It’s been a month in a half since my last post. Yikes. I’m hoping you (haven’t) noticed. 🙂
I’m back.
One of the reasons for the absence has been a lot of traveling, including a trip to London. See my picture here in downtown York. U.S. history is nothing compared to a place like this!
I also spent one day in the UK with David Rance, CEO of Round. I worked with David to bring a customer centricity framework into Dell several years ago.
There are two powerful parts of the Round system. First is the simplicity of a baseball metaphor and measurement system. As you analyze the customer centricity of your company, you move along the bases, closer to a home run. The bases even bring a language that your people can use to explain why things don’t line up.
Second is the sophisticated part of the system: the “Strands”. The Strands represent key areas in your organization, each of which can be measured towards customer centricity based on feedback within the organization…like looking in a mirror. Strands are things such as leadership style, employee engagement, customer data, marketing metrics, etc.
On a jet-lagged bank holiday at David’s 400-year-old house in northern England, I shared my opinions of what it took for a company to have word of mouth. David opened up his laptop, opened his software, and over the next hour we identified the key strands that are critical for a company to earn word of mouth.
Brand Values
Collection & Debt Recovery Processes
Communication of Company Vision
Company Goals
Company Leadership style
Company Organisation Structure
Company Planning Process
Company vision
Competitive Differentiation
Contact Center Platform
Customer Complaints & Compliments
Customer Acquisition Process
Customer Base Development Plan
Customer Contact Routing & IVR
Customer Data Accessibility & Analysis
Customer Email Platform
Customer Fault Management (Tech Support) Processes
Customer Information & Insight
Customer Process Adherence
Customer Process Design
Customer Process Governance
Customer Propensity & Contact Plan
Customer Service Metrics
Customer Service Organisation Structure
Customer Servicing Processes
Debt Management KPIs
Decision-making Authority
Employee Culture
Employee Engagement
Fault Management Metrics
Frontline Skills
Knowledge Management Culture
Knowledge Management Systems
Management Information Systems
Marketing Metrics
Marketing Organisation Structure
Operational Alerts
Organization Metrics
People Development
Performance Review
Personalisation & Customer Decisioning Systems
Pricing
Process Workflow & Automation
Product Development Cycle
Quality Management
Recruitment
Reward & recognition
Tailoring The Customer Offering
Team Management Style
Web Customer Platform
These Strands represent about half of the strands that are part of an organization. The measurement of each strand is based on the answers to questions that is Round’s secret sauce.
For example:
Customer Service Metrics
How do you use high level performance measurements to effectively manage customer service activity?
What overall measures are reviewed by the director responsible for marketing?
What customer group measures are reviewed by the director responsible for marketing?
What measures from other functions are reviewed by the director responsible for marketing?
What’s the takeaway?
Word of mouth comes BEFORE word of mouth marketing. Advocates should talk about you before you amplify their voices. To garner word of mouth requires building a customer-centric business, from the top down, inside to out. Each of the strands above can have a positive or negative impact on your customer experience and therefore word of mouth. Consider, each of them and look at your company in the mirror regarding each of them.
And if you want the secret sauce for the questions to ask, and to measure this for your organization drop David an email. (That’s word of mouth for his company!).