Jennifer Rice

Introducing White Board Wednesdays

A weekly video series on how to attract and keep customers, faster and more efficiently. Our first video is up! Only 15 min long, I explore key concepts in customer centricity. 

Click here to access the video. 

Take a 360-degree view of strategy

If your strategy isn’t right, the best execution in the world won’t get you where you need to go.

In any strategy that involves customers (which encompasses nearly every strategy created by virtually any department within the organization), one major pitfall is making decisions from a single perspective. It’s like a hiker planning a route up the mountain from his or her current vantage point. From that particular vantage point, the solution might seem clear.

But what might they see if they get in a helicopter and fly around the mountain? Perhaps they'll discover a totally new path, or... perhaps discover that they've chosen the wrong mountain.

Outside-In/Inside-Out

Inside-out strategy is created from the company perspective. Who we are, what we do, what we're great at, who's our target customer. While this is the most common approach, the cons often outweigh the pros. You’re a hammer in search of a nail, fueled by the hope of “if we build it they will come.”

Conversely, an outside-in perspective starts with the customer problem to be solved, and ideally how they should feel when they do business with you (since emotion drives purchase and loyalty in nearly every sector). Then work your way backwards into your business model and product/experience design.

The third option is “both/and” for existing businesses: start with your capabilities and project outward to define the customer outcomes (tangible and emotional) among which priority customers. Then flip to outside-in to define the ideal future-state experience that delivers those outcomes, and identify the gaps between your current-state and future-state experiences. Lastly, design your strategy to close the gaps.  

For example: You might say, we provide tools and resources that empower our customers to (x). That's inside-out thinking, starting with yourself. The resulting outcome is that customers feel more in control. Control is an emotional outcome that resonates with customers who feel confident in themselves and their own abilities, but just need some help in doing (x) easier and faster. (Contrast that with customers who lack experience and would rather outsource, which would deliver a sense of freedom -- being unburdened -- and confidence in the vendor. That mindset requires a totally different business model).

So... given our customers' need for control, what is the future-state experience that is best suited to delivering on that emotion? We know we can deliver part of it (since we already offer tools and resources) but what else do these customers need from us? That's outside-in thinking and requires exercising your empathy muscle. Make sense?

Toggling between what you do well and what customers really want from their vantage points (outcomes, not features and benefits) will help you land on the best answer.

Top-Down/Bottom-Up

In a similar fashion, we can rely too much on insights that emerge from data & analytics, allowing strategy to emerge in a bottoms-up fashion. I believe we've over-rotated to a dependence on analytics; not saying it's not important, mind you -- we now have an incredible wealth of data at our fingertips that enable us to pinpoint target and personalize experiences. However, we've lost the view of the forest for the trees. Focusing solely on differences and nuances can drive us down into rabbit holes, reinforce silos and spread resources way too thin.  

The top-down view is the more traditional approach of brand and business strategy -- finding the common denominators instead of the differences to identify your strategic territory to own as a brand. You can't be all things to all people… you can't design an infinite number of variations of products and experiences. What is your frame of reference? What is your emotional territory that you'll own and nurture over time? I would argue that owning an emotion or a need state is the most effective kind of territory to own, simply because emotions don't change like the wind. Human nature is pretty stable. Apple, Nike, Salesforce, AirBnB, FedEx, Amazon Web Services and too many others to mention have built their businesses on one or more core need states in our Customer Archetype framework.

So, the top-down view finds the common denominator and defines a clear target for the organization to enable alignment and momentum towards shared goals. The bottom-up view operates within this container to better understand priority customers and their behaviors, and enable personalization and cost-appropriate service levels. 

Macro/micro

A micro-perspective might look at specific touchpoints or customer interactions. A macro-perspective recognizes that these touchpoints and interactions are strung together to accomplish a specific customer outcome or objective. While we often need to repair touchpoints -- for example, creating a mobile app that streamlines the process of hotel check-in -- a sole focus on touchpoints can be enormously misleading. Customers can be very satisfied with one particular interaction but miserably upset at the inability to easily achieve an outcome.

