Outside Innovation

WRESTLING ORGANIZATIONAL INERTIA TO THE GROUND

No matter how brilliant you are, and no matter how well-intentioned your executives are, it's extremely difficult to shift the culture of an organization to become truly customer-adaptive.

There are people issues. People don't like change. It takes time to change behaviors. People need to be seduced into doing things differently, not coerced or commanded.

There are organizational issues. The way we divide up functional responsibilities organizationally makes sense from the standpoint of centers of excellence; we group people together based on what they're good at doing: sales, marketing, finance, operations, IT, etc. But when customers try to get things done across our silos, our organizational specialization adds friction.

There are performance management issues. We all do what we're asked to do and what we're rewarded for doing. It's very hard to put good customer-centric metrics in place that really make sense for people in each department.

There are focus/priority issues. We SAY that delivering a great customer experience is important. We understand intellectually that increasing customer loyalty is important. But we also have new products to get out the door, numbers to meet, projects to complete, and competitors to beat.

Shifting your organizational culture takes time. It's going to take five years. It's hard work. Many customer-centric executives have been wrestling with the molasses of organizational inertia for longer than that.

GREAT BOOK TO READ TO SPEED YOUR JOURNEY

This Spring, a client told me that his wife was writing a book I would appreciate. Of course, I was gracious and interested, but when I received the book and began thumbing through it, I loved it! Jeanne Bliss is the author. Her book is called “Chief Customer Officer.” I recommend it highly. Jeanne provides a clear strategy and a set of tactics for shifting your organizational culture so that your firm can actually deliver the wonderful end-to-end customer experience you envision. This book should be required reading for all executives and managers, not just the people who lead the customer charge in their organizations or who aspire to do so. Jeanne is a seasoned veteran. She began her customer journey working directly with Gary Comer at Lands' End and moved on to Allstate, Coldwell Banker, Microsoft, and Mazda. She has learned by doing. A weekend spent reading this book will probably save you two years of frustration. My book review/summary is attached.

This is a book about what it takes to shift your organizational culture to be more customer-centric. It’s a must read for any customer-centric executive; not just for Chief Customer Officers or for those who aspire to that position. The hardest aspect of customer experience work--making it easy for customers to do business with you and designing and delivering a differentiated end-to-end customer experience that will grow your base of profitable, loyal customers--is shifting your organizational culture. Every business unit and department has its own focus and its own metrics. These goals and metrics often conflict with one another when you try to design and deliver a wonderful experience across silos. This book, Chief Customer Officer, is an accurate and useful guide that will help anyone--whether you sit at the top or the bottom of your company--understand how to move your organization through the steps required to shift your company’s culture to deliver a great customer experience.

HIGH TOUCH FOR HIGH TECH: CISCO’S ONLINE TECH SUPPORT AND CUSTOMER INTERACTION NETWORK

Cisco benefited hugely by commercializing the Internet ethos of customers-helping-other-customers in tech support in the late 1990s. Cisco Customer Connection (CCO) has evolved over time to include customer self-service for all interactions and transactions. Cisco’s vibrant online tech support community is now called NetPro (Networking Professionals Connection). NetPro continues to be a vibrant forum in which Cisco engineers, partners, and customers come together to wrestle tough issues to the ground. The solutions that customers and partners suggest to each others’ problems are available on the site and help feed Cisco’s evolving diagnostics and trouble-shooting.

Cisco has also revamped the way it handles customers’ and partners’ phone calls. Like many sprawling high-tech organizations, Cisco had over 500 different phone numbers in the United States alone (in addition to several different numbers in each country) that customers were supposed to call to reach technical support experts in different products, or to talk to sales, order management, or even about getting a job at Cisco.

The company’s IVR phone tree was “agonizing,” according to LaVeta Gibbs, director of the new Customer Interaction Network for Cisco. “There were at least eight options at the top level menu, and each option went at least six options deep, and that was just to get a voice message! The company experienced between 25 to 40 percent misdirects, and who knows how many abandonments. It could take up to four minutes for a customer to navigate the IVR, and no one owned the customer during those four minutes.”

