Esteban Kolsky and Graham Hill:
Customer Experience and the Digital Enterprise
Modern organizations must consider their relationship to customers, including the possible universe of digital touch points.
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Modern organizations must consider their relationship to customers, including the possible universe of digital touch points. Although analyzing customer experience with journey maps offers a traditional approach, we should evaluate whether this method is sufficient for today's digital enterprise.
Esteban Kolsky and Graham Hill are analysts and advisors to a range of large and small companies. They are both highly respected in the world of customer experience and bring informed and data-rich perspectives to the issues.
Michael:
(00:02) Customer experience and the digital enterprise what does that mean? An interesting question
Esteban:
(00:10) I hope you’re not asking me I don’t know.
Michael:
(00:13) And I was going to do a further introduction to the show, but Esteban, let me do my standard introduction. Will that work?
Esteban:
(00:25) Of course Michael anything you want.
Michael:
(00:30) I’m stunned into silence. Okay, we are here with episode number 132 of CXOTalk. I am Michael Krigsman and my glorious co-host is Vala Afshar. Vala how are you?
Vala:
(00:46) Michael, I’m doing great and it’s an honor to be here with three customer experience experts who I can learn from.
Michel:
(00:53) Well so you’re going to learn from yourself, learn from Esteban and of course Graham Hill who is joining us from the UK. Why don’t we start by saying hello to Graham since he has been politely standing by, and I think Vala I hate to say this, this is one of those shows where, let’s see, we’re into it about 30 seconds and you know they say you should never let it get away from you.
Vala:
(01:18) Michael, all bets are off for the next 45 minutes.
Esteban:
(01:21) Let’s say hi to Graham the proper way, cheerio governor!
Michael:
(01:34) So let me just say that, go ahead Graham please.
Graham:
Audio technicalities.
Michael:
(01:50) I’m afraid Graham there has some audio issues. Both Graham and Esteban are analysts and practitioners and advisors and practitioners of in areas like CRM, customer experience. And two of the very smartest people that I know in this domain, so Graham, let’s try this one more time. Give us a sense of your background, tell us about Graham Hill?
Graham:
Audio technicalities
Michael:
(02:31) Graham, your headphone or microphone has a loose wire, so why don’t you play with that in the meantime, Esteban…okay Graham, can’t hear a word your saying. Esteban tell us about your background and then Graham we’re going to come back to you.
Esteban:
(03:23) Well I’m 6”3. 220 pounds…
Michael:
(0I’m not sure if that’s relevant…
Esteban:
(03:31) Well let’s see, what can I say about customer experience. I’ve been an analyst for 15 years, eight of which I’ve spent at Gartner. Back in the early days in Gartner in early 2000, which we used to call the bible of customer experience which was all stuff by today’s standards. It’s ahead of whatever people are doing because people are too much into hype and too little into actually getting things done. Did that work?
Michael:
(03:55) That’s good. Graham, let’s try you again and hopefully your mic is going to work.
Esteban:
(04:14) So Graham can you try again, your background?
Graham:
(04:16) I can’t hear a word, so it’s not working at my end.
Michael:
(04:21) Okay, don’t you know Vala, we’ve seen this before right.
Graham:
(04:26) Can you hear me, I can’t hear you.
Vala:
(04:28) We can hear you okay.
Michael:
(04:30) We can hear you but he can’t hear us. Well we could just start the discussion…
Graham:
No, it’s not working. I’m going to have to restart.
Michael:
(04:48) So Esteban, let’s hear your view of customer experience. What is from your perspective, which we realize is a limited perspective because that’s why we have two people, limited in the broader scope…
Esteban:
(05:05) I’m a professional so don’t try this at home..
Michael:
(05:08) Alright, tell us about customer experience.
Esteban:
(05:10) So here’s the deal about customer experience at a very high level. There’s actually different perspectives of that, let’s start with the companies perspective. Company’s believe that customers want experiences because everybody has been telling us for a long time. People who read books about millennials and the new generations and the future of work and how the world works, and how social customers have changed the world and all these things keep saying, oh no the new people they just want experiences so they’re willing to pay more for experiences.
(05:41) So there are surveys all over the place, 56% of people globally in a recent by Zendesk confirmed that they want to pay more for experiences. 64% in a survey that was done by JD Power said the same thing, you know, back in the days when (unclear 06:00) which is part of Oracle now, and I think I throw out enough or our vendor names right Vala.
