How we did it: the Customer Transformation

A customer transformation is where the Company changes its methods, processes and outcomes responding to demand from its customers and employees [it's people] (1).

Compared to a 'digital' or 'business' transformation which are led by a need to "retool". A customer transformation is led by an internal (employee) and external (customer) demand for change.

It's time to transform to how we transform

Since Digital and business transformations are failing at an surprising rate (88% of transformations fail or underperform according to Bain & Company (1), accounting for nearly 625 billion dollars in lost transformation investments according to Michelle Gilboy's back of the napkin math (2). A similar number to where we were already in 2019 when the estimate loss was 900 Billion (3)).

Technology and data-led transformations don't work. Because they don't know where they are going or why.

Many of them are simply built on the goal of "more" (e.g. "to win in the future through digital innovations"). Transformations need to be led by demand not tools.

It's time to transform how we transform.

We didn't start with a transformation .. but ended up with one

Given the opportunity to design and lead a project to create the enterprise wide strategy for customer experience I assumed from my own work that the organization's need for understanding and supporting the customer was much bigger than the ask from our project.

But we wanted to respond to the responsibility of the project to the company's employees and customers. We needed to find out what the organization demanded, convince our sponsors and stakeholders and deliver to it. What started as a customer experience strategy (a door opener) climbed to become the strategy and blueprint for a customer transformation (leading meaningful change).

We put together an exceptional team of talent to get the work done: Michelle Gilboy , Linda Daniels , Erica Metzger , Robin Fransz , Andrea Sanchez-Rubinstein and collaborated with even more around the world. Especially Kanae Clar in Japan, Julia Meiler , Julia Donath and Ziying Liao in Germany. (Thank you all for this great experience)

Key Steps:

We designed our process in the following chain:

How we did it:

#1. External research and raising the bar

The first thing we needed to do was establish an ambitious point-of-view for what good looked like. We wanted to challenge the industry-average and learn from leading industries, especially pushing back against the reductionist CX-mindset coming out of the technology and data industries. We found 37 external and internal reports and research which we used to distill down to 13 questions answering these from a "today" and a "near future" perspective (where are we today and what is the change?). We answered questions like:

• What influences and enables the customer's experience?
• What constitutes data, insights and sensemaking to influence which decisions?
• How is the field enabling and empowering diversity, equity and inclusion?

With these answers we could strongly assume where the customer was today and which outcomes we wanted from the 'customer' tomorrow.

2. Internal research and keep raising the bar

Next we needed to understand what the customer meant to the people, roles and responsibilities inside the organization. We interviewed 57 people and pushed the limits of an internal GPT ( Linda Daniels and Erica Metzger ) to analyze and synthesize our insights.

This was an important and valuable exercise. Nobody had done a similar analysis before and therefore we needed to make absolutely sure we could capture, understand and answer the needs of the organization.

With our analysis we could see where the customer shows up in the organization and used Jesse James Garrets age old model of designing experiences (4) as inspiration to create an intuitive map and logic navigating our work.

We already knew the customer was cascading through the entire organization. Our early work in 2020 had demonstrated that once you help a team become customer centric they start asking new questions demanding new things to be efficient and effective. Giving someone the power of 'the customer' is like putting a Ferrari engine into an old Fiat.

They start demanding new things and you can quickly see how the rest of the organization needs to catch up. With our map we could see the entire car, set our strategy and plan how to do the work.

3. Setting the strategy

We now had the external and the internal view with our desired outcomes and map showing us how to get there. We needed to make choices and prioritize how to make a difference. Who are we helping (internal stakeholders), what needs are we serving, what is our value offering and what behavior would we influence.

The strategy emerged including the entire stack from experiences to data and technology, strategy, culture and leadership.

4. Creating the roadmap

The strategy highlighted a series of needs and value propositions. We worked with the right talent and stakeholders across the organization turning it into a roadmap and plan the needed changes to take place over our timeline.

5. Motivating the change: the measures

The last work we needed to do was to create the measurements. Everything mentioned so far is all good, important and creates a great story, but you won't be successful without the measures to incentivize change. This is when the strategy turned from a customer strategy to a customer transformation. Because the way we decided to set the measurements helped the organization connect and combine all its competencies towards the same and shared goals delivering value to the customer driving value to the business. The strategy became a spindle taking all the disparate technology, data, digital, omnichannel etc. initiatives winding them together into the same fine thread = the customer narrative: driving what valued outcomes to the customer delivering which desired outcomes to the business.

What our exceptional team had managed to do was:

• Set a high enough ambition to matter
• Uncovered the burning relationship to and care for the customer across the entire organization (the need)
• Mapped the engine of how the organization delivers its outcomes, set a strategy and plan for how to change it
• Tied it all together with a measurement system enabling to pull the entire organization into a narrative that meant something, mattered and delivered

We had created the strategy and roadmap for a customer transformation.

Resources and links:

(1). Shoshana Zuboff, Creating value in the age of distributed capitalism, https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/creating-value-in-the-age-of-distributed-capitalism

(1). Bain & Company, Peter Slagt et. al, The Three Common Transformation Talent Mistakes and How to Avoid Them, https://www.bain.com/insights/the-three-common-transformation-talent-mistakes-and-how-to-avoid-them/

(2). Michelle Gilboy from Upwards Consulting on Linkedin, https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/michelle-gilboy-upwards_rethinking-digital-transformation-activity-7292542679425400832-w9_8

(3). Behnam Tabrizi et. al., Digital Transformation Is Not About Technology , https://hbr.org/2019/03/digital-transformation-is-not-about-technology

(4). Jesse James Garret, The elements of user experience, https://www.flickr.com/photos/25700689@N04/2418806737