Cisco’s new Customer Interaction Network (CIN) builds on top of the customer-community nourished knowledgebase and customer self-help portal to provide a single point of first-line support for all Cisco customers, partners and employees. CIN provides general customer support with a seamless point of entry into the company. With CIN, customers have one number to dial, and the person answering the phone represents the entire Cisco Systems company--all departments, all business units, all functions, regardless of where the customer called from or where the CIN agent is located. CIN looks like a single contact center, but, in fact, it is a network of agents throughout the country who are equipped to handle that first contact with the customer (there are 35 different call center locations).

The agents, who used to provide customer assistance in just one area of specialization, are no longer just trying to solve a problem in their one area or trying to transfer the call to someone else. All CIN agents (both employees and outsourced providers) are now provided with access to a knowledgebase that quickly provides them with a broad range of answers, Web tools, training, and exact escalation instructions for each caller. A frontline rep can provide short answers, take customers to very complex Web sites and tools, and escalate accurately to the right expert (TAC for technical support, Sales, Order Management, or simply someone wanting a job at Cisco).

When is Aggregating Customer Information an Invasion of Privacy?

Today, Saul Hansell wrote a provocative article, TiVo Is Watching When You Don’t Watch, and It Tattles - New York Times, about TiVo's data mining service which apparently can tell advertisers which commercials customers watched and which ones they skipped over and in what contexts. One of the competitive bombshells alluded to in that article is that TiVo's consumer behavior tracking appears to be much more accurate than Nielsen's, when it comes to advertising, at least--which is, after all the reason that anyone cares about which TV shows are most watched.

Right now, TiVo's information is anonymous, but Saul includes a telling quote from a TiVo exec:

For now, TiVo will not be able to tell advertisers anything about the demographics of the audience it measures. The privacy policy of the service allows it to gather data about viewing habits, but not any personal information. Mr. Juenger said TiVo hoped to find a way to change that by the end of the year.

That's pretty scary... Just when I was ready to finally join the TiVo ranks!

Google Checkout: Streamlining Customer Scenarios

ONE-STOP SHOPPING AT GOOGLE WITH GOOGLE CHECKOUT

Google Checkout may be the most profound strategic move that Google has made since its release of Google Earth. Google Earth was a “get it out, open it up, and see what happens” kind of offering from Google Labs. I suspect that even Google was surprised by how quickly Google Earth began attracting eclectic and creative mash ups.

Google Checkout, on the other hand, was clearly a very carefully thought-out strategic move. So far, so good, from the standpoint of merchants and buyers, judging from the discussions in Google’s online support forums.

What I like about Google Checkout as a Customer
From the customer’s point of view, Google Checkout appears to be a win. Our Customer Scenario® workshops show us that a huge percentage of “search, find, and buy” excursions begin at Google. Why not remove the friction? If I can find what I need from a merchant I trust on Google, I’m happy to click to buy, going right to the merchant’s checkout page. There I have the option of either using my stored credit card info on the merchant’s site (if it’s a merchant I already frequent), or of selecting Google Checkout to use my Google Checkout account. If I use Google Checkout, the merchant won’t see my full credit card information, nor will they receive my email address (unless I explicitly choose that option). The Google Checkout service will track the shipping status, alert me to problems, etc. through its API with the merchant.

While this is useful and reasonably painless for a one-time transaction, it becomes more irresistible for someone like me who is a frequent online shopper. I get the advantage of one-stop shopping, one-stop shipping status, etc. in one convenient location. As with Amazon and eBay, I can rate my experience with each merchant, so that others will know whether to expect any hiccups. I like the fact that Google promises not to share my personal information with anyone (although I realize that Google’s aggregated information will become hugely valuable to Google and its advertisers).