Vala:
(06:06) Hey I haven’t heard the vendor name I’m waiting for, but..
Esteban:
(06:15) But you know, back in the days, (Heras interactive? 06:17) said 86% of people are willing to pay more for an experience and because of that, brands are thinking they need to create experiences for customers. You know, this is my biggest concern is that as we as practitioners and we as brands believe that the customer experience is something we have to manufacture, to engineer to prepare for the customer. Whereas the customers are willing to find their experience as they go along, and this is why that most of the stuff that’s been done in customer experience today is absolutely worthless.
(06:48) Because if you’re going to manufacture the experience for your customer, your customer (a) will do it once and maybe never do it again, or (b) be in disagreement of what the experience should be, and not one time but every single time. Because every single time the company meet with you, they want to do something. That maybe different or maybe the same but you don’t know. So by manufacturing and engineering that one single experience that you think your customers want, you’re living out a lot of the nuances and complexities of what interactions with customers actually are.
(07:15) I mean I that was really short to cut that off. We have recently completed a very successful year of dating, and I can tell you that no too data’s are the same in the same way no two interactions between brand and customers are the same.
Vala:
(07:30) But I suspect you have a strategy that you implement as your dating, but we’l save that for question number two that Michael will ask. I want your point of view on you know out good friend Paul Greenberg recently wrote a blog that actually defined CRM, customer experience management, customer engagement. In that blog which I’m sure that all of us have read described customer experience as how a customer feels about a company over time, and you reference Bruce Tompkins definition and Bruce has been covering as you know covering customer experience and he said that the the perception that customers have of their interactions with an organization. What are your thoughts about that very simply worded definition of customer experience, which he then leads to customer experience management, which is by Pauls’ definition a business science and strategy. And that’s why I mentioned that when you referenced dating.
Esteban:
(08:34) Here’s the thing about customer experiences, right let’s see if we’re going to explain this in a simple way and then I would love to hear what Graham has to say. But let’s say that you live in New York City, Manhattan of course, because there it’s not worth living anywhere else in New York City. But let’s say you live in Manhattan and you go to like the university there up in Columbia and you live you know, in the Upper East Side or whatever in a small apartment.
(08:59) Now every single time that you go from your house to the university and the university to your house, you could say that that’s an experience. I mean you could walk, take a cab, take Uber. You can take a combination of metro subways, you could you know take your bike, you can ride with friend. You can do many different things. Each one will be a different experience right.
(09:18) The problem is that the definition that puts the company that’s creating the experience or in the case the company saying this is what you can do means that you have a limited set of options. You can you know, for a company for example like Uber were to be creating your experience your experience is to taking Uber and there maybe two or three ways to it. Uber black, Uber x, or it might be a motorcycle or whatever, but that’s only what’s provided by the company but it may not be the experience that you want, right.
(09:48) The problem that we have when companies get into charging the customer management and building experiences is you know, it’s their perception. And this is the entire thing is that what Paul did right and I disagree with Bruce Tompkin. Bruce says that he is seeing the perception of the customer, and it’s not the perception it’s the reality of the customer.
(10:05) But what Paul actually enhanced and did really well, to a certain extent he’s 80% of the way there. It’s like you know, customer experiences must be chosen by the customer and they must be you know validated by the customer. Paul also says chosen by the company but you know we can split hairs on that one which is my thing with Paul. But I don’t think the customer experiences are offered by the company. I don’t think the company has a decision. I think the company needs to build an infrastructure and then let customers do whatever they want whenever they want, and however they want. That’s what customer experience is. I define my own experience in the terms that I want every single time that I interact with you. If I have time, if I don’t have time you know, if I’m happy or not happy or whatever it is I’ve got to be able to figure that out.
Michael:
(10:46) Okay, Graham can you hear us can we hear you?
Graham:
(10:51) I can hear you very clearly.
Michael:
(10:54) And we can barely hear you Graham. Your microphone I’m afraid has a loose wire. There’s a short circuit in your mic so don’t move. So Esteban has been making the point by definition or by nature, any definition of customer experienced specified by a company is therefore going to be limited, and how do you react to that? So do you agree with that point of view, so you have to be thinking about what the customer is going to do right?
