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“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” — Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft.
Very relevant to our first story.
[Driving Change]
Using Customer Data To Drive CX Innovation is Hard! (But There is A solution)
This recent piece of research by Chief Executive magazine (CEOs Find Challenges In Using Customer Data To Drive Innovation) found that, while CEOs want to focus significantly more on the customer experience as part of their innovation cycle – it’s hard.
(No surprises there.)
And data appears to be the main problem: “The key is sorting through all the data and finding what is actually relevant.”
It’s true, making sense of the myriad data that flows from the customer feedback process can feel overwhelming at times. Customer feedback data is messy, inconsistent and even downright contradictory.
However, there is a whole class of approaches and tools that’s been around for decades (yes before computers) and has been dealing successfully with this sort of complex data issues: Total Quality Management.
It’s variously called Lean, Six Sigma, TQM, and more but the tools are, basically, all the same.
Here’s what’s possible: in just 18 months one of our clients implemented 67 separate business improvement projects and started work on 43 more. That’s 110 projects!
One project alone reduced inbound calls by 30% AND increased customer loyalty!
Did they have a team of data scientists running PhD level statistics on a supercomputer? No.
Did they implement a fiendishly complex natural language recognition engine to analyse customer comments and tell them what to do? No.
Here’s what they did: they met in small teams of front line personnel, physically read the comments and applied the most basic of all TQM tools, the 5 Whys Process, to understand customer problems and design resolutions.
There is no magic bullet, secret formula, or technology shortcut for CX innovation success.
The only path to success is to get front line people who understand the business in a room, read what customers say and take action.
[Data driven empathy!?!]
8 Steps for Building a Culture of Data-Driven Empathy [Link]
“Data driven empathy” – is it me, or are we now just stringing together words, regardless of whether they make sense?
The only thing that would have made it worse is if they had added ™. 😉
