Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Building a customer-centred business

Some solutions on how to put the customer at the centre of your organization.

I was pleased to participate as one of nine panelists in a kitchen-table dialogue on June 23, 2010 – led by moderator Alan Kay of The Glasgow Group and hosted by Rick Wolfe of PostStone Corporation – about how companies can get past thinking about brands and become truly customer-centred.



Examples of organizations that are considered customer-centred
  • Tim Horton’s – a brand that’s become an icon by tapping into the Canadian experience.
  • Life Choice Foods – a virtual company that offers top-quality kid-friendly organic foods.
  • Amazon – an online retailer that understands past purchase patterns and presents relevant recommendations.
  • Zappos – an online retailer with an explicit set of family core values.
  • Zip (Netflix in the U.S.) – an easy-to-use, hassle-free home DVD rental service.
  • Best Buy – uses information from employees to better understand customer preferences.
  • L.L. Bean – a retailer offering guaranteed customer satisfaction across all touchpoints.

Some barriers to putting customers at the centre
  • Leadership bias – CEOs/CFOs do not generally gain exposure to a customer mindset in their education or their career path. 
  • Insufficient analytics – despite plenty of data, few businesses seem to have succeeded in integrating all their information to compile a realistic 360-degree view of their customers’ value to the business.  
  • Organizational structure – with the Marketing department owning the brand in many ‘siloed’ organizations, it’s hard to get the entire business focused on the customer. The job of a traditional leader is to provide predictable results to shareholders, and organizations have been narrowly structured to ensure profitability.

Some solutions for being customer-centric

* Begin with the business’s existing information resources, use business intelligence to identify and understand the most valuable customers, then ask them how you can best meet their needs. (We’ve never had more capability to identify and understand customers.)

* Don’t start with your widget and then look for customers; instead, start further upstream by ask a group of prospects what they need, then design the widget accordingly.

* Start by being employee-centric:
  • Hire the right staff. (North America tends to value ‘talkers’ instead of ‘listening,’ which needs to be built into the company’s value system.) 
  • Inform them about the company’s progress.
  • Value them by asking for their input.
  • Report back to them on what you’re doing with their input (or explain why you’re not doing something.) 
  • Reward them for their successes. 
* Leverage a ‘use-case process’ (a user-centric perspective, drawn from the software business) in thinking about the business:
  • Who are our various users?
  • Why are they coming? 
  • Where are they coming from? 
  • What are they trying to do? 
  • How long do they stay (determined using today’s metrics)?
* Remember the singular, customer-focused vision of some of the great entrepreneurs (e.g., Jeff Bezos of Amazon; Steve Jobs of Apple; Ray Kroc of McDonald’s). But things get tough when the leader passes the torch. After a few years in the value of death after the death of Sam Walton, Lee Scott of Wal-Mart transformed the company’s focus on eliminating waste to cut prices into a focus on environmental sustainability.

* A customer-centric vision must be strongly held and acted upon by the senior leadership team, but then ‘given up’ by the leadership team and handed over to people in the organization for their input. Ask them four questions:
  1. Where did our company come from? (where were we yesterday?)
  2. What are we today? (how do we appear to you now?)
  3. Where should we be in five years? (what would you like us to be?)
  4. Do you have any ideas of how we’ll get there?
Senior leaders should be sponsors who clear barriers, but not run the team. With this autonomy, the teams will spend money responsibly to help address the improvement opportunities.

* Thanks to social media today, we can listen to millions of people for their ideas. Make the customer the expert in the changes they want made. However, be conscious of how you’ll use the input you gain!

* Be conscious of what you’re selling: the tangible product (which doesn’t change), versus the brand (which is fluid).

On brands and branding
  • “A brand is not what you think you are, but what they (the customer) think you are.”
  • “The brand is the value we give our customers; it’s what we stand for with them. If we can consistently present this message throughout the organization at all levels, then everyone will gets it; this is what we’re about.”
Some quotable quotes
  • “Being customer-centric is a lot of work, and you can’t lie. You have to make real connections; you can’t hide behind your desk. It takes courage.”
  • “Don’t confuse the ‘scoreboard’ with the ‘game.’ Profit is the scoreboard, and it’s more important to some than to others. But the game – for instance, providing nutrition to the mass market in Canada – is what’s important. If we play the game well, the score will take care of itself. The customer-focused game is what we should be take pride in.”
  • “Don’t suck up [to your boss], suck down [by telling your boss what your people have done].
 Some further reading

Saturday, June 26, 2010

One day, three communities...

Today, I was proud to be part of one very 'tangible' community, happy to be part of an 'old media' virtual community, and ashamed to be indirectly associated with a 'real' community powered by new media. Let me explain...

Proud (noon): The group of neighbourhood youngsters that I coach on the Leaside Braves baseball team pulled together on a very wet and dreary morning to win the Consolation Championship. Media involved: face-to-face connections supported by league website and coach's weekly emails.

Happy (10:15 pm): Joined a virtually connected group of blues music fans as I brushed my teeth. Media involved: radio (CBC's Saturday Night Blues) which included phone-in requests.

