Category Archives: Customer Experience

Steering and Branding

By John Evelyn  |  May 11, 2011  |  Agility,Capability,Customer Experience,Customer Service,Execution,Fit for purpose,General,Legacy,Rigidity,Sustainability,Winning

What’s in a name? How about the three R’s: recognition, reputation, and revenues? What’s the value of a brand? BRANDZ has just published their evaluations and valuations of global brands. It’s a measure of just how valuable the commercial brand is and supporting insight into the whys and wherefores. The shifts and changes in their rankings are a barometer of how our choices of who delivers value are manifested in our buying behavior. It’s not an opinion poll, but rather an evaluation that incorporates business results with analysis inclusive of some subjectivity.
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Please Tell Me All About Me

By John Evelyn  |  April 29, 2011  |  Capability,Customer Experience,Fit for purpose,General

For many years we’ve been helping our clients sort out how to create and sustain value for their customers. Few would argue that the Voice of the Customer is essential. We all too often find that the Voice of the Customer collected and reported is more about the organization, how well they are liked, or opinions on performance (not real performance), rather than those that focus on the customer’s world. Hearing and understanding the actual Voice of the Customer has too often been interpreted from gathering data that feed survey instruments, reports, dashboards or scorecards. By searching for and producing data that can be rolled up, opportunities for critical insight are lost. Feeding the tool or report can become the goal and by the time the report comes, the customer might be gone. Are we missing something? “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina. Count Leo has a point.

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Class Struggles

By John Evelyn  |  March 28, 2011  |  Blind Spots,Capability,Customer Experience,Fit for purpose,General,Lean,Six Sigma,Winning

Best in Class! How often do we run into the term? I don’t believe it’s a term that has lost much meaning. I suspect that overuse, or selective playing around with what “class” we pick, or the unreliability of rating organizations render it useless too often. In the world or process improvement it is applied to a goal setting step for evaluating how large a gap there is to close and subsequently chartering projects and resources to close that gap. There are some pitfalls to the approach
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Going to Pieces

By John Evelyn  |  March 9, 2011  |  Agility,Blind Spots,Capability,Competition,Customer Experience,General,Leverage,Resources,Rigidity,Technology

It’s hard to miss the changes in the media world, specifically, the demise of the Blockbuster empire. Netflix has a business model that is a game changer, a Blockbuster buster, as iTunes changed the way we access music and other entertainment, a CD and DVD killer. The world of content will soon be without the burdens of physical media. I’m fascinated by the Blockbuster busting by a competitor, one implementing the very strategy that made Blockbuster king of the block. Blockbuster was the brainchild of Wayne Huizenga, an entrepreneur recognized for this value creation strategies. Huizenga’s strategy was to take businesses that were very fragmented in the marketplace and integrate them, creating customer value. He did the same in the world of waste management. Interestingly, Netflix saw the Blockbuster blindness to its current fragmentation and jumped in.

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The Winter of Our Discontent

By John Evelyn  |  February 15, 2011  |  Adversity,Agility,Capability,Customer Experience,General,Leverage,Resources,Rigidity,Technology

The yearly onset of winter has been a critical milestone in our history, life for that matter, on this planet. It triggered severe constraints in access to food, travel, safety and the quality of life overall. Travellers who needed to get across mountain ranges had to make tough choices, and often make winter quarters and postpone travel until the thaws. Even in war, some armies huddled in winter and fought from early spring to late fall. Today, winter continues to constrain and often reminds us that our advancement and technology can be humbled by severe weather. Those in the tropics see a different face of nature, the tropical cyclones and monsoons.

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My Way or the Highway

By John Evelyn  |  January 19, 2011  |  Blind Spots,Capability,Competition,Customer Experience,General,Leverage,Resources,Rigidity,Technology,Winning

American Airlines war with the web is a fascinating series of events. Nobody can argue that the web is the neural and circulatory network for the preponderance of businesses. Unavailability and inaccessibility are likely to be two deathly symptoms of a commercial entity headed for life challenging times. Now, when I hear about accessibility issues, I tend to associate them with technical or network failures. Something broke, or glitches or evildoers are driving the calamity. Not so in this case. This war has to do with how accessibility is managed. American has made a decision that they will set the rules of how customers can access them.

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The 2010 Newsletter from Dr. Noriaki Kano

By John Evelyn  |  January 14, 2011  |  Customer Experience,Deming Prize,General,Legacy

I got on the train from Taoyuan City in one evening to attend a meeting to be held in Taipei. Although the train was not packed because it was going reverse to the general flow of traffic, there was no vacant seat and I held onto the strap, when a high school girl got up abruptly and offered her seat to me. It was my first experience, and her pure attitude and consideration impressed me. At the same time, feeling that I was not so old as to be offered a seat, my pride was shattered completely and flattened me. Nevertheless, I accepted her warmth and took the seat while lamenting over my age, 70, which is probably an age at which there is a gap between how one thinks of onself and how one is regarded by others.

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Who’s in Your Wallet?

By John Evelyn  |  December 7, 2010  |  Agility,Capability,Competition,Customer Experience,Fit for purpose,General,Leverage,Resources,Rigidity,Sustainability,Technology

Many great cities over developed for one important reason. They were at crossroads, or at bays, river crossings, or safe harbors. Some were near resources to be harvested or emerging roads, tracks, or caravan routes. They grew because they were or would become markets. Markets towns enabled trade, commerce, and exchanges that enabled value creation. Agriculture, mining, cattle, diamonds, forestry … all types of enterprises emerged, so that exchanges could be made, with money or barter as instruments. We could get and sell stuff. For most of human history, markets were visible, tangible, and somewhere we travelled to buy or sell. This tangible requirement and the transportation linkages determined life or death to commerce and the development of cities. Ask the railroad towns that were bypassed by the interstate highway system or mining towns that had no metals or minerals left to harvest. Our conquest of time and space over centuries has shaped this dynamic.

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I’d Gladly Pay You Tuesday for a Hamburger Today

By John Evelyn  |  September 13, 2010  |  Blind Spots,Capability,Customer Experience,Diagnosis,Execution,General,Lean,Resources,Risks,Six Sigma,Sustainability,Transparency

Yesterday, residents in the San Francisco neighborhood of San Bruno returned to what was left of their homes. Several had burned when a 24 inch distribution gas pipeline failed and a fire ensued. The section that failed was due to fail and, following the rules of physics, it complied
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The Egg and I

By John Evelyn  |  August 26, 2010  |  Capability,Customer Experience,General,Integrity,Leadership,Operational Excellence,Respect,Six Sigma,Transparency

Ever wonder about the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg? It’s hard to escape the current media about eggs, salmonella outbreaks again! I confess that part of me is a chicken, more than a bit concerned about the eggs. Although the broadcasted data says my eggs are likely to be safe, the current outbreak is disturbing. Egg farmers everywhere are sharing the chilling thoughts of what fear can do to our buying behaviors. A bad egg amongst the good can spoil the lot. It’s not just about eggs, is it?
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