Graham:
(11:44) Companies can’t be all things to all men. So companies have to make choices on how they want to serve and how they want to do it. in doing that they want to have the right infrastructure, services, marketing sales, the product they use and what they define as the customer experience. So companies make choices on that serve them and how they want to serve them. the experience from the customers perspective of course is defined by the customer themselves and doing whatever they want to do.
(12:23) So it’s a thing of (unclear?) The company provides the recourses, the platforms though the internet or through customer services or whatever. The customer uses those in what he’s trying to get done and the experiences, the interactions and those two things together. So Esteban is right to one extent in that, in providing infrastructure that limits the customer in what they can do. And it’s also wrong at the same time in that, that they have had it all their lives to do anything they want because that’s not going to be viable perspectives. So you have to look at those tradeoffs and balancing tradeoffs and that’s what makes for a good (Unclear?)
Esteban
(13:06) Yeah, but then when you do that and you balance those tradeoffs, and you look at what you did and they start getting return, you start making decisions based on things that are not directly – I don’t want to say affecting, but impacting and giving value to the customers.
(13:22) Those tradeoffs mean that you know, the person making the tradeoff makes the decision on what’s possible and what’s not…
Graham
(13:28) That’s always been the case. I’ve always been sure it’s how they serve customers
Esteban:
(13:34) Yeah but that’s what I’m saying. They shouldn’t make the choices anymore. Now it’s the customer’s choice in how they want to be served of what they want to do and that’s the problem that we have.
Graham:
() Audio technicalities
Michael:
(13:59) Graham, we can’t hear you. Is there any way you can just use the microphone built into the computer.
Graham:
(14:07) I can give it a try.
Michael:
(14:11) Now we hear you. So be like a statue. It’s because you have a short circuit and it’s going in and out, so be like a statue.
Graham:
(14:25) So few customers are going to be outrageously profitable for companies, so make sure they look after those and provide the experience as far as possible. Some companies will be very unprofitable (Audio technicalities) cater to move them on to competitors or provide them with a lower cost, or provide them with options where they pay for those services.
(14:52) The challenge of the customer experience is the challenge of customer value management and understanding what customers they want to serve. When we design the platforms which the experiences are delivered then we can work together with customers.
Esteban:
(15:09) I mean I agree with you on the customers have got to be profitable, customers are going to be unprofitable of course. I want the best for the company who just make the profitable customers happy. Then unprofitable customers well, leave. You want them further and further, but you know, you want to provide the minimal level of service.
(15:26) But the point is it goes beyond that. The customer experience is something that customers expect, whether they’re profitable or not. And you know, in the old days when we had you know extremely limited resources that in fact we were paying for everything because we had our own data centers and our own components and everything was you know paid for by the company that case could be made.
(15:44) Today, when things are like you know cheap by being able to leverage the cloud infrastructure and you can do you know things that you couldn’t do before and you can actually leverage outsourcing through different locales in the world that are much cheaper and everything. You can create a strategy that will deliver experience, not only based on who they are and how profitable they are but also like you know the fact that they want to be your customer, because you never know who your bottom customer today maybe your great customer of tomorrow.
Graham:
(16:13) Don’t forget though you’re now going to face the iceberg fallacy, and the iceberg fallacy is the bits you see through the cloud that customer experiences serve through the digital or whatever it maybe (Audio technicalities)
Esteban:
(16:31) I cannot hear. Your mic is going in and out.
Michael:
(16:56) So the question that I have about all of this is that on the one hand Esteban it seems that you’re saying there’s almost an infinite range of potential customer experiences for that full set of customers with so many different varying needs and on the other hand we do have a need for structure. So how can an organization systematize
Esteban:
(17:30) The need for infrastructure is more of a need for control and the organization thinks that they can retain control, when in reality, we’ve proven in the last five to 10 years or whatever that the control doesn’t belong to the organization anymore, so what do you do when your ultimate gaining the false sense that you’re in control and you retain the structure because your creating your own experiences versus giving the customers what they want.
