#58 | DCX - Perspectives and insights on digital customer experience
Spark Innovation by Encouraging Ingenuity and Conquering Anxiety in Your Team; Unraveling the Maze of Customer Experience Management; Links to Industry news and the Thought Leader Profile of the Week
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Spark Innovation by Encouraging Ingenuity and Conquering Anxiety in Your Team
In the dynamic business landscape, innovation stands as a linchpin to success. Yet, it can be elusive, often stifled by unaddressed fears — fear of criticism, career stagnation, and failure.
So how can we create an environment where innovation thrives amidst these challenges? In this post, I’ll share my thoughts on understanding the concept of innovation, pinpoint the barriers to its adoption, and provide practical strategies to cultivate an innovative mindset within your customer experience (CX) team. With insights from research and practical examples, we'll embark on an enlightening journey to break down these barriers and unlock the innovation within your team.
Understanding Innovation
Regarding customer experience, innovation goes beyond just being new and exciting. It's about transforming and surpassing customer expectations in incredible ways.
Exceptional companies set themselves apart by establishing strong connections with their customers, which leads to remarkable growth. But innovation isn't just about having imaginative ideas; it takes bravery, perseverance, and determination to turn them into reality. Innovation is a way of thinking and a disciplined approach that brings concepts to life.
Identifying the Barriers to Innovation: Fear and its Facets
Fear, a potent innovation inhibitor, often wears several disguises. A 2022 McKinsey article highlights the impact of fear of criticism on innovation. It found that when team members worry about being judged or ridiculed, they tend to hold back unique or unconventional ideas, curbing creativity and stifling innovation. This fear of criticism can limit the free exchange of ideas, an essential element for fostering innovation.
The fear of career stagnation is another key roadblock. Employees are frequently reluctant to propose innovative ideas, fearing that a failed idea might derail their career progression. This was substantiated by a report from the Harvard Business Review, which emphasized the stifling effect of a risk-averse mentality on innovation.
Moreover, the fear of failure, perhaps the most pervasive, can inhibit innovation. The stigma attached to failure and the societal pressure to avoid it at all costs can hinder experimentation, a key driver of innovation. However, failure should be seen as a valuable learning experience, a necessary step in the innovation journey.
Fostering Innovation: Strategies to Overcome Fear and Encourage Creativity
To dismantle these barriers and nurture an environment conducive to innovation, consider the following strategies:
1. Promote an Open Environment: Establish a culture where sharing ideas, however unconventional, is encouraged and appreciated. This can counteract the fear of criticism. Openness and psychological safety can fuel creativity, providing the necessary room for innovation to breathe and grow.
Atlassian, a leading provider of collaboration software, encourages its employees to take "ShipIt Days" — a 24-hour hackathon where employees can work on anything related to their products. This event promotes the flow of ideas and has led to numerous product improvements and innovations. By fostering an open culture that celebrates new ideas, Atlassian ensures that the fear of criticism doesn't stifle innovation.
2. Normalize Risk and Failure: Adopt a culture that views calculated risks as an opportunity rather than a threat—frame failures as learning experiences and stepping stones toward success. By doing so, you can alleviate fears of career stagnation and failure. A study by the National Institute of Health indicates that organizations with a tolerant attitude towards failure encourage greater innovation.
Under Elon Musk's leadership, SpaceX exemplifies the embracement of risk and failure. The company experienced multiple rocket explosions before successfully launching the Falcon 1. Instead of viewing these failures as setbacks, SpaceX analyzed them as learning opportunities, leading to the historic success of delivering cargo and later astronauts to the International Space Station.
3. Invest in Training and Development: Equip your team with the tools to innovate effectively. Regular training sessions and workshops can boost confidence, improve skills, and enhance understanding of innovation processes. Training is a tangible investment in your team’s abilities and serves as a signal of organizational support, mitigating fears and fostering an environment safe for innovation.
To foster a culture of continuous learning, Unilever launched 'Flex Experiences'’ This platform allows employees to work on short-term projects in different business functions and geographies based on their skills, interests, and the company's needs. By doing so, Unilever encourages its employees to acquire new skills, gain fresh perspectives, and ignite innovative thinking.
