angry. Some may not know what they
want. They think aloud without any
conviction behind their answer.
If I wanted to unleash empathy, I'd
much rather ask leaders to silently
observe a customer doing the job with
which their product or service is
supposed to assist. I'd ask them to
pay particular attention to what they
don't do as well as what they do. This
gets them out of their head and if
you'll pardon my bad anatomical
humor, closer to their heart. That's
where empathy lives.
Let me close with one comment.
This evidence won't be as precise
and comparable as your local
currency. Companies tend to
measure that which they can
measure and compare precisely
regardless of criticality and shy away
from measuring the most important
things because the measurement
lacks equivalent precision and
comparability. Done properly, what
I'm describing can be measured,
studied, shared and compared for
use in decision making. Using it just
requires a bid more judgment but it's
far better than making decisions
without any customer experience
information.
-
Every MBA program across the
world offers specializations in many
functional areas of management –
finance, marketing, operations, IT
and human resources management,
etc. However, no business school
offers any specialization in customer
experience management. It is after all
the customer that provides the 'fuel'
and 'reason' for every other
department to exist. Why then no
specialized and focused course on
customer experience management?
In part, your question gives away the
answer. Sales and sales management
is not on your list nor is it in most
MBA curriculum. Have you ever met
an MBA who majored in Sales?
Academic research and teaching
follows rather than leads business. In
general, marketing and sales
education is still rooted in a scarcity
model that pushes products out to
customers rather than recognizing the growing abundance of choices before
customers. Contemporary marketing
pulls customers through a richer
understanding of their specific
customer experience requirements.
That said, there are exceptions
emerging, often in unusual places.
For example, the
"D School" in Stanford's Graduate
Engineering Program is a hotbed of
customer experience research.
What according to you is customer
experience management and how is it
different from customer relationship
management?
CRM captures what a company
knows about its customers and
distributes principally to customer
facing functions. CEM captures what
customers think about a company.
The most important difference is that
CEM is a leading indicator and CRM
is a lagging indicator.
-
Experience is a behavioral
dimension of any individual.
Experience primarily occurs through
all the five sensory perceptions – taste
mouth), smell (nose), see (eyes), hear
ears) and feel (hands and legs). How
can companies manage customers’
experience spanning all these five
sensory perceptions?
The question suggests that it might
not be possible yet Chefs at Michelin
three star restaurants earn their keep
by doing this every day. Apple’s
design elegance addresses each one
with the possible exception of smell.
Doing this requires attention to detail
combined with a point of view (i.e.,
value proposition) which is woven
into every product and service.
This is what makes Apple so unique.
What might appear as elegant design
has its roots in Steve Jobs' quest for
"insanely great" products. They are
insane for two reasons. First the
standards he sets for himself and
others are at the leading edge of
experience; rarely technology.
Second, the standards are driven by
empathetically embracing customers’
experience requirements; not
technology or internal financial
criteria. Apple customers want to be
cool; not geeks.
Think of the "soft touch" control
wheel that graced the first iPod and
continues to this day. When they
introduced the wheel, every other
MP3 player had traditional switches
and rotary volume controls. Was the
new control wheel functionally
necessary? Absolutely not but it was
a far more elegant and functional
solution. It was cool.
Delivering superior customer
experience requires empathetic
leadership supported by delivery
systems, information and let me
emphasize again, individual
initiative. This goes back to trusting
each customer's experience;
including the aspirations that drive
their experiences. This is what
ultimately drives revenue growth.
One can outsource nearly every
function within a company but I've
yet to see one outsource their
customers!
