The Apple Watch is the latest innovation that has a lot of people weighing in about why it will not be successful. It’s human nature these days to minimize the impact of innovations, claiming they are not needed and don’t seem unusual or special. The resistance wants to reduce everything to mediocrity.

Doubters—those who are incapable of seeing a better way than the Apple products that currently exist—generally disagree with ideas that don’t fit in with their current worldview. Cynically, they want to believe that the Apple Watch is “Nothing so much as an inbox strapped to the wrist.” (Casey Newton in The Verge). They quickly can cite Google Glass as an innovation that did not immediately catch on and infer that the same fate will happen to the Apple Watch.

Since the iPad was the fastest selling gadget in the history of electronics, it’s difficult for us to remember the initial reaction it received when it launched. Here is how the NY Times summarized the initial reviews.

“Consumers seem genuinely baffled by why they might need it.” Business Week
“An utter disappointment and abysmal failure.” Orange County Web Design Blog
“My god, am I underwhelmed.” Gizmodo

History, of course, proved how revolutionary the iPad technology really was.

There are plenty of status quo products and experiences that are being transformed because they are simply due for disruption—including customer service. Customer 3D is like having an entire workforce of superstars, who feed off of a fabulous culture to do unbelievably good things for their customers. The goal of customer success is running through every employee’s veins. If this were a basketball team, everyone would be doing no-look passes that set up spectacular slam dunks.

The can't-picture-anything-new mindset tries to limit wearables such as the Apple Watch by labeling it as mostly fashion. Those observers with a more visionary approach to the future can see the substance and functionality of these wearables and the opportunities they offer.

Customer 3D creates a changed worldview of customers, which becomes a “wearable” for your organization. Once you embrace it, you wonder how your company lived without it. It’s about inspiring companies to disrupt the customer relationships that we have allowed to become the norm and to create brand new behaviors aimed at customers who are seeking something better.

Customers are now expecting that this perpetuation of out-of-date approaches to customer service—not poor service, just unimpressive service that is not proactive—will be changed in every organization or they will go elsewhere.

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In The Evolution of Cooperation, Robert Axelrod explained his research on players of the game Prisoner’s Dilemma. This game famously demonstrates how two players can be more successful over time if they cooperate for mutual gain and avoid the short-term temptation to play selfishly because they want to avoid the risk of being suckered by the opponent.

Axelrod’s experiments validated a system in which players that cooperate on the first move and both parties win, will subsequently echo (reciprocate) what the other player did on the first move. They were never the first to defect and, in turn, “won, not by doing better than the other player, but by eliciting cooperation [and] by promoting mutual interest rather than exploiting the other’s weakness.” Most of game theory had previously investigated “zero-sum” with the total rewards fixed and each player working at the expense of others. Axelrod’s winners won by consistently scoring higher with a variety of partners, rather than striving for a payoff greater than the other players. Axelrod calls the concept “clarity” – rather than outmaneuvering the other player through a complex strategy, the winners were more successful by simply cooperating instead of trying to be too clever.

What are the implications for an organization’s thinking about its customers? It places a new emphasis on collaboration with customers. It directs us to see the role of a business as an important part of a group that includes its customers. When businesses visualize themselves as part of a group, instead of a supplier to a group—the game changes completely. Suddenly, those organizations are focused on reciprocating to their customers, not operating under some mythical “arms-length” relationship. It becomes a combined effort for the group’s success, which is more purposeful and represents the greater good.

Groups that are more successful—for reasons, including learned behaviors—will benefit all individuals of the group. In the spirit of Richard Dawkins’ selfish gene theory, the unit of evolution is not the individual, but the perpetuation of the community that connects those individuals. A new type of kinship helps to develop a broader, more profound view of what constitutes self-interest. If group members can benefit simply on the basis of a shared exchange, the benefits come not from altruism, but directly from reciprocity.

