Customer Experience is hot today. As the battle to attract new customers intensifies, companies are increasingly proclaiming a renewed commitment to their existing customers. But is there a key factor standing between the good intentions of the creative types who clearly see the need for customer experience improvements those who fund them?
Or is it just a language barrier? On one side of the language barrier are customer experience creative’s who speak in terms of loyalty, satisfaction and ‘common sense’. It is uncommon for companies to adopt “common sense” customer-centric strategies.
On the other side of the language barrier stand those who make investment decisions. They speak the financial language of profit and loss. Companies select investments based on the returns they expect to receive on those investments. Companies that successfully transform their experience do so because they have learned to translate the “soft” language of customer experience, loyalty and satisfaction into the “hard” language of return on investment, revenue and profit. It is necessary to provide a framework and a methodology for translating customer experience into the language of finance so customer experience initiatives can compete successfully against other, more familiar investment opportunities like refurbishment efforts and direct marketing campaigns that are framed in the context of profit and loss.
Armed with the financial truth about the economic power generated by loyal and devoted customers, customer experience creative’s will gain a critical seat at the table when investment decisions are made because they will be able to demonstrate how specific investments, resources and prioritization in customer experience will lead to higher spending, reduced attrition, increased customer advocacy and greater interest in other products and services.
Feel free to comment, Mike.
Help is required as we move up a gear. Our offices aren’t big enough any more so we’re off to bigger ones over in the city. Our work load is growing and we need another couple of people. Can you help?
We’re after someone under the age of about 25 that’s keen to learn about people, place and profit. Our small but dynamic organisation sits at the interface of business and community, and is an exciting place to be right now, what with Big Society and all that. We’re offering a decent enough wage for a graduate, and the degree ideally has to be in a subject that’s still relevant. (Sorry to all you economics grads that have just wasted your last three years at LSE!)
What we can promise is that we will give you satisfying work to do. That you will spend a lot of time with people like you. That we’ll give you the experience of being good at something. And we’ll give you the chance to be part of something bigger.
So if you are someone interested in working with (not for) us, or have a child or contact who might be, then please do get in touch with me. We’re as keen to learn from you as we hope you are from us!
Cheers, Mike.
Click the link
http://davidbarrie.typepad.com/david_barrie/2010/07/wiring-the-big-society.html#tpe-action-posted-6a00d834519d9469e2013485d3eaa7970c
Human resource is any high street or shopping centre’s most valuable asset and seems to me to be consistently undervalued. By nurturing and developing it, it can become a valuable asset and competitive differentiator.
Highly motivated staff perform well, enjoy their jobs, and go the extra mile for you and stick around. But what actually motivates them?
How important is money?
Daniel Pink, the Washington-based author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us says “You have to pay people enough money, if you don’t it is a demotivator. But once you pay them enough – the market rate or slightly above – each extra unit of pay has very little effect.” Bonuses have “short term euphoric effect” but do little to impact on the bottom line particularly when they become the norm.
What really motivates people?
I believe that the key is to let people get on with their jobs. “Good managers give people compasses, not maps. Give them a level of discretion and they’ll make discretionary effort for you” says Phil Merrell, a director of the human resources consultancy Penna. Being listened to and creating a sense of belonging and purpose also motivates which is why people should feel like they’re making a contribution to something important.
How does motivation differ in the high street and shopping centre environment?
Motivating assembly line work (like making widgets) is different to motivating people whose job it is to serve people. Schemes that allow staff to spend a bit of their work time pursuing projects that interest them become hugely motivating (Google allows it’s staff 20%), but most businesses find this difficult. A lot of mechanisms inside “legacy” organisations are about ensuring compliance but what I believe we need isn’t compliance, it’s engagement. Freeing people up to become engaged in their own way will make them happier and more productive.
What about my role as a manager?
It is worth remembering that the number one reason people cite for leaving their jobs is their boss. As well as being understanding, I believe you should take a genuine interest in staff. As a boss, you’ve got to give some of yourself back.
Feel free to comment.
Mike.
This is not a new term. Of course everyone thinks about their customers but are we as an industry thinking of them in terms of OUR product or service, though? Odds are the answer is yes.
