I don’t know about you, but I’ve found it really hard to sleep over the last few nights of hot weather, and even harder to think during the day.
So this week, I’m going to be catching up on sleep and on food for thought, so I can better keep my promise to you with more interesting stuff than I have done lately.
I can’t wait.
I’ve always been sceptical about claims that double-glazing businesses are ‘very clean, and tidy up after themselves’.
Not because I think they aren’t, but because I’ve always suspected that emphasising the ‘tidying up’ might be a way to distract from poor work on actually putting in the windows.
I’m wrong of course.
What being clean and tidy signals is a pride in the job and consideration for the customer.
A committment to leave the client’s home as least as good as it was before the job, if not better.
A willingness to conserve bits and pieces the client wants to reuse.
A willingness to fill in holes you didn’t make, because that’s what a proper job looks like.
It might cost a small amount extra – hardly anything really, because not to do a proper job is usually harder – but every little helps to build a bank of goodwill and loyalty.
On which to grow a business that lasts.
For 30 years, so far.
The point about a musical score is that it tells you where you are, what comes next and where you’re trying to get to.
So when your bow breaks in the middle of your passionately executed violin solo, you can simply borrow one from the lead violinist and carry on. And so can the rest of the orchestra.
Ok, the pause breaks the illusion for a second or two, but the experience as a whole doesn’t break down. In fact, it becomes more memorable.
Not because it ‘failed’ but because of the ease with which it was got going again.
The only change you might want to make afterwards is to add a spare bow to each performance.
The point about a customer experience score is that it enables you to keep your promise, creatively, no matter what.
Discipline makes Daring possible
HT to @Bev Costoya for the prompt.
As I mentioned yesterday, almost the biggest challenge for the food innovators in Vaughn Tan’s “The Uncertainty Mindset”, is making sure that any new experience (whether a dish, a meal or an event) is both consistent with their unique ‘ethos’/’house style’/’brand’ AND completely new.
How on earth do you teach someone how to do this?
The answer is a process something like this:
These steps are repeated until the dish is judged fit to introduce to the restaurant menu. It’s at this point that instructions for re-creating it will be set down.
The key things here are:
The result is that learning and reinforcing the unique ‘ethos’/’house style’/’brand’ becomes almost effortless, because it’s simply part of the job. Chefs learn all the time by doing, presenting and re-presenting the results of their work for the scrutiny of their peers.
These are businesses operating under conditions of extreme uncertainty, but I think there’s something really useful here, that could and should be incorporated into a system for making and keeping promises.
Because in truth, what we really want is a system for making and exceeding promises.
After all, the Discipline is there to make Daring possible.
How would you do it?
When your business is faced with uncertainty, rigidity is the wrong tool to use. That’s why big corporations fail in the face of change.
The challenge for a purpose-driven, legacy-focused, customer-centred small business is to be open to unknown futures without losing its identity. To keep their edges fluid and their core firm.
Fortunately, that’s relatively easy to do, because human beings are very good at dealing with uncertainty – especially the uncertainty that comes from dealing with other human beings.
All you need to do is to build the firm core:
First you define a high-level, comprehensive Promise of Value that is specific and distinctive, yet open-ended:
Package that Promise of Value into concrete products and services:
Use that Promise of Value to drive the design of a Customer Experience Score for sharing and delivering on your Promise that:
Make sure you gather feedback:
Enable every player in your team to discover the combination of roles that ensures their best performances:
Once you have this in place, you can safely trust your people (and the people to come) to dance with uncertainty. You can make every one of them a Boss, and leave the future of your business safe in their hands.
Discipline makes Daring possible
“Stories are beliefs made manifest.”
“What you do is who you are.”
Share your true, unique Promise.
Then make sure you Keep it.
Otherwise you’re a liar.
When you buy off the shelf, you’re buying from someone who’s producing for people who do what everyone else does, the way everyone else does it. That’s what ‘mass-market’ means.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t buy off the shelf. Just that when you do, you should be clear that whatever you’re buying really does serve what you do, the way that you do it.
Otherwise you’ll end up having to act like everyone else.
A shame when there are other options available.
As a musical instrument, the triangle is often regarded as a bit of a joke. A bit ridiculous. Not to be taken seriously.
Yet a composer includes it in their orchestration for a reason – because it’s unique sound contributes to the experience they wish to convey. Without it the composer’s promise couldn’t be kept.
When times are hard, it’s tempting to strip back on our offer. To cut down on the details of our customer experience.
Just remember, it’s your promise you’re really stripping back. Eventually it will show.
Use your natural ingenuity to find a better way to keep it instead.
First nation peoples and clever marketers have known for a long time that Sharing your Promise is never really about selling the thing. It’s about how that thing affects our relationship with ourselves and with others. So what you’re really selling is a change of relations.
Which means of course, that when it comes to Keeping your Promise, you’re not really delivering the thing. You’re delivering the shift in relationships signified and caused by the thing.
Which means that’s what the Customer Experience should be all about.
Which means that’s what should be in your Customer Experience Score.
And why keeping it human matters.
After the complaint has been handled; once you’ve addressed the customer’s problem and left them more than happy with the result – so happy that they’ll tell their friends about what went wrong and how you put it right for them so well. After all that, there is one more job to do.
Make sure you update the way you Keep your Promise so that you don’t get the same complaint again.
Amend your Customer Experience Score.