(17:55) You can on one hand say, look, you know we want to give the customers whatever they want but only as long as it’s profitable and you know actionable and everything. And you couldn’t do that in the past because resources were much more expensive and much more limited. But in today’s world, like it doesn’t cost you that much more to provide a basic level of experience to everybody. You should be able to do that and then increase the experience as they go along in the sense of you know, the more value that the customer requires, which is going to be more value created for you, the better the experience it delivers.
(18:26) Experiences are not you know once and then done. It’s every single interaction is going to be different.
Michael:
(18:33) Yes, so we’re going to have anarchy and chaos with our customers, is that it?
Graham:
(18:42) It’s obviously not going to work is it. So I agree with Esteban, customers want a whole variety of things. Some of those things they can have, some of those they can’t. If I’m a negative profitability customer and I want concierge service when I travel with British Airways I’m not going to get it because I’m not worth it in the crudest of terms.
(19:05) So customers make the choices and in front of all that lovely experiences that the customer sees, there is a complex service system in the backgrounds and often limited by laws and regulations that companies have to provide the limits in what they actually are able to profitably provide, and that’s always going to be the case.
(19:24) So it might be easy to change your website to continuous beta, and that’s one of the things that’s happening these days, but changing the back offices, changing all the regulatory aspects of work, changing the data architectures and the data structures and all those sorts of things, those things are not so easy to do unless you are perhaps Google, Facebook, or Amazon.
(19:43) Most companies, most banks, most Telco’s, most airlines, most car companies, the companies that I work with on a daily basis, they can’t turn around on a sixpence. They’re struggling to do simple decision making based around customer data based on what they have.
(19:59) So it sounds great in theory, and I agree in theory. But the practice would take maybe five or 10 years to catch up.
Esteban:
(20:05) Yeah, but you know what, were in the middle of that change already in the world. Go back as far as you want. Go back 20 years to when the internet first started conversations and with e-commerce making a broader adoption of the internet, 10 years for social and online world. You know the internal organizations.
(20:24) Five years ago we’re looking at a broader adoption of social. Today, you know for like machine learning, automation, cloud, through the last 20 years this kind of adoption became a commodity.
(20:33) Well I agree with you that it would take five to 10 years and I also have to recognize the fact that that we’re half way through the first generation of you know further along of these changes. So we owe it to people to say, look, it’s complicated but you’re going to do it anyways so might as well do it the right way. And the right way is for you not to retain control or at least some insignificant you know, stigma that you have control. But do it so like your customers are the one in control as you keep saying and those who are customer centric as you keep saying…
Graham:
(21:06) The customers aren’t in control
Esteban:
(21:10) The customers have always been in control.
Graham:
(21:13) That’s a nice (hypothesis?) but it’s not really, so let’s think of a simple situation. I want to take out a new mobile contract with a mobile Telco, so all the things I’m going to be allowed to do are going to be set by Telecoms regulations, various laws to do with data protection and what have you, and we have got many more in Europe than you do in the USA, business systems and logistic systems and the architecture inside those different companies.
(21:41) So these things are going to take a long time. Five to 10 years before they can get to any point where the customer has some sense of control, and at the moment companies have control. They set how you can interact, they set when you can interact. They set opening times and closing times and they set the processes. They decide whether you can have a product or not, with or without credit checking and so forth. So the idea of customers having control is a nice soundbite.
Esteban:
(22:08) But you know what, it’s not a soundbite because, I mean I agree with you with all established companies, you have an inkling if you have less and if you have an O2 in the UK, and you have a you know NTT in Japan, and you have Telstra in Australia, they have you know tens of millions of customers, I totally agree with you.
(22:24) But that’s why companies have been creating their spinoffs, you know they are much smaller and nimble and adaptable because they can actually - there is no way to go around you know, compliance with you know federal laws or state las or whatever.
(22:40) But within the compliance you can offer different services because you have access to different systems. For AT&T Wireless to make a change, means that they would have to change you know tens if not hundreds of years of technology that’s been amalgamated through different acquisitions for somebody like 3 to make a change in Europe means they have to make a change because they are a young company with new systems. So you know they’re changing whether they want it or not or whether it is you know an old established company or new one. But you as a customer you always have the choice, and the choice gives you the control.