Ashamed (bedtime): Watched the devastation wreaked by unruly G20 protestors in my city. Media involved: TV and newspaper websites delivered the images showing a 'community' of protestors -- reportedly linked and empowered through social media.

The reminder for me: communities and media (like other enabling technologies) can be instruments of good or evil.

Monday, June 21, 2010

7 insights on building your personal brand

On Tuesday June 15, I was invited to participate in an informal roundtable discussion on personal branding, led by Alan Kay of The Glasgow Group. Here are seven brief insights I gained from the event, and some additional resources I've since discovered.

What is a personal brand?
A personal brand (like a conventional product brand) is a set of elements that lead to trust and help customers make choices. The essence of your personal brand is what’s unique to you, and how it benefits your customers. Clear identify for yourself what you’re good at (be specific), and where you want to go (and grow).

Why should I worry about my personal brand (especially if I’m an employee)?
Whether you think you have one or not, you do have a personal brand. Be conscious of what you do and who you are associated with, since the digital universe never forgets things (you’d be surprised at what comes up when you Google your name)! A positive personal brand will help you get your next position (as an employee) or your next customer (as a consultant / entrepreneur).

How do customers connect with my brand?
First emotionally, then they rationalize their choices afterward. If you are truthful and passionate about yourself and what you do, customers will be drawn to you. Try to have a consistent brand persona, but remember you can have some fun at the same time. We’re all human after all!

How can I boost my credibility?
Within reason, communicate openly about the well-known brands / experts you’ve been associated with (e.g., as past employers, collaborators) so that their intrinsic credibility rubs off on you.

How can I strengthen my brand?
‘Working your network’ and building relationships is not enough. To battle the inevitable ‘commoditization’ of talent, continually improve the quality and uniqueness of what you do. Add value in every interaction (it’s better to ‘give’ than ‘ask’).

How should I promote my brand?
With all the new media channels available today (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, YouTube, etc.) there’s never been a better time to leverage your personal brand. As often as you can, post interesting or provocative insights and comments to try and grow your network, and position yourself as the thought-leader in your field.

Strive to demonstrate ‘business maturity’:
Whether you’re starting out or are well established in what you do, it pays to show you:
· can understand and adapt and learn on the fly (be flexible)
· can respectfully share your experience with others (be collaborative)
· can listen effectively (be engaged)
· have the confidence to take initiative (be proactive)

Some additional resources on personal branding:
* Alan Kay's follow-up blog: 7 ways to build your personal brand…now!http://frymonkeys.com/7-ways-to-build-your-personal-brand-storynow/
* Personal Branding Blog – read articles from various thought-leaders, and download the free, 16-page ebook, 10 Personal Branding Secrets You’ve Never Heard Before. 
* Brand-Yourself.com – sign up for the free monthly ‘Personal Branding VIP Newsletter,’ and download the free, 24-page ebook, From Tweet to Hired: The Brand-Yourself guide to Leveraging Twitter to Advance Your Career. 
* 'How to Develop your Personal Brand' – short, helpful article from Susan Young of Get in Front Blogging.
* 'Honest, believable, sustainable: the brand of me' – an insightful blog from 'creative entrepreneur' Rebecca E. Parsons.
* Book: Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk (available as an audiobook from emusic.com) – an informative and passionate call to build your brand on the now-egalitarian platform of social media.
* A 'Venn Diagram' on the three attributes required for maximizing your individual talent, from talent coach Lisa Martin.

Cotter-pins and continuous improvement

This afternoon I spend a couple of hours assembling a Yardworks garden cart – a new tool for my wife's business, It's Perfect.

The product was compactly and responsibly packaged (all cardboard, no styrofoam), the instructions seemed pretty clear, and the different nuts and bolts needed at each stage of the assembly stage were even supplied in separate numbered pockets on a vacuum-packed card... wow!

Everything was going along very nicely, and I eventually figured out the best way to use my crescent wrench and box-end wrench to tighten the hard-to-reach bolts.

However, while fastening the side walls of the cart, one of the tiny cotter-pins sprang out of my pliers and into the wilderness of my garage floor. Which got me thinking: Wouldn't it be great if manufacturers supplied a couple of extras of the 'most-likely-to-be-lost-during-assembly' parts?

My only beef with the product was that the instructions were unclear about which way to install the side walls, so I had to remove and reinstall them to get the nifty locking fasteners to fit. Otherwise, it was a great experience, and Sue is delighted with the utility value of the cart!

Lessons for marketers: Anticipate and address potential customer irritants to deliver the best customer experience.
  • Ensure every part of the instructions is crystal-clear (with detailed illustrations) to help customers avoid mistakes.
  • Consider supplying a few extra nuts and bolts – ideally in a separate, clearly marked little package so customers aren't wondering if they missed something.
Personal lessons: As usual, allow enough time for the project, have the right tools on hand, and keep experimenting how to use the tools to get the job done quickly.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Arrival of a renewed blogger

Despite my November 21, 2008 promise that I'd get back to regular blogging, my good intentions were overtaken by work pressures, family commitments and the usual set of excuses.

Now, I am returning to blogging in my efforts to help increase Glue's presence in the marketplace and share some interesting perspectives and insights I've gained along the way. I hope you find it helpful, and I welcome your comments!