. But

for the most part, they wanted to know that repairs in their area had been initiated. Or in some cases, THAT their power HAD been restored (Many were staying with relatives or friends out of town, and this would be their only way to learn that things were back up and running). Last year during a similar event, my wife learned we were restored via Facebook, two days before the utility reported it on the web.

 A solution staring you in the face?

But here’s where it gets interesting. During any such wide-scale outage, there are hundreds of thousands of eyeballs scouring these channels, many capable of providing information the utility doesn’t have access to—localized damage, poles down, safety issues, and plenty more. But the vast majority of this information goes unharvested.

In fact, with Sandy it was just the opposite. My local utility was literally pumping out messages, at times more than three or four per hour. But the sum total of the content was—yes, you guessed it… that it was an unprecedented event; it was not their fault; that they had no information; and, yes, that unnerving seven-to-ten-day restoration prediction. There was the occasional posting of “ice and water” locations (met with sarcasm since temps were often well below freezing). There were some attempts by customers to engage with whoever was providing these messages, but it was always met with some way of saying “we don’t know”.

Then I noticed something interesting. A few customers began hashtagging tweets with specific information about their location. Soon others were replying in kind—simple things like “we have two trucks on our a street.” Then someone else would chime in with an address that had been restored.

One of the utilities in our area (not ours, mind you) even attempted to “coordinate” some of the dialogue between customers—things like “thanks for your question about such-and-such a town, we don’t know the status, but three customers are reporting activity in your area.” That type of coordination was very rare to see, and was only short lived, but someone began to see an opportunity and was willing to act on it. For the most part, though, the majority of the dialog was between and among customers, and the utilities were largely absent from the conversation, save for the repeated banter of … “7-10 days.”

What if?…

OK—extrapolate with me a bit here…

What if the posts and tweets of customers were slightly more structured—like we saw with customers hash-tagging their locations?

What if utility reps played a role in facilitating the conversations between customers and other information providers and consumers?

What if we had systems that could synthesize large volumes of unstructured data that was already out there and actually add value to it?

What if utility workers and restoration crews could post directly to appropriate forums and boards as the work was being done?

In short, what if the customer was actually a participant in providing customer service?

Emerging Models…

Farfetched? Perhaps.
But there are models that are beginning to look exactly like this.

GifGaf , a UK mobile service provider has migrated almost completely to customer-provided customer service. No call centers, no lobbies, just a portal for customers to report issues and actually play a role in responding to and solving problems. There are reward mechanisms where customers can earn points toward minutes or other merchandise for contributing valuable content and solutions. The model isn’t perfect, and some customers would say it’s just another way to save money and push self-service, but if you look a bit more closely, you’ll see that this is a radically different approach.

There is a variety of services (see-click-fix, and get satisfaction) to name a few , that have begun to apply the concept of “crowdsourcing” (a more formal name for aggregating and extracting value from available streams of social content in the provision of services) to the provision of infrastructure and other utility services. In both cases, these companies provide a structured app for customers to report issues, and companies to respond, while tracking progress along the way—everything from fixing potholes to streetlights. Only these services are not completely tied to the company providing the service. It does, however, behoove the service provider to monitor and participate in the resolution process, since the complaints, issues, and resolution have so much visibility.

Take-aways…

I believe we are at an interesting juncture in customer service—one that can not only improve the process and costs of providing customer solutions, but radically change the delivery model.

To me, the take-aways are threefold:

  1. Become a more active participant in your customer communities. Don’t just settle for perfunctory uses of Twitter and Facebook as communication channels. Engage in a value-adding way to the dialogue that is already taking place. Instead of trying to create new followers or get “Liked,” try to join in on active discussions and dialogue.
  2. Change how we think about service infrastructure and technologies. I would say 90% of our systems are based on using information collected from customers by our companies FOR our companies. Instead, think about how we might harness information from the broad range of unstructured data already out there (information already provided by our customers FOR our customers) in the provision of better and more relevant customer experiences.
  3. Focus on the one or two areas where dissatisfaction and loyalty are most at risk. Most companies design their service infrastructures for the average environment, when the larger risk is posed by the anomalous circumstance (the three-week outage, the blizzard that closes ten airports, etc.). That will likely change the tools, technologies and even the customer portals that are used for providing service, as well as who actually provides it.

Some could argue that engaging in this sort of thinking poses a significant competitive threat (by removing you from the process and giving competitors a window into your customer relationships). I would argue just the opposite—that customer communities exist all around us, and many of us are blind to the value it can provide in terms of better, cheaper, and more relevant service.

Instead of viewing it as a threat, look for ways to engage with it and add value.