Barlean’s Organic Oils recently “set out on an epic journey that completely changed our purpose and business paradigm.” Called Pathway to a Better Life, it’s about “creating prosperity for those most in need throughout the world.” In addition to selling the high-quality nutritional supplements they have regularly sold, now they are now partnering with anti-human trafficking organizations, helping at-risk populations in need, helping autism awareness and getting healthy products to those in need in Washington state. Their notions of fairness and simply doing the right thing have evolved to a much more expansive worldview of the groups they belong to and want to help succeed.

If organizations have the clarity engendered by belonging to a group that is mindful of a larger purpose, collaboration with that group will be natural. And the payoff is better for every member of the group—the company, its employees and its customers. That is the formula for a better future in which all stakeholders identify with the success of the group and are loyal to the group. It is not an isolated do-gooder philosophy, but a deep-seated belief that groups (the business, its customers, and beyond) will do better by sticking to a pattern that benefits all players and the purpose that the group is working for.

Collaboration and customer success go hand-in-hand.

The post You Belong with Your Customers appeared first on Customer 3D.

A guest post by Danielle MacInnis from MacInnis Marketing in Melbourne, Australia.

Small businesses need marketing more than ever
I have just spent the last 3 months travelling around Australia working with medium businesses CEOs. They have identified that they need to invest in their marketing strategy because their current sales approach is no longer working. Their sales approach has been by-passed by their customers and is no longer relevant. What was really interesting for me, is that many of these businesses hadn’t identified is that customers have to be at the centre of their business and marketing. This was a new concept for many along with customer lifetime value, the concept of owning a customer for life not just one transaction.

Differentiate or Die
Customers will choose on price when they can’t see a difference between your product/service and a competitors. The biggest point of difference for many businesses is a customer centric approach. Taking an outside in approach to all activities through the lens of the customer. This is a point of differentiation that is hard to replicate. According to Forrester “80 % of businesses believe they deliver an excellent customer experience but only 8% of customers agree.” And as Ranjay Gulati explains"it would be hard to find a CEO who would tell you that his or her firm isn't customer-centric already. And that's exactly where mass delusion begins for most companies."  So most companies think they are differentiating by providing excellent service but in reality their customers don’t think so.

Marketing
Successful marketing is no longer about who can scream the loudest about their products. Marketing is no longer a numbers game, it is a relevance game. Marketing has become understanding the customers behaviours have changed and how to engage them with their preferences.  Now to get the customer’s attention businesses have to evolve their approach to be customer centric. This requires a mindshift for many organisations and has to start at the top and filter all the way through the culture. When you think about it, it is hard to go from thinking about your business for the last 10-15 years, your products to the customer if it is not what you are use too. We do what is comfortable and easy and it is hard to embrace change.

What exactly does  being customer centric mean?
It means putting the customer at the centre of your business. It means being useful, helpful and a partner in their buying journey.

This of customer centricity has been fueled by customers having access to more information, better communication tools which has empowered them to make decisions without the need to consult with a seller in a business. This shift has out out played the traditional sales representative and left him floundering.

Who are your ideal customers?
Most businesses say “any one with a pulse”, but in fact we know that is not true. There are only certain customers that you serve best. Only some that are great to deal with and highly profitable. These are the customers you want to build your business around, not everyone. Profiling your customers and identifying who is a fit and who isn’t has many benefits not to mention it makes it easier to attract these customers and market to them.

Customer centric culture
Being customer centric needs to be driven across the entire company. It is a culture that focuses on the customer. You can’t fake it. The starting place for developing a customer centric orientation is to start with customer feedback. Understand what your customers wants and needs are. How can you serve them better? To embed the customer and the passion for being helpful, useful and delightful you need to have passion for this within your values. It also needs to be recognized and rewarded so it is visible and embraced by all staff.

Customer Journey Mapping
A great way to start the process of orientating your business around the customer is to map out the journey your ideal customer takes when engaging with you. What are the delightful moments and potential opportunities for disappointment? By doing this with your entire staff you can start the process of thinking like your customers. It is important to understand that every touch point along your customers journey is important to manage. 

Responsive, active, engaged
Everyone has those times when we have been disappointed by an experience, but now we are likely not only to tell our friends but also tweet it, put it on Facebook or leave a review online as a way of venting.  While some businesses fear that transparency, those that embrace it and take action when things go wrong (as they will) are likely to win more fans than they loose if they show that they care.