But to keep hold of customers I believe we must design products, experiences and process differently than the current inside-out way of doing things. The customer is not interested in….
• What we think would be a cool new feature
• What Janet the store or centre manager feels needs to be done at 11 am each day.
• Whether Jack and Jill enjoyed their visit to your centre.
Our customers want to be wowed by an experience that at least, meets their expectations. Most customers just want to make a purchase, so we must make it happen as friction free as possible. Sometimes they need help, so as an industry we must design our service around that need, and not one that is made up and driven by our own business needs. As the supermarkets have proved, customers don’t want to do business with thousands of suppliers so I believe we must work harder to discover what our customers really need, not in our product, but in the jobs being performed around it so we can offer solutions that no one else has thought of. Time to innovate therefore.
This is why I believe the industry (shopping centres and retail) must display some leadership around the transformation that’s needed around the customer’s experience. It might mean conflict for some legacy business thinkers, but we must focus on the bigger picture – and the customer – so that these issues begin to pale in comparison to the successful customer experiences we can create.
Designing a customer centric outcome isn’t easy, but here are some things to start the conversation off.
1. Business Process – can technology be employed to simultaneously improve effectiveness, efficiency and customer service?
2. Customer Needs – do we ask our customers what they need and what they want well enough? Do we ask them what we can do to help them? Can the answers help us open up new markets that serve customers better?
3. Customer Experience – Should this be more than the service we offer? If we truly understand what job our customers are doing when they visit our high street and shopping centres, then we can design new tools that help them do it easier. Working together as stakeholders would be a good place to start.
4. Customer Metrics – If it’s all about the customer, why do we measure footfall and revenues? It’s easy and it’s what we’ve always done. But have we ever asked ourselves “do my customers stay with me longer than they do in the supermarket or on-line?” Do we have any metrics for tracking customer disengagement instead of simply focusing on opening the doors and turning the sign to ‘open’? Customer retention is so important and these questions need answering with metrics that measure number and quality of customer relationships.
Feel free to comment.
Mike.
The future performance of shopping centres will depend so much on centre managers. Owners wishing to protect and grow the value of their assets will need to think differently as the fight for share of wallet intensifies in the age of austerity. Making centre managers more accountable – by making them more responsible – will empower and incentivise the most important people in the shopping centre hierarchy. This is a post about leadership.
At I-AM, we have a very simple model to run a shopping centre. It starts with leadership at the top, which drives a culture. Culture drives innovation and that then drives results.
So the style of the centre manager is critical. Leadership is a people-person skill, one that should be encouraged by owners and rewarded properly. Here’s our view on how to effectively manage a shopping centres performance.
• Invest in culture – people skills are hugely undervalued, but humans are a resource, and the happier they are, the more productive they are
• Make listening an enterprisewide skill – taking the pulse has never been more important
• Innovate product and process – turn innovation into a continuous process
• Provide a clear and compelling purpose – the fundamentals of quality, price and customer service are your starting point but you need to add meaning to the mix nowadays because that’s the value add
• Extend and enhance the digital fabric – a multi-channel customer facing front end combined with a business information back end will be an investment worth making
• Practice good social citizenship – to effectively differentiate, shopping centres should align their interests with those of the community, and say so
In summary, if you want results pick a leader and let them lead.
Feel free to comment.
Mike.
Isn’t it time that asset managers of shopping centres started to examine their financial performance? Don’t get me wrong, we’ve all been operating the wrong way for a long time, and from a personal experience at my old company Modus, I’m certainly not immune from the effects of the macro-economy, but at least I’ve had a chance to look myself in the mirror and examine why that business failed.
It failed for three reasons. Firstly we didn’t give customers the experience they were after because our focus was on the numbers, not the customer. We gave them shops and services, when really what they wanted was a lifestyle experience. Big mistake.
Secondly, we didn’t use our supply chain in the way we should have – we didn’t encourage them to innovate and so what we offered wasn’t different enough nor did we freshen things up often enough. In short we didn’t deliver the right goods at the right price at the right time.
1And thirdly, our operational model was rubbish. We didn’t give the right people the right information to make the right business decisions at the right time. Information simply wasn’t valued adequately, and woolly business plans that weren’t properly monitored or measured simply meant that negative trends weren’t picked up and sorted. All in all #fail…
But the exercise was a great learning experience. Something else I learned was the need to connect. Retailers for example could benefit from being connected because the information they could share on the buying habits and behaviours of the customer will create value for them by making their lives more convenient.