When I called my cable service provider for the third time in an attempt to get my service repaired, I was asked to rate my satisfaction with this particular call. I was delighted with the agent, who was friendly and very helpful. But I was angry at the fact that I had 3 lovely interactions that never resulted in repairing my service. We should all be focused on measuring the macro, not just the micro. The challenge comes when different departments own various touchpoints within a single journey from the customer's vantage point. This is why macro-focused (and outside-in) processes like journey mapping can be so powerful; journey mapping enables various departments to understand their impacts on the customer experience and on other departments.

Pulling it all together

The most important thing to remember when exploring multiple vantage points is to define the "connective tissue" in the strategy that knits all these opposites together.

• The single biggest omission in nearly all brand strategies is the lack of clearly defined parameters for the experience required to deliver on the promise. The entire organization (bottoms up, inside-out) must have clear guidelines on how to operationalize the top-down, outside-in bulls-eye. I guarantee no one knows what to do with fuzzy "personality traits" and won't take marketers seriously if that's what you hand over.
• The single biggest omission in various departmental strategies (IT, digital, service, product, etc) is the lack of connection to a clearly defined customer outcome that every other department is also aiming for. I call it "getting all the wood behind one arrow:" ensuring that all initiatives and resources are aligned against a shared customer outcome, which compounds their impacts over time.
• The biggest flaws in customer segments that emerge from your customer data is the lack of "why" to explain behavior, and also the shared psychographic parameters that can (a) simplify your personas and (b) enable creation of products, services and experiences to meet their common need instead of spreading your resources too thin across numerous segments. Find the intersection between your "why's" and psychographics with the interesting nuances and distinct differences you find in your data.

Your turn

Dear reader, does this all make sense? What are the challenges to 360-degree strategy from your perspectives?

 

I'm back!

Yes, it's been a while since I posted here. After nearly 3 years at Forrester (serving as CX Principal and B2B Sector Lead) I decided to revisit my strong preference to run my own business. Enter Farther, which is focused on outcome-based coaching to help companies drive growth through customer centricity. I've been posting on my Farther website, but I've lost all the true blogging functionality there and of course you, my long-time blogging friends. So... I'm back. 

Onwards!

I just took a full-time position at Forrester Research serving as Principal in their Customer Experience consulting practice. I'm enjoying being part of a team, having an office, working on a topic that I love, and of course a regular paycheck and benefits.  Self-employment is often held up as the holy grail to those in corporate America but it has its downsides as well.

While I'm no longer overtly in the world-changing space, I now have exposure to a lot of Fortune 100 clients whose stated values include social and environmental issues, yet these values aren't visible to customers in their experiences. I bring expertise in using the brand lens on sustainability to ensure what's visible is appropriate to the brand and relevant to customers, and also using a sustainability lens on brand and customer experience (ie. how to bring those values to life in a way that builds credibility for the brand.) 

Forrester's CX practice is putting a strong focus on ecosystems as well; instead of simply mapping a customer journey, we need to understand the full ecosystem of people, partners, technology and processes that conspire to create an unsatisfactory experience, and how it can be shifted to create a more positive outcome. That's been the focus of my thinking for the past year and it's great to continue the "systems vs. silos" approach within corporations.

From a blog content perspective, I'll focus on customer experience and its intrinsic link with brand, as well as some continued thinking around this concept of coherence. More soon! 

Best of Jen's blogs

I'm digging through all my posts looking for writing samples across my 3 blogs and wanted to consolidate them here in one place. These were either popular enough to generate good conversation or are a good demonstration of how I think. Enjoy! 

Brand as Ecosystem (customer experience, brand)

Coherence: The Prerequisite to Resilience and its related post, Wired for Failure

My popular debate with Laura Reis on positioning: Positioning for Extinction and Focus or Flexibility

Brand Humanity: From Processes to People

Blogging and the Singularity

Customer insight posts: Neuromarketing Not So Hot and Neuromarketing Continued

Maslow & Branding wrap-up post (with links to sub-posts) 

Newer work.... 

