The latest CX developments make me feel stupid...

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Or maybe not. It's making me feel pretty bad at the moment. Like a lot of hindsight, mine forces me to confront paths I did not take; obvious decisions that did not seem obvious at the time. Strangely, in this particular case, it comes down to my decision to value input from some people more than others, without any rational reason.

Mainly about surveys

This sad situation is mainly about surveys, though it also includes other ways of talking to customers. In my case, it started in 1981 or 1982 when I first did my own surveys, going out to talk to stores that sold Wrangler clothing at the time. I listened to those customers and I did my best to implement their suggestions. Let me be more specific: I did my best to implement their suggestions for them, and only for them. Yet I could have looked at our operational data and determined that other customers had the same issues and attempted to fix them for everyone. But I didn't. I felt proud of what I had done at the time. Now I feel bad about it.

Too little, too late

That whole pattern continued as I helped to implement NPS at HP. Our work was comprehensive and far better than what I had worked on in the clothing industry. Surveys everywhere. Great loop-closing with Detractors across the company. Comprehensive improvement initiatives for the largest customers, again based on surveys. We used survey data to identify issues that were common to many customers and address them across internal teams. That all sounds good. However... this was all taking place after the fact, and loop closing was only happening with customers who answered survey requests. It felt great at the time. I now find it unacceptable.

The information we were seeking was already available

The main missing link should have been obvious. If we had looked at the operational data that drove survey respondents to be Detractors, Passives, or indeed Promoters, we would easily have identified non-respondents who were experiencing the same things. Armed with this same knowledge, we could have addressed bad things that were happening, such as late deliveries, before the customers were aware of them. Rather than waiting for a customer to complain in a survey, we could have contacted them in advance and apologized before they were even aware of the issue. But we didn't. Partly because we did not think that way and partly because it was difficult.

It's easy now

We didn't have the AI and Machine Learning tools that exist today, and I suppose we thought that doing the work manually was not worth the effort. The necessary software exists today. OCX Cognition's Spectrum AI software is a great example of one such product. Real-time monitoring of operational and other data that the software has identified as impacting customer retention. It works, and it works for all customers, without any surveys.

So, this all makes me happy and sad at the same time. One the one hand, I am sad that I did not think of such an obvious approach at the time. On the other had, this is about you, not me. You are probably at a much earlier stage of your career. You can implement all of this now, and avoid feeling as stupid as I do.

Notes

Maurice FitzGerald is a retired VP of Customer Experience for HP's $4 billion software business and was previously VP of Strategy and Customer Experience as well as Chief of Staff for HP in EMEA. He and his brother Peter, an Oxford D.Phil in Cognitive Psychology, have written three books on customer experience strategy and NPS, and a fourth book that focuses on Peter's cartoon illustrations for the first three. All are available from Amazon.

OCX Cognition predicts customer futures. Our breakthrough SaaS solution, Spectrum AI, lets enterprises transform what’s possible in customer experience. Reduce your customer risk, break down silos, and drive speedy action – when you can see what’s coming, you can change the outcome. Building on more that 15 years of CX-focused expertise, we’ve harnessed today’s advances in AI, elastic computing, and data science to deliver on the promise of customer-driven financial results. Learn more at?www.ocxcognition.com.

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