Vala:
(23:11) So Esteban, you would say companies like Uber, AirBnB, Netflix are the ones that realize that the more control of the experience that you give to the end user, people call it the gig-economy, the on-demand economy, the sharing or whatever you want to label it, are the ones that get the fact that you know, the customer does want to control the experience. They don’t just want to stand and hang on a street corner and hope that a taxi is going to come by. There going to want to use technology and pick who gets them from A to B, or where they stay in terms of their lodgings. Are these companies more aligned to what you’re thinking of the next generation of managing the experience?
Esteban:
(23:57) Yes and no. Yes because they get the concept, but no because they are quickly becoming because the center they are replacing. I mean look at the size of Uber and AirBnB today, right. Is not where they started anymore, there is no way they can adapt to any new choice for the customer. Look at somebody like Barn & Noble’s look at some of the salesforce customers. Look at any of these smaller companies that are emerging, resize companies. Those are the ones that are revolutionary.
(24:26) People that in brace the cloud at the beginning and do everything through the cloud, not to say that they do it through the cloud and mobile, but truly in brace in the sense like you know customers are going to guide whatever happens to the customer, right.
(24:40) That’s the thing, Uber, Zappos, AirBnB, they all started that way. Now if you have an issue with AirBnB today, it’s not like it used to be like two years ago, three years ago now you are stuck in some complex thing and that goes back to what Graham was saying. So to me, the set up here is you know, the realization of large monolithic operations, whether they are five years old, 25 years old or 50 years old are the same. Once you have a complex set up like what Graham was saying, I totally agree with Graham it’s impossible to do.
Michael:
(25:08) Well at some point…
Graham:
(25:11) You have to be careful. The idea that customers want control I don’t think is necessarily true. So if you look at the research and I was talking to Eileen (Englit?) a little while ago at Warwick about this, and her research showed you that the everyday humdrum ordinarily things, most customers don’t actually want to control, they just wanted to work. They want somebody else to provide it for them, and so because it’s just ordinary day run-of-the-mill sort of stuff, it’s the exceptional stuff that the customers want to control.
(25:41) So I was looking at another paper a little while ago about patients in Australia who were going through cancer treatment, and how much control they wanted over that cancer treatment. And the research carried out in Australia showed that there is a variety of groups that wanted to control the cancer treatment experience in different ways. And that’s an exceptional experience, but even then the majority, 60% of the people they looked at wanted to see the vast majority of control over to somebody else, and only a minority actually wanted to control something as important as cancer treatment.
(26:20) So, our job is to understand you know, customers want to get stuff done and you know, Esteban and I joke about the idea of jobs to be done. Jobs jobs to be done is pretty universal now in services and experiences I would say. You have to have jobs to be done, and the question is its controlling how things get done, and the part of the job you want to be doing yourself or do you want somebody else to provide for you on the basis of trust. I think that’s where the matter lies.
Esteban:
(26:46) I agree with you and there is one thing I want to get out of the way. I mean the illusion of customers that want control or customers that want relationships, or customers wanting engagement. Customers want that stuff. I agree with you, every single research that I have seen in the last you know 10 years in continue going forward is going to be that customers don’t care about control, engagement, and relationships, it’s customers want stuff done.
(27:07) You know, whatever they need to get down they want to get it done, minimal hassle, minimal problems and the easiest ways to be to get it done and all that stuff. But this is where the disagreement starts to an extent is that you know, companies believe that customers want to get it done means that the company is deciding the easiest way possible. Fewer steps, fewer clicks, fewer people in the middle, fewer phone numbers or whatever, and customers say I don’t know what I’m going to need until the moment that I’m there. So don’t give me a packaged way to do it thinking that is the easiest way, because if I’m driving down the freeway on my way to the airport and I want to change my flight, I want to talk to somebody. I don’t want an automated system that can hardly understand me because of the wind or because I’m in a convertible with the top-down or whatever. I want to talk to somebody and say I want to do this, and get it done.
(27:51) If I’m at home, I want to be able to log into my computer to look at all the options. If I’m on the subway I want to be able to go through my mobile interface and get those things. It’s not about creating that one experience, but it’s about creating ability for the customer to give them the experience that they need every single time. That’s the control that they want. Something that people with cancer I mean the report on cancer I agree with and it also goes to the fact that you know, most cancer patients want to have as much information as possible even if they don’t want them, and even if they are not able to make a decision, they just want to know that they can have that information.
Vala:
(28:24) So is it just a different C. it’s not control it’s choice, they just want choices.
