The Elimination Sensation

When we released the book “The Best Service Is No Service” in 2008 some people didn’t get the core idea. They thought we were advocating the idea of “withdrawing” service rather than “eliminating the need” for service.  The drive for automation and digitisation has taken off in recent years as we advocated back in 2008.  All types of business now

 promote digital solut...

When Voice of Customer Matters Most – Can you Hear it?

Many organisations have measurement systems in place to try and provide the Voice of Customer or give an indication of the customer’s perception of their experience.  In addition, most companies have some form of periodic customer satisfaction and relationship survey and many have real time feedback systems that provide

“transactional” NPS. Thes...

Being ready for the unpredictable

Unfortunately, despite all the best systems and processes, customers can be impacted in very negative ways when things go wrong.  The term “moments of truth” gets used to describe critical events on a customer journey such as making a claim or the ease of accessing a new product.  The events we are talking about here are different.  These are the bad events that oc...

The Holy Grail of Effort measurement?

"Resolution of my query” or First Contact Resolution (FCR) ranks in the top three customer experience needs in all the customer research we have seen, but it has always been hard to measure. FCR is often seen as the “holy grail” of customer experience outcomes.  This also aligns with the Customer Executive Board’s research (2010) which demonstrated the value of...

Do operations and process principles apply everywhere?

We have had a hypothesis that good operational and process design disciplines are in some ways, “universal truths” regardless of the industry or process.  A recent client gave us the opportunity to test our process design and operational management principles against a type of work that was very different to anything we’d worked with before. Th...

Are Great Shareholder returns and great customer outcomes incompatible?

One of the startling recommendations in Australia of the Hayne Financial Service Royal Commission report is that businesses and executives have been too focused on shareholder returns at the expense of other outcomes for customers.

The Australian media has picked up on this theme and is starting to discuss fundamental shifts awa...