behaviorists fascinated by the human
dynamics of customers, leaders and
employee interactions that drive
business success. Like behavioral
economists, we recognize that
rational thinking is a human
capability but not a certainty.
Since 1983, we have applied this
unique perspective to innovation,
reducing time-to-market, strategic
thinking and most recently, customer
experience. Our work is published in
the Harvard Business Review and in
books such as Fast Cycle Time (Free
Press, 1992). Our latest thinking is
available at www.workingwider.com
where we offer competitive insights
on the challenges of global
innovation.
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Many congratulations for writing a
wonderful and thought-provoking
piece on customer experience in
Harvard Business Review
("Understanding Customer
Experience", HBR, February 2007).What prompted you to shift the focus
from the traditional themes to this
path-breaking theme of
understanding customer experience?
What were the antecedents to this
insightful proposition?
Many of our clients had been
successful introducing new products
and services using 'Fast Cycle Time'
strategies but were not achieving the
returns they had predicted. As we
examined their results, it was clear
that they focused on delivering
products and services that met
technical specifications but failed to
provide a compelling customer
experience. Digging into the problem,
we quickly saw that there was a huge
information gap inside these
companies. Only the rare firm had
any persistent customer experience
evidence, few had periodic inputs
and most relied on irregular and
intermittent feedback from customer
visits and trade shows. Besides being
random and infrequent, customer
experience information didn't
circulate or become part of decision
making.
Businesses are driven by goals and
steered by measures that detect and
correct error relative to these goals.
This is particularly true in
engineering organizations. We began
our customer experience efforts to
correct this problem.
Several decades ago Peter Drucker
said, "The single most important
thing to remember about any
enterprise is that there are no results
inside its walls. The result of a
business is a satisfied customer". Yet,companies have at best involved in
hard-sell sales pitches rather than
show genuine concern for the
customer. Why this dichotomy?
This is a huge problem to unravel.
Rooted in the tension between
managerial control and trusting one’s
employees and customers, the key to
unlocking this is empathy. Managers
regularly say "don't make me
responsible for something I can't
control." The reality of customer
experience is that no single manager
or function controls customer
experience. Superior customer
experience results when leaders
make it a clear priority, supported by
goals and timely information.
Ultimate delivery relies on employee
initiative. This takes us to the trust
dimension.
The toughest job is convincing
leaders to trust their employees'
judgment and accept customers'
experience. Frankly, the advances in
management analytics can hurt as
much as they help. (see Darrell Huff's
classic How to Lie with Statistics).
My experience is that evoking
empathy is far superior to
convincing. Everyone has been a
customer and employee. The more
creatively you can put your
leadership team into customer and
employee shoes, the more likely
you'll be to unlock the trust issue.
Let's start with employees. Customer
experience ratings and sales soar at
firms like Zappos (now part of
Amazon) because they give their
people the responsibility and the
right to solve the customers' problem.
Employees are not handcuffed by
overly detailed policies and
procedures that transform them into
machine-like robots serving up
explanations rather than solving
customer problems. Zappos'
employees exercise judgment within
broad customer-focused boundary
conditions and self-correct using
rapid feedback on satisfaction and
financial implications.
