Having just completed an innovation session last week where The Brainzooming Group was leading a client in addressing its customer service experience innovation, this Brainzooming guest blog post from Woody Bendle was top of mind for me. Woody shares a robust approach to pursue if you are trying to address any opportunity to differentiate your organization relative to the customer experience you deliver:
If so, I first want to congratulate you and encourage you to continue on this journey because it really can make all the difference in the world between success and failure!
Second, you also need to recognize that you are not alone.
I did a quick Google search this morning on “excellent customer service mission.” The search produced 46.2 million results! Here are a few that came back:
Not only are you not alone, I’d say you are at risk of being the norm! And, therein is the problem.
With so many organizations focusing on customer service, you have to assume if you are providing really good customer service, resulting in a pretty good overall customer experience, you are likely close to providing what is expected by today’s consumer. But, this probably only keeps you in the game; and it may not be setting you apart.
In order to set your organization apart from your competitors - in terms of customer service and experience - you have to innovate. You need to develop and provide a customer service experience that is:
Figuring out whether or not you are doing something truly unique is easy enough. When you walk into an Apple Store you know you are experiencing something different. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of being visited by The Geek Squad, you know you’ve experienced something different. It probably made a positive impression on you.
Recognizing something different after you’ve experienced it is pretty easy, but how do you come up with that idea in the first place? Also, how do you determine whether or not it is something that will be highly valued by your current and potential customers? And perhaps even more important, how do you determine if there is even a significant opportunity to differentiate your organization through customer service (or experience) innovation?
To answer these questions, you essentially need to do two things:
Yes, I heard you say “well….duh!” But this is always the foundation for creating a successful innovation. So many new products and companies failing, you’ll be surprised to learn it is actually a lot simpler than people make it out to be. You just have to do it!
To thoroughly understand your customers’ needs, wants and expectations, you need to ask and exhaustively answer the following questions:
If you want to innovate, it is important to obtain as many answers to each of these questions as possible. As you obtain one answer, go ahead and ask:
Another oft referenced technique I absolutely love is “5 Whys.” By probing deeper and deeper with each and every question, and continuing to ask why, you will uncover many interesting and surprising insights.
As I mentioned earlier though, thoroughly understanding your customers’ needs is only the beginning.
Armed with a lot of really interesting answers to the above questions, you need to determine how important each of these things is to your customers, and how well they feel you and your competitors help them with what they want to accomplish. A proven tool you can use to gauge the opportunity for innovation is called the “opportunity algorithm.” After you’ve performed your opportunity analysis, you will be able to pinpoint you organization’s most significant areas for service and experience innovation.
At this point you know how differentiated your organization is from your competition, and whether or not you actually have an opportunity to deliver a knockout service and experience innovation.
There are several additional (and critical) steps you will need to take if you want to develop and get your service and experience innovation to market. These include:
In a forthcoming Brainzooming article, I will detail these next steps for customer service and experience innovation. Until then, you have the first steps to get started.
Since I’m an individual who loves and genuinely appreciates new and distinctive customer service experiences, I’m rooting for you to get started leaping out of this sea of sameness! - Woody Bendle
Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic creative ideas! For an organizational creativity boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.