The Next Wave: Brand-Led Sustainability Strategy

My thoughts on the future of insights: Why Open Data Won't Change the World

Unbounded Collaboration white paper (still work in progress)

I have loads of other content based on more recent experience on customer analytics, customer experience, etc that unfortunately never made it into blog form. If intererested, just ask. 

Yearning for wholeness

Came across a tweet this morning from Andrew Zolli: "Reflecting on the intersection of kairotic time, 'urgent biophilia' and #resilience… there's a there, there…"

Oooh. Absolutely. This gives me another perspective for my book proposal on Coherence.  

Kairosis is the literary effect of fulfillment in time. It is "the feeling of integration experienced by the reader of the novel or epic form"

Biophilia literally means "love of life or living systems." The biologist E.O. Wilson suggests that biophilia describes "the connections that human beings subconsciously seek with the rest of life.” 

And resilience is the ability of a system to bounce back from unforeseen shocks (I recommend Zolli's book on the subject.) 

Integration and connection are the key words in the definitions for kairosis and biophilia; these concepts have coherence at their core. As I wrote in my last post, coherence is about moving from silos to systems, from independence to interdependence, from fragmentation to wholeness. It's about synthesis and integration... getting "all the wood behind one arrow" to create exponential power and forward momentum. 

Our ability to be resilient depends on our ability to actually behave like a system rather than like isolated entities with our own egos and agendas. 

Along these lines I recently wrote a post inquiring whether we in Western society were wired for failure. We are the philosophical descendents of the ancient Greeks, who celebrated individuality, autonomy and linear cause and effect. Contrast this with east Asians, who are wired to think more interdependently and holistically. I wrote: 

So we’re at a real disadvantage in today’s highly complex society. The big issues of our day – poverty, climate change, spiraling healthcare costs, declining global competitiveness – require a new way of thinking, one that doesn’t come naturally to us.

And yet... there's biophilia, our instinctive desire to connect with nature and other living beings. There's kairosis, this gratifying feeling when the various threads of a novel finally weave together into a coherent, cathartic climax. We as human beings -- regardless of heritage, regardless of ego -- seek synthesis, wholeness, unity. 

If we can transcend our differences and our need to run our own shows, this unity we inately seek will be our saving grace. If we want resilient individuals, societies and ecosystems, we must start here.  

 

The power of brands to change the world, part 2

Posted the second in a series of three posts on world-changing brands on my business blog. This one looks at power and permission (which is linked to brand extendibility). Take a look and leave a comment! 

Coherence: The Prerequisite for Resilience

Resilience has become quite the buzzword these days. The term originated back in the 1970s in the field of ecology, and since then others have been refining and expanding to personal, organizational, societal systems. Resilience is essentially the ability of a system to bounce back from unforeseen shocks, and that ability depends on:

• the measure of change the system can undergo and still remain the same, 
• how capable it is of self-organization, and
• how well can it learn and adapt

Gary Hamel wrote about resilience back in 2003 in a business context, defining it as “the ability to dynamically reinvent business models and strategies as circumstances change.” And of course Andrew Zolli popularized this rather complex concept in his recent book Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back (which I recommend if you haven’t read it.)

Now while resilience is certainly a good goal for any system, we will never achieve resilience if we continue our fragmented, siloed, independent way of life. We need to start acting like a system if we’re ever going to reap the benefits.

The problem: Compartments, not connections

Our society is slowly coming to the realization that everything is connected and interdependent. Crises are occurring more frequently – from bank crashes to droughts and hurricanes – prompting individuals, corporations and governments to consider how actions ripple outwards to create unintentional effects.