Esteban:
(28:30) They want choices and I mean trust is and Graham hit it the nail on the head. It all comes down to trust at this level. Trust is the only thing that’s going to make it happen, and you know if you talk to Paul Greenberg and his research that he is doing on engagement, engagement goes into trust. I mean I wrote about this on engagement a couple of years ago and continues to be the thing.
(28:49) When it comes to choices, and the trust of the company will give me the right choices. When you go to your doctor you know, you want to have choices. You don’t want to be told this is all you have to do to get it done. That’s something that you would have done general maybe five, 10, 15, 20 years ago. But if I go to my doctor and he says all you have is x, y, z and there is only one treatment, nah, there’s got to be more than one. I want the choices; you know even if I don’t make the choice, I want the choice, because without the choice I will trust you.
Michael:
(29:18) There is this issue of the connection between trust, confidence, choices, and engagement. And the challenge for many companies is to define a set of choices to limit the universe down to what that particular customer within their context will find reasonable, yet at the same time provide sufficient choice that they will feel confident that the choices being offered are the right set of choices to solve whatever issue it is that they may have.
Graham:
(29:56) Let’s be careful if you look at the research from (Unclear of the name 30:01) wrote a paper a few years ago looking at choice. What they found out was was that customers say they want choice, but when you give them choice they are overwhelmed by it, and they don’t want so much choice. So giving people too many choices is actually worse than giving them less choices, because they become cognizant and overloaded and they can’t deal with the choice, and then they very quickly limit themselves to think things that might not be in their interest.
Michael:
(30:26) So is that why we create…
Graham:
Sorry what was that?
Michael:
Is that why we create…
Vala:
(30:34) That’s a big leap
Esteban:
(30:37) Is this when like I stir the fire (unclear) That’s not even funny, that’s not even a segue. That’s like…
Michael:
(30:54) Let’s talk about journey mapping now.
Esteban:
(30:56) I refuse to answer the question based on the bad segue. You have go to do better than that. you have got to work with the conflict…
Vala:
(31:03) Michael, After 132 episodes whoa that was a segue.
Esteban:
(31:09) I couldn’t even dream of doing something so bad.
Michael:
(31:12) All right, let’s try this again. So customers want choices. From the company perspective, the company wants to drive and channel the customer into making the right choices, namely the choices that are going to be convenient for us as a company. And to do..
Esteban:
(31:32) You know what, if all we go on any further, that’s what I keep telling my dates, I’m making the right choice for you honey, that doesn’t work okay. You don’t make the choices for somebody else. You offer the choices and the customer chooses, that’s the bottom line.
Michael:
(31:44) Okay, so we need to understand then…
Esteban:
(31:47) Here, let me make the segue for you, let me make the segue for you. Let me take over as host for a second. We’re talking about customers want and choices, and they want trust and all that stuff and you know, from the company perspective it’s overwhelming. It’s just like for the customer to have all the choices, it’s overwhelming to understand the customers wanting these choices. Is there any tools or anything I can do as a company to actually understand and document these choices so I can work with them. Let’s say we are journey mapping Michael?
Graham:
(32:16) That’s a great idea.
Michael:
(32:16 Excellent, that was really excellent. And so Graham, do you support customer journey mapping in the strong way that Esteban does.
Graham:
(32:30) Sure, journey mapping in the strong way that Esteban does (unclear 32:35). So let’s face it, mapping customer journey, however you do that and however you involve the customer in the process is the standard way today to understanding what goes on in the mind of the customer, and the heart of the customer as they go through the experience and interactions with the company, the staff, their product, and of course (unclear).
(33:01) So journey mapping is the standard way today. There is many ways to do it. I use (Andy Pulane?), So tools like (satalie and Expite?) so that allows you to using telephones or whatever it may be, but it has become the standard way at looking at things. Can it be improved? Of course it can. Should we involve customers more? Yes, and in different sorts of ways.
(33:32) Michael Hammer first introduced processed mapping if you like in the 1990s, after writing his book, Reengineering the Corporation. This takes on a whole generation of business process re-engineering, which did a lot of service design engineers (unclear 33:45).