I learned that getting people and organisations in sync is the project of our times. And making sure that every partner involved in delivering the shopping centre experience is better organised and more aligned, are the foundations we’re building I-AM on.
Feel free to comment,
Mike.
Having come to the conclusion some years ago that the performance of shopping centres is inextricably linked to the performance of town centres, I set out to innovate as all the business management books advised at the time. “Innovate or fossilate” they would urge.
The fruits of that hard work now appear to be paying off as the ideas have gone beyond the drawing board and grown into business plans getting ready to launch. Here’s a flavour of what we’re working on, but keep in mind that some of the names might change as we begin the branding process.
Hometownplus+
“Hometownplus is a social business that builds and operates a cooperative platform that encourages social and business networking at a local level.”
Imnotawaster.com
“Finding new ways to inspire young people to participate in the quest to eliminate resource-waste, and encouraging communities to fund them.”
Trading Republic
Trading Republic generates footfall where it matters; back to the High Street empowering innovative independent entrepreneurs offering a plethora of local food, commodities and services rarely seen in our cloned town centres.
I-AM Training and Development
Engage Retail ”works with employees, students and job-seekers to reveal the secrets of creating a memorable customer experience, ever improving sales and thus a great career in retail for those who aspire to achieve.”
Of course technology underpins all these ideas since the Web and the Net are free, and making use of this fantastic resource makes businesses more effective and more efficient. Modernisation has never been easier, or cheaper.
Feel free to comment.
Mike.
I-AM is fundamentally a business focused on knowledge and understanding.
In its simplest form, let’s look at how we use it to align supply and demand for a shopping centre. We need to begin with the shopping centre product. To bring it to market (which centres have to do, day-in day-out) you need to know something about supply – about tenants, suppliers, marketing, finance, HR and so on.
You also need to know about demand: who your customers are, what they want, how to reach them, and all of that.
Value happens when these two forms of knowledge – about supply and demand – are brought together in alignment, so that the one informs and feeds the other. The respected author and founder of Ctrl-Shift and Mydex Alan Mitchell says: “Looking at things from this perspective, you could say that every product and every service is just a piece of crystallised knowledge”.
The speed with which retail and consumer trends change means that the process of crystallising knowledge needs to happen in real time, and not long after the event.
We understand this sort of stuff; it’s what makes us different. Helping owners see round corners is what we do for a living.
Feel free to comment.
Mike.
Luke Johnson (ex-Channel 4 boss) tells us that the most important word this decade will be reinvention.
He is right. Wholesale renewal is required. The causes of this upheaval (which have been charted in previous posts) include the economic downturn, an ageing population, the digital revolution and environmental issues among others. We are told that this is the age of austerity. It wasn’t that long ago that I sipped champagne on a boat overlooking the harbour in Cannes. Farewell the age of excess then? In fact “good riddance” describes my feelings so much better.
As an industry we must be more ingenious and industrious. Productivity must be increased, resources preserved and borrowings repaid. When organising a turnaround, almost the only golden rule is to remove the management who were in charge when the ship went down. The old guard can never admit that their policies were misguided – this is why they must be cleared out quickly.
According to the worldly-wise Mr Johnson (who runs Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm, and is also chairman of the Royal Society of Arts) “bureaucracy should be eliminated and technology embraced to accelerate development of everything from better transport to new energy sources”.
This is encouraging since I have spent the last three years building a best in industry technology supply chain that can manage business performance in real-time, carry out detailed retail analysis and manage a home town smartcard scheme all at the same time. VERY CHEAPLY. We love technology as it’s good value and improves user-experience.
So this is a decade of opportunity for those willing to embrace the change that is happening in the retail property industry. Ten years from now we will see a completely different relationship between landlords and tenants, and a completely different experience from the customer’s perspective will be the net result. That’s a win-win and something akin to the reinvention that Mr Johnson seems to be seeking. The industry is just getting itself modernised – and about time too.
What do you think?
Feel free to comment.
Mike.
General | Dan August 24, 2010 | 
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