-b

 


2011- Year of the Squirrel

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What 2011 taught us about strategic distractions, and their impact on business value…

A few months back, I remember having a good chuckle while watching a Jon Stewart parody on the Republican candidate field.  The monologue poked fun at the media’s tendency, during its seemingly relentless coverage of the leading candidate on that day, to completely shift direction the moment a new contender entered the picture.In this case, Bachman was the leader du jour, the media was the dog in the Pixar movie “Up”, and the part of the squirrel was played by none other than Rick Perry, who these days appears to be succeeding only at distracting himself.

“Squirrel moments” happen all around us, and with greater frequency than we’d care to admit. As flawed human beings, it’s easy for us to get sidetracked from what we should be doing, by some urgent new distraction that seems terribly critical in the moment. Yet most of us eventually manage to refocus, once we become aware (through our own cognitive skills or because a friend or colleague points it out to us) of how badly the squirrel moment has driven us off-course. Typically it is the speed with which we are able to re-calibrate ourselves that ultimately determines the degree of damage, if any, that is caused by the distraction.

Some “squirrel moments” have far reaching impacts…

But for organizations, the challenge of refocusing after a significant distraction is far greater. Unlike individual distractions, those in organizations often require refocusing entire workgroups, business units, and processes that may have strayed far from the core focus and strategies of the business. It’s a bit like comparing a fighter jet to a large commercial airliner. While both are capable of course correction, larger aircraft don’t react “on a dime” and require a lot more time and space to maneuver.  The magnitude of the corporate distraction, the breadth of areas it touches, and the duration of the distraction, are just a few of the variables that determine the organization’s ability to react and readjust quickly.

2011 offered numerous examples of companies adversely affected by a loss of focus.

  • The enormous value that Netflix had created, based on a simple and straightforward product offer embraced by scores of customers, was severely jeopardized by the company’s ill-advised decision to migrate to a more complex, two-tiered pricing model driven largely by a short-term desire to justify an overinflated stock price. The outcome was both predictable and horrific, as customers departed in droves, destroying an enormous amount of company value in very short order.
  • Bank of America, arguably one of the better banks in terms of customer satisfaction and experience, watched much of that brand value evaporate following announcement of a pricing move (its now infamous $5 charge for debit card use) that evoked a similar customer outrage. While perhaps necessitated by financial realities (debatable), its positioning, execution, and ultimate response were painful to watch play out.
  • Research in Motion, maker of the Blackberry, whose loyal business following was predicated on its operational and reliability advantages, suffered a huge blow to its value on the heels of a long and poorly managed  network outage—a network on which it had based much of its service differentiation.
  • Berkshire Hathaway, a company whose entire business is based on the prudent, sober, and wise investing of its founder, ended up the subject of one of 2011’s stories of financial impropriety–an insider trading scandal the likes of which we’ve come to expect from the industry, just not from these guys.
  • HP announced another redirection of its product portfolio, and yet another shift in its leadership team–a true “squirrel moment” with a healthy dose of “been there, done that.”

S*** Happens! You just have to manage it…

Sure, one might argue, “bad things happen to good companies”, and in these and a myriad of other examples from 2011 there is certainly some truth to that. Sometimes, these blunders cannot always be attributed to bad strategies or failure to stick with a good one. Sometimes, it’s the tactical decisions that are “far removed” from the C-suite and its strategic decision making. Sometimes these decisions, as we saw above, are undertaken because of a financial necessity that in the short term might trump a marketing strategy.

But, by the same token, those seemingly small disconnects may, in fact, be symptomatic of the problem itself. While management may not be able to control ALL of the drivers that lead to negative consequences, effective development and MANAGEMENT of strategy can not only limit the damage caused by veering off course, but can play a very important role in course correction after the fact. For many companies the words “MANAGEMENT” and “STRATEGY” connote different, and often conflicting, disciplines. But for those successful at avoiding and responding to distractions, these are highly related and often inseparable competencies.

 Great strategy management is about the WHAT and the HOW…

So, how can you ensure that corporate distractions are kept to a minimum, and effectively refocus and re-center the business when they invariably do occur?