Customer Advocate
There is nothing like seeking feedback from your customers. They are the custodians of your brand. They can tell you why they choose you or ignore your offering. By having your customers input captured as often as you can, you can ensure that you are creating real value. Being able to collaborate with customers is the new frontier of transforming cutting edge companies. Some include customers in their boardrooms, have persona profiles and do mystery shopping but whatever the role, having customers as part of your business is vital.

Sponsor customer initiatives
The best way to build a customer orientation is to create room for it. Sponsoring customer initiatives have become more recognized.
Examples of customer initiatives happen all the time. Here are some examples of how companies are making my life easier:

• Wipes at Woolworths for the trolleys
• Colour coding and personalizing your banking online
• Using your mobile number instead of carrying loyalty cards
• Sending a reminder for flight the night before and allowing me to check in on my mobile
• Emailing me the latest release from my favorite author

The Future of Marketing
If you continue to market and sell using a product centric model you will be ignored as part of the customers buying journey. It is time to shift to an approach that lets the customer guide the experience. Buyers will continue to become more knowledgeable and social. They are now embracing mobile technologies and connecting with tools that allow them to amplify their opinions. This is no time to be a dinosaur, it is time to a line your business to your customers journey. There is more tools to listen, pre-empt and provide delightful experiences than ever before, you just have to create the environment and mission around your customers needs.

The post Are you still focused on your agenda? appeared first on Customer 3D.

Seth Godin gave us another brilliant post recently. It described how difficult it is for most people to understand why they would benefit from a new service that does not exist today. They get stuck in believing that what the world they know is already is good enough and in telling themselves why they do not need something. If new ideas are introduced, however, these people are good at describing what is wrong with them.

In the journey toward customer-centricity, it’s easy for organizations to explain what they already are doing well for the customer. It’s another thing altogether to ask them to explain what they could have done better. Fortunately for businesses that have difficulty with creating change because they are on the status quo treadmill, most customers cannot articulate what they want either.

However, when companies commit to innovation and the spirit of introducing new ideas new ideas before they are asked for, then customers get to communicate what they value through their purchase preferences. In this way, organizations receive feedback about why customers did make their choices. This is the new world of customer relationships.

Bluelarix Designworks, for example, uses a people-centered approach “to design meaningful products that mean an improvement for the user in terms of experience, interaction or ergonomics.” Using user observations and the right interpretation, they created a medical alarm that is truly safer for hospital and care home patients calling for assistance. The rubber strap is designed in such a way that while the patient is sleeping and turning in bed, the cable can never become dangerously attached around the patient’s neck.

When a spring-loaded weighing handle, which adapts to any type of suitcase, was invented by Selma Durand, it allowed customers to know how heavy their bags were before paying additional fees at the airport. With both the medical alarm and the suitcase handle, customers never asked for these improvements, but the design thinking mindset in both companies pushed them to create these new ideas.

Successful companies know how to get beyond what they are already doing. The ability for organizations to develop a culture that wants to show customers “what can be” is the secret behind sustaining a worldview that embraces customer-centricity.

The post What You Are Already Doing appeared first on Customer 3D.

Recently, I interviewed a number of adults who had loved ones in senior living facilities. One of the clearest messages they sent was that the residents at these types of facilities “have to have their son or daughter advocating for them” to ensure that the senior receives adequate care. The standard service provided by these homes is generally satisfactory, but there is no guarantee that the staff is going to always react to the voice-of-the-customer needs by individual residents. Therefore, the families of the residents accept the fact that they must speak up in order to have the resident properly cared for.

Customer 3D organizations — in every business and nonprofit sector — don’t need this type of intervention. Because they are purposely customer-centered, they proactively advocate for the customer as part of their expected role.