4. Encourage Collaboration: Promote collaboration across different departments. Diversity of thought can spark innovative ideas. Additionally, shared responsibility in collaborative settings can mitigate the individual fear of failure, allowing more room for experimentation.
Pixar Animation Studios' open-plan office is designed to encourage unplanned collaborations, fostering a culture where everyone is free to share ideas. The idea for their movie, 'A Bug's Life'’ was reportedly conceived during a lunch conversation between colleagues. Pixar has consistently produced innovative, successful films by promoting a collaborative environment.
5. Prioritize Customer Feedback: Ensure your team listens to and values customer feedback. Customers provide invaluable insights that can inform and direct innovation efforts. This customer-centric approach to innovation ensures your team’s efforts align with customer needs and desires.
Domino's Pizza turned its business around by paying attention to customer feedback. When they received negative reviews about the quality of their pizza, they didn't ignore the complaints. Instead, they took the feedback seriously and used it to improve their product.
They also launched a successful advertising campaign to promote their changes. This strategy proved successful, resulting in increased sales and showing the importance of listening to and valuing customer feedback when it comes to innovation.
Measuring Progress: The Metrics of Innovation
To ensure the success of your innovation efforts, it's important to measure progress and effectiveness. Measuring progress and effectiveness is crucial for the success of innovation efforts. You can accurately evaluate the impact of your innovation initiatives by keeping track of key metrics such as customer satisfaction, revenue growth, and time-to-market for new products or services.
Monitoring customer satisfaction will provide insights into how well your innovations meet their needs and expectations. Additionally, tracking revenue growth will help gauge the financial benefits of your efforts, showcasing the value of innovation to the organization.
Lastly, measuring the time-to-market for new offerings indicates efficiency in bringing innovations to market, allowing you to stay ahead of competitors. Monitoring these metrics will enable you to identify areas of improvement, celebrate success, and make data-driven decisions to foster an innovative culture within your organization.
The Journey to Innovation
Overcoming fear and fostering a culture of innovation requires intentional effort and strategic planning. Creating an open, supportive environment, normalizing risk and failure, investing in skills development, promoting collaboration, and focusing on customer feedback can ignite the spark of innovation within your team. Remember, innovation is not a destination but a continuous learning, adapting, and growing journey.
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Unraveling the Maze of Customer Experience Management
As passionate CX professionals, we are constantly striving to exceed our customers' expectations. Along the way, we encounter a variety of challenges that can hinder our progress. From internal roadblocks to technological limitations, these obstacles can feel overwhelming. However, this article aims to shed light on 10 common issues that we face. By taking the time to understand and address these challenges head-on, we can develop practical strategies to overcome them.
Identifying Customer Expectations: Understanding exactly what customers want and expect from a brand can be challenging due to the diversity and ever-evolving nature of customer needs.
Creating Consistency Across Channels: Ensuring a seamless and consistent customer experience across various touchpoints (online, offline, mobile, in-store, etc.) is a complex task.
Collecting and Analyzing Customer Feedback: Gathering feedback is crucial, but it can be difficult to collect, interpret, and act on it in a timely and meaningful way.
Integration of Systems and Data: With the proliferation of technology platforms and data sources, integrating them to have a unified customer view is a common hurdle.
Personalization at Scale: While personalization enhances customer experience, achieving it at scale, without compromising on customer privacy, is a significant challenge.
Handling Negative Customer Experiences: Dealing with unsatisfied customers and turning negative experiences into positive ones requires finesse and strategic planning.
Employee Training and Engagement: Engaging and training employees to deliver excellent customer service consistently can be hard, especially in larger organizations.
Maintaining a Competitive Edge: Staying up-to-date with the latest CX trends and technologies and implementing them effectively to maintain a competitive advantage is not an easy task.
Measuring ROI on CX Initiatives: Determining the return on investment for customer experience initiatives can be tricky due to the sometimes intangible nature of these benefits.
Proactive Problem-Solving: Transitioning from a reactive to a proactive approach in solving customer issues requires a shift in mindset and often an organizational change.
To tackle these challenges effectively, we must embrace a strategic approach involving extensive cross-departmental collaboration, tech integration, and profound understanding of the customers' needs and behavior. This will pave the way for optimal solutions, unlocking a world of opportunities for unparalleled customer experiences.