  1. Define and clarify your business strategy — This sounds like motherhood and apple pie. It always does. But it remains the preeminent cause of breakdowns during times of distraction, because the strategy is either too complex to begin with, or it lacks sufficient clarity to engender the necessary alignment and commitment to continue keeping the firm focused in times of distraction. Your strategy is more than simply a restatement of a vision or broad ambition. It is a specific answer to a specific question: What do we need to do to ensure success within your existing business environment? One of Apple’s most effective demonstrations of strategic clarity was Steve Jobs’ insistence on collapsing their previously expansive product portfolio into four clear product families that would redefine its future. Clear, compelling, with an easily-understood line of sight to renewing the value of the business.
  2. Do more than just communicate it — Management 101 preaches “communicate your strategy.” But communication alone is insufficient to create the alignment necessary to avoid distractions. One of the most rewarding aspects of this job is watching clients challenge ideas and recommendations (even from yours truly) based on an automatic and often deeply-felt narrative of how the suggested change(s) might conflict with their core strategy. For them, it’s more than just “talking points.” It’s a compelling narrative they have embodied through words and examples. Sure, these too can be misinterpreted occasionally, but just like a pilot who is expected to react with some degree of muscle memory, we must develop and nurture that level of alignment as a first line of defense against corporate distraction. Vision, values, and strategies. They all need to be seamlessly integrated within a crisp, clear, and compelling narrative.
  3. Build and use the right navigation systems — When NASA launches a probe to Mars, it must travel undistracted for about nine months in order to hit a fast-moving and very small target (the red planet). Even the slightest and briefest of external forces can cause the probe to miss the planet by millions of miles. Having the right navigation systems and a network of alerts and course-correction mechanisms is crucial to a mission like this, and it is just as critical to a business like yours. In business, such technologies and processes comprise your integrated performance management system, and they should include the KPI’s of the business, the network of leading and lagging business metrics we must monitor, and a clear understanding of the relationships between them.
  4. Scenario and contingency planning — Made popular by companies like Shell years ago, the discipline to do this, and do it well, has fallen out of vogue. Not sure why, other than what I heard from a client a few years back…that it “forced us to admit that we might have the wrong strategy”, or that it “would distract us from adhering to that strategy”. That’s as much hogwash today as it was when I first heard it, and failure to implement a rigorous scenario planning process is, as ever, tantamount to sticking your head in the sand. If subjecting your strategic plans to that level of scrutiny adversely affects your ability to execute the strategy as designed, while being agile enough to react and learn from mistakes, then you either have the wrong strategy, the wrong leadership, or both.
  5. The ability and agility to recover from distractions — Unlike the dogs in “UP”, we don’t have masters to yank our collars or order us back into focus. (unless we work in a purely autocratic environment). What we do have is the ability to learn and react. It helps if we have a contingency plan with automatic responses. But we must also have the ability to recognize when something is not working, and the agility to put that learning in motion quickly and effectively.

 History doesn’t have to repeat itself…

2011 wasn’t the first time we’ve seen these types of blunders. And it most certainly won’t be the last.

We all remember the Tylenol scare of many years ago. Drug companies like J&J, who exist largely at the mercy of safety protocols and regulations, can easily be crushed by such events. But J&J’s ability to identify and react to the crisis with agility prevented what could have been an historic business failure. Their “distraction,” which arguably could have been anticipated, was kept fairly well contained.

Others weren’t so fortunate. The Exxon-Valdez and BP-Macondo debacles are two great examples of this. Safety, which should be a core strategic underpinning for any company, but particularly those in this industry, in large measure fell victim to distraction. But, in both cases, it was the lack of a coherent, actionable response strategy that kept business value flowing out of the pipeline/tanker as fast as the oil.

If we have the right blueprint for managing strategy, we can limit the number of distractions, identify and react appropriately when they do occur, and respond with agility and effectiveness to keep adverse consequences to a minimum.

-b/b

Bob Champagne is Managing Partner of onVector Consulting Group, a privately held international management consulting organization specializing in the design and deployment of Performance Management tools, systems, and solutions. Bob has over 25 years of Performance Management experience with primary emphasis on Customer Operations in the global energy and utilities sector. Bob has consulted with hundreds of companies across numerous industries and geographies. Bob can be contacted at bob.champagne@onvectorconsulting.com

Brian Kenneth Swain is a Principal with onVector Consulting Group.  Brian has over 25 years of experience in Marketing, Product Management, and Customer Operations. He has managed organizations in highly competitive product environments,  and has consulted for numerous companies across the globe. Brian is an alumnus of McKinsey & Company, Bell Laboratories, and Reliant Energy, and is a graduate of Columbia University and the Wharton Business School. He can be contacted at brian.swain@onvectorconsulting.com. 

Balancing Operational, Product and Customer Priorities…

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Choosing your “strategic bias”…

We’ve had more than a few conversations with clients of late that revolve around the subject of core competency. What is it today? What should it be? What do we want it to be? Must we choose between product innovation, customer care, or operational excellence, or is it possible to have all three? While there isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” answer, the consensus philosophy (as espoused, for example, in the “The Discipline of Market Leaders”) is that there should most definitely be a bias toward choosing one axis of the model for optimization.