The problem with the many organizations that do not advocate for customers is a superficial mindset about the clients who buy from them. They are limited because their relationship is so focused on expecting customers to do business with them in the manner their organization has created. It’s controlled and rules-driven. It’s a ‘what’s-the-least-we-can-get-by-with’ approach. It’s a feeling that they only care about people who presently purchase their products, with no concern for the value they provide now and in the future. In contrast, the culture of Customer 3D organizations empowers employees to always think like a customer. They anticipate what will make the customer happy and just take care of it.

Organizational advocacy for the customer will be the difference-maker in the future. The ability to build this mindset into the culture will separate high-performing organizations from the mediocre middle. The beauty of advocating for the customer, rather than handling problems, as each customer complains about them, is that it works both ways, of course. Because you understand their needs more clearly, they will advocate for you in return. That’s the essence of customer loyalty.

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The Thinking Forward speaking troupe, which Bill helped found, introduced The One Project to a community-focused audience on March 28, 2014 at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY. Bill described the benefits of The One Project initiative, which was created as a platform that brings committed individuals together to focus on specific community-related goals in a diverse range of disciplines. Then, he challenged the audience members to commit to helping their community to become recognized as #1 in the United States in the category about which they are most passionate.

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The Situation. Our office had purchased separate AntiVirus Protection Software subscriptions for three computers, two of which had recently auto-renewed. The well-known corporation (which will not be named) has a feature to auto-renew our subscriptions, unless we create an account and password, then update our preferences to remove the auto-renew feature – making this a task in itself – while marketing it as ‘stress-free’ and warning the machine operators, individually, that they shouldn’t let their subscription expire.

Interestingly enough, the auto-renew feature charges customers full price. However, if these loyal customers go online, they can find the same product subscription at a fraction of the price.

The Solution. A manager in our office explained our situation to Sonia with the supplier’s Customer Service Department. After the third attempt, Sonia understood and agreed to credit $53.99 each for the two current AntiVirus Plus subscriptions that had auto-renewed. We then purchased the All Access subscription for $53.99, which covers all three computers and carries the maximum amount of security, including protection for our mobile devices.

Sonia proceeded to tell our manager that she had to un-install all previous versions of the software on all our machines, then download the new software on each individual machine. In order to ensure this would happen, she promised to transfer our employee to someone in technical support to guide her through the process

Our manager waited on hold for some time, after receiving a Service Request #. After about 10 minutes on hold, another customer service representative came on the line and proceeded to tell her how to download the software (while on hold, she had already downloaded the software online and had installed it – during which the prompts confirmed that the new software would over-ride any previously installed software – hence no need to un-install).

She explained that while on hold she had already performed the installation with no problems. They were slightly confused, but gave her another SR# so she could refer to this new number if there were any issues.

The Aftershock. All computers have been updated, but there is more to the story. Since the consolidation of our subscriptions, we have received four notifications that our previous subscriptions (all cancelled, of course) are about to expire. These notices warn that our ‘time is running out!’ and they urge us to purchase the basic software protection for the same price as the multi-machine, maximum protection. The lesson here is that organizations with functional siloes don’t deliver results very well from the customer’s perspective.

Isn’t it ironic that a company that wants to be trusted to prevent problems for customers (i.e., virus attacks) cannot have a system in place to correct its internal problems with customer-facing transactions? The effort customers have to exert to purchase a service is directly proportional to their feeling that the supplier doesn’t care about them.

Years ago, Tom Peters (In Search of Excellence) described the perception that an airline passenger has about the quality of engine maintenance on the aircraft when the company cannot clean a coffee stain off of its seat-back tray tables. Every interaction with customers leaves an impression of a supplier’s competence and impacts the willingness of its customers to trust that company. The real solution is not to consume hours of employee resources and hours of customers’ efforts to resolve each complaint. This approach is reactive and inefficient. It ignores the multitude of other customers encountering similar problems who will never purchase from you again.

A better alternative would be to anticipate these problems and eliminate them in advance. Empower employees to challenge and change current processes and rules on the basis that they will be a source of customer complaints in the future. Prevention is always better than repairing problems. In the long run, ROI improves dramatically because the problems will not occur in the first place and customers will remain loyal.  Everyone benefits when problems are handled proactively.

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