This week I asked our colleagues in the Customer Experience Professionals Group on Linkedin about their thoughts on which Maps app has the better customer experience. Maps play significant roles in shaping customer journeys (no pun intended).
They offer much more than just wayfinding; their integration with different applications and services (from ride-sharing apps to local business search) makes them vital to the overall digital customer experience.
It's intriguing how these mapping services, with similar goals, can offer such diverse user experiences.
Let’s see how the voting tallied.
Google Maps: A Comprehensive and Accessible Approach to CX
As the top choice among respondents with 53% of votes, Google Maps stands out for its extensive data, street view, and universal accessibility. Its user-friendly interface and the depth of information it provides make it the go-to choice for many looking to navigate efficiently.
Key CX Insight: Google Maps' success lies in the company's continuous effort to integrate accurate and comprehensive data into their services. By constantly updating their offerings and prioritizing usefulness and ease, Google Maps remains at the forefront of the customer's mind.
Waze: The Power of Collaboration and Real-time Updates
Receiving 31% of votes, Waze has carved a distinct niche with real-time traffic updates, community-driven alerts, and innovative features to help users avoid roadblocks. Collaboration is at the core of Waze's success by connecting drivers and empowering them to share valuable information.
Key CX Insight: Encourage customer collaboration and create a user-centric experience by incorporating real-time data and updates in your services. Facilitate community-driven platforms to improve engagement and build loyalty among users.
Apple Maps: Seamless Integration and Intuitive Design
Although receiving only 13% of votes, Apple Maps offers unique advantages in seamless integration with the iOS ecosystem and an intuitive design language. Apple's dedication to privacy and consistent user experience across devices is a significant factor that keeps its loyal user base returning.
Key CX Insight: To keep customers engaged, ensure a seamless and consistent experience across platforms and devices. Invest in user privacy and maintain trust by prioritizing data protection.
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Qualtrics Brings Generative AI to "Every Part" of Its Platform - CX Today
Qualtrics has launched its XM/os2 platform, which is powered by AI and has access to an extensive database of human sentiment. This will help organizations use AI to produce better experiences for customers and employees. It will be available in private beta in October and generally available in early 2024. DISH Network is already using it to analyze video feedback and provide personalized coaching to managers.
Meta's Threads erupts as potential customer service channel | TechTarget
Threads may or may not be a Twitter killer, but if 100 million people signed up for it in its first five days, your customer service team should consider supporting it -- and fast.
Gen Z consumers want technology-enabled, self-service options | Retail Customer Experience
A survey of U.S. adults showed that Gen Z shoppers prioritize tech-enabled self-service solutions over traditional shopping preferences, such as a convenient location or neat store. The survey found that most see technology as making shopping better, although the type of shopper (bargain hunter or convenience-minded) impacted how they felt. Companies implementing technology into the shopping experience can attract younger consumers and satisfy other shoppers.
Each week, I share a profile of a person from LinkedIn whom I believe can positively impact your life and career.
This week, meet Marbue Brown, founder of The Customer Obsession Advantage, an organization dedicated to helping companies achieve transcendent business results through Customer Obsession.
An influential name synonymous with customer obsession and transformative business strategies, Marbue founded The Customer Obsession Advantage, dedicated to leveraging customer-centrism to achieve transcendent business results.
His impressive track record is marked by significant contributions to globally renowned organizations like J.P. Morgan Chase, Amazon.com, Microsoft Corporation, and Cisco Systems.
At J.P. Morgan Chase, Marbue led the Chase Consumer Bank to an all-time performance high in different customer experience metrics, including JD Power Retail Banking Study, NPS, and branch satisfaction.
His impact at Amazon.com was revolutionary, transforming the Andon Cord mechanism - key to Amazon's customer-centric culture - to a predominantly automated system powered by machine learning and statistical models.
At Microsoft, he developed and codified the NSAT improvement approach, acclaimed for its effectiveness in dramatically uplifting the customer experience - an achievement recognized by nationwide awards.
Marbue's wide-ranging expertise is mirrored in his insightful articles on customer experience measurements, outlining the crux of his career - that customer obsession is integral to true business success. In addition, he is the author of Blueprint for Customer Obsession.
Marbue personifies passion for customer experience with strategic leadership, leading companies and the industry toward a customer-obsessed future.
Highly recommend following him.
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