It certainly has been an issue that’s generated a lot of strategic debate in corporate boardrooms. Most provocative and paradoxical questions will do that. But the reason this debate so energizes meetings is because it also taps into something deeper–corporate culture and emotion. Operations, R&D, and Customer Service, among other departmental factions, continue to fight for precious budget and capital, and as these resources become increasingly constrained, the consequence of failing to “choose” begins to look like compromise or watered-down decision making. Clearly, it seems, steering a majority of our resources into one of these areas offers the opportunity to create some short-term wins in that area, but it also risks undermining our overall strategy, which could, in the end, leave us with nothing to show.

When a “bias” becomes “THE end game”…

Unfortunately, the very essence of what has made this discussion so valuable is, as well, now creating an unhealthy dynamic in some leadership circles. With resource constraints and the passions of business unit executives both reaching fever pitch, the push to make the core competency declaration is stronger than ever, and the tendency to push for a “clear choice” rather than just a “bias” (which was the original intent of the management model) is more often than not the desired end game of each of these respective operating executives (so long as its THEIR area that benefits from the increased emphasis).

Rather than focus on optimizing just one dimension of the business, we should, instead, look to companies that have managed to assemble the complete package, or, more accurately, perhaps an edge in one domain but without apparent sacrifices in the other two. Apologies in advance for more “Apple advocacy”, but clearly this is an example of a company that not only balances these three dimensions skillfully, but excels in them simultaneously.

Having your cake and eating it too…

Apple is clearly a product-based business…no argument there. Simplicity, functionality, user commitment, and advocacy … the list goes on. When people buy an Apple product, loyalty and advocacy are an integral part of each transaction, and this despite the fact that customers are sometimes even paying a premium price versus competing products. They are immediately reinforced by their “buy decision”. One of our clients calls this “smart value”–the ability of a company, through its product experience,  to continuously remind each customer of how smart their purchase decision was. Worth noting also is the fact that, while Apple sells many premium-priced products, they offer, as well, a range of affordable ones that, despite their competitive prices, still feature the design and functionality excellence that customers have come to expect from the company. That their manufacturing and operational processes are sufficiently well-thought-through to allow such products to be offered is a testament to their emphasis on the operational side of the business.

On the customer-care side of things, they are equally credible, if not downright superior, for example, in the way their service channels are so perfectly aligned with customer convenience, the way they make and manage commitments and appointments, the almost cult-like enthusiasm of their staff, the customer-centric culture of their work environments. Even tasks that are traditionally frustrating to customers–warranty issues, software updates, etc.–are so smoothly handled that customers walk away having appreciated the experience.

Separate and apart from the fact that these stores generate more revenue per square foot than any company in history , what is more amazing is the customer-centric focus and attitude that are constantly on display. Whether it is the simplicity of making an appointment at the genius bar , the excellent service you receive, or nice little touches like bypassing the line and having an employee execute the transaction by hand-held device and email you the receipt, it’s all there. When was the last time you heard customers raving about an extra warranty plan for a product that rarely fails?

Product Innovation, Operational Excellence, Customer Advocacy … Walk into any Apple store and you’ll see all three in abundance.

Creating and multiplying your base of “engaged advocates”…

Recently, we’ve shared some views on the need to excel at both product and service experiences. (“Customer Nirvana”) Failure to achieve both means you are only creating temporary success, i.e., until customers have a better choice or option. The path to engaged advocacy requires both. And to achieve product and service excellence simultaneously, as well as profitably, requires operational excellence.

Strategic models that ask you to focus time and money on a single discipline certainly have their place. For example, if your company finds itself in the unfortunate position at being sub-par in all dimensions, then more often than not it will make sense to focus on fixing one area at a time. But as a long-term aspiration, maximizing all dimensions of performance remains the path to being  recognized as world class.

There are many football teams that have either awesome offensive or defensive capabilities, but you rarely see any of them playing in the Super Bowl. It’s the team that has managed to strike a proper balance between the groups — offense, defense, special teams — that usually walks away with the trophy.

-b/b

About the Authors:

Bob Champagne is Managing Partner of onVector Consulting Group, a privately held international management consulting organization specializing in the design and deployment of Performance Management tools, systems, and solutions. Bob has over 25 years of Performance Management experience with primary emphasis on Customer Operations in the global energy and utilities sector. Bob has consulted with hundreds of companies across numerous industries and geographies. Bob can be contacted at bob.champagne@onvectorconsulting.com

Brian Kenneth Swain is a Principal with onVector Consulting Group.  Brian has over 25 years of experience in Marketing, Product Management, and Customer Operations. He has managed organizations in highly competitive product environments,  and has consulted for numerous companies across the globe. Brian is an alumnus of McKinsey & Company, Bell Laboratories, and Reliant Energy, and is a graduate of Columbia University and the Wharton Business School. He can be contacted at brian.swain@onvectorconsulting.com.