Category: Customer Experience
Why You Shouldn’t Ask Customers What They Want
The customer is always right. If you involve customers – you’ll make better decisions. The only problem with statements like these is that they don’t seem to account for all those occasions when the customer wasn’t right. They don’t explain the fact that, despite high degrees of customer involvement and extensive market research, between 70-90% ...
Four Factors Hindering Transformation
The problem with good service design is that you don’t notice it. It’s only when you experience truly bad design that you appreciate the good stuff. That’s why so few organisations are design led. They focus on designing out the bad rather than designing in the good from the beginning. Earlier this week I ordered ...
Is It Time To Rethink Industry Awards?
Award schemes have become a form of media. They exist to generate income for an organisation through a combination of entry fees and overpriced chicken dinners – Stephen Waddington It can sometimes feel like there is an industry awards ceremony for every night of the week. A Google search for ‘housing awards’ will get you ...
Rebuilding Trust Requires Getting Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable
Difficult conversations, the ones which we all too often shy away from, are the very thing that help build trust in one another. For instance, if you want to spot a couple who are on the verge of splitting up, look for the ones who have stopped talking and are sitting in silence. The ones ...
Do We Really Trust BrightHouse More Than We Do Housing Associations?
Ultimately the best way to build trust is to actually be trustworthy
How Complexity Kills Trust
Customers trust those who give them control — who put them in control — of their lives. They distrust those who try to control them. – Gerry McGovern Why do you trust the companies, organisations, and institutions you deal with? Chances are it isn’t because they have a customer charter, seek to involve you in their decision making, or ...
Does Benchmarking Really Save Companies From Failure?
Even in the very best organisations, bad practice is waiting just around the corner. In 2014 General Motors began the recall of the Chevrolet Cobalt which would ultimately affect nearly 30 million cars worldwide. The problem was with the ignition switch which could shut off the car while it was being driven, disabling power steering, power ...
5 Reasons You Need To Question What Customers Are Telling You
Despite little evidence of impact, each year millions of pounds are spent on market research, focus groups, and ‘coproduction’. The danger of listening to customers is you end up focusing on wants not needs. Often what a customer wants is diametrically opposed to what they need – and want is often more of a powerful ...
The Case Against Digital Transformation
Something that’s being sold to you as more convenient may well be a lost social interaction that you’ll never get back – Ben Holliday, Convenience Isn’t Digital Last week a friend of ours told me a story about trying to get some support for his partner who was ill. He was stuck in an impasse between the ...
Thinking Differently Is Slowing Transformation
Despite the perpetual cheerleading for innovation, most of our organisations need to be boringly effective. This week we’ve been mapping our work across 30 service objectives at Bromford – and it strikes me that most of what we do doesn’t need any bells and whistles. It just needs ruthless efficiency. Our innovation efforts really need to ...