Yet most of us spend our waking moments in fragmented, siloed, disconnected lives and organizations. Interconnection is still relegated to theory, not part of daily routine. Our education system and MBA programs drill students on facts, subjects and specialties, not relationships and systems. Chain booksellers and big data slice the book market into ever-smaller niche categories that don’t reflect the complex nature of our actual lives. Healthcare specialists treat isolated aspects of systemic diseases without addressing the full complexity of the human body. Like a fish unaware of the water in which it swims, we take this pervasive worldview for granted even while we bemoan its side effects.

Yet a look at Asian culture reveals a fundamentally different way of seeing the world. Eastern philosophy and society are more holistic, with a focus on relationships, context and interconnection. Language reinforces these differences: Chinese characters are pictograms, the meaning of which must be interpreted through context, whereas in the West our language is built on modular letters and words. We are philosophical descendants of the ancient Greeks who celebrated individuality, autonomy, and personal control. Our ancestors invented logic, categorization and modularity, and our modern civilization is built on these premises (for more on this topic, see my previous post, Wired for Failure.)

So we’re at a real disadvantage in today’s highly complex society. The big issues of our day – poverty, climate change, spiraling healthcare costs, declining global competitiveness – require a new way of thinking, one that doesn’t come naturally to us.

Bridging the gap through intentional coherence

Miriam-Webster defines coherence as (a) systematic or logical connection or consistency, and (b) integration of diverse elements, relationships, or values. The benefits of coherence manifest across a wide range of topics:

• In the realm of science, coherence is what gives a laser its power. While regular light is fragmented and diffuse, lasers emit almost perfectly coherent light; all the photons emitted by a laser have the same frequency and are in phase. 
• In the corporate world, a coherent brand and business (like Apple, Patagonia or Method) creates strong competitive advantage. Booz & Co analysis showed that more coherent capabilities are correlated with higher profitability.
• Brain scans show a high level of brain-wave coherence in experienced meditators, which is associated with more integrated and effective thinking and behavior.
• Water, properly channeled over time, is powerful enough to carve out the Grand Canyon. A waterjet produces a coherent pressurized water stream – 30 times the pressure of a car wash – that can slice through steel.

We can learn much from the natural world about coherence. Bodies, brains, ecosystems, and swarms all instinctively operate in a deeply interconnected and unified way. Yet in the social realm, coherence doesn’t just happen; intentionality is required. Human beings uniquely have volitional consciousness: we choose what we want and how we go about getting it. Our ability to align our actions to our values, collaborate with others, or consider our impact to the environment is not automatic.

Like light and water in their everyday states, we humans can operate in a fragmented, diffuse, and ultimately powerless way. Lack of coherence can create a stuck, stagnant situation or, at worst, a self-reinforcing negative spiral that spawns personal and organization dysfunction and a host of social ills including poverty, hunger, poor health, ecological destruction, and more.

Yet like light and water properly channeled, creating intentional alignment can produce the power to transform even the most difficult problems. By operating in a collaborative, cohesive manner towards shared outcomes, we get “all the wood behind one arrow” to create a positive self-reinforcing spiral. We discover and manifest our collective strength and power. Applying coherence is finding the middle way between independence and interdependence – moving from silos towards systems without disregarding the fact of our deeply embedded cultural tendency of self-interest and self-determination. Consider it a way to bridge the gap between today's disfunction and tomorrow's resilience. 

I’ll cover the 8 guidelines for creating coherence in the next post. Stay tuned. 

The Power of Brands to Change the World, part 1

I just posted the first of a series of three articles on The Power of Brands to Change the World on my business blog. This post highlights our 5 Sustainable Brand stages and framework, and plots a back-of-the-napkin audit of Apple and Nike. 

Please go visit and let me know your thoughts! 

20% discount for Sustainable Brands '13

I'll be teaching a workshop called Sustainable Brands 101: Integrating Sustainabilty at the Brand Level at the upcoming SB'13 conference in San Diego, June 3 - 6. Use discount code NWSPKSB13 to get 20% off.