Tiny Gilmore wrote (unclear?) Economy in 2007 and this kicked off the popularization if you like of customer journey or customer experiences as a discipline. Journey mapping came out of this I would say five or 10 years ago out of work of designers in particular (unclear 34:10) process and has become a pretty standard way to do things.
(34:14) So it’s there, it works, it could be improved and a different way to do it but it does work and it is there. So you have to give it what you have got unless you have got something much better. Over to you Esteban, have you got something more better?
Esteban:
(34:28) Yes, but you know, before we get there. Let me answer your question, how do you do you differentiate between business process re-engineering and customer journey mapping as a set of customer journey mapping as seen as the external processes that has been re-engineered as opposed to some internal one. Is that the same thing that we were doing 20 years ago?
Graham:
(34:50) So it can be. With some companies I’ve actually looked at how they do their journey map, they are effectively process maps. They are the internal management’s view of the experience of the customer’s journey, in particular the touch points that they themselves deliver outbound to customers. So in many ways they are little better than customer process diagrams, or rather process maps in that they don’t actually involve the customer at all.
(35:17) But yet, if you go to other organizations, service design engineers in particular, they will work with customers to map out what actually goes on. They look at what the jobs the customers are trying to do, they look at the interactions they use to get those jobs done. They look at the channels they use to get those jobs done and so forth. They look at how the customer feels, how they think, how they act and relate in result of doing those things, they will map up various measures and performance, whether that’s MPS, SeeSad, CES or whatever it may be. And then they will go down to the organisation and say, well actually what capabilities do we have. What do we need to deliver a better experience?
(35:54) So in some ways, in the worst case, a journey map is nothing better than a process map (and I would(n’t?) really recommend to do either of them?). And if you do it really really well it’s chalk and cheese.
Esteban:
(36:10) But then you know we know how well those journey maps and process maps worked 20 years ago or 25 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago. So then the question becomes what is different now, and then we go back to where we started this conversation. Which is, we have a different set of resources and capabilities that we didn’t have back then. We have access to like infinite technology to elastically scale to anything that we want. We have the ability to process in real time, information that before we couldn’t process like in a month long basis. So all the technology that we have, you know we have customers that are more willing to contribute themselves to be guinea pigs and to become part of like a new and tried processes, so there is a lot now that is different.
(36:53) So what I’m saying is like you know, to take the same model that we have before and tried to like you know, give it a new cutesy name and make it more complex doesn’t make it work. That’s the problem with customer journey mapping. But what you are saying is right and I agree with everything that you are saying in the sense of like you know getting a good stock of your capabilities and what they want and all that stuff. But then you use that to build that infrastructure that allows the customers to do whatever they want, versus building a specific journey experience and telling the customer, because we did this last week, were going to do the same this week, which is going to stop happening with customer journey mapping.
Michael:
(37:28) We’ve got like less than 10 minutes left, so what is the future…
Esteban:
(37:35) Hold on, let Graham answer that part it’s interesting.
Graham:
(37:37) I agree with you to a certain extent. So if companies use journey mapping like process mapping, then nothing really changes. But if you use journey mapping properly and if you involve the customer in a design and process, the (double down?) process as the design Council in the UK wouldn’t describe it, then you are much much closer to help customers want to do things rather than how the company wants to do things, recognizing that you need to achieve a balance between the two. The customer needs to get their jobs done faster, better, and cheaper. But the company needs to get their jobs done as well, faster, better, and cheaper. So you need to find a way to meet the two, which is why we come to the point of where we started at the beginning, customers can’t have everything unless they are willing to pay for them. And most customers aren’t willing to pay for everything. So you end up making choices, trade-offs in order to keep the company alive, and to provide enough value for customers, bearing in mind what they are expecting any way. That they stay, that they get their jobs done and they are reasonably satisfied, and ideally temporarily delighted.
(38:40) It’s a difficult choice that companies need to make and don’t have infinite resources, even although there is infinite capacity of AWS of what ever in may be, those choices that drive everyday business in most large and many small companies as well.
Esteban:
(38:53) Yeah, but then we go back to like we are doing things the same way we did before and were not realizing that we live in a different world with different people than we did before. Sure, it must have answered 20 years ago plus or minus evolution and maturity and all that stuff, but you know for the most part there is not such a thing as a generation gap and there is no millennial’s versus x-generation or Y or Z or whatever, there is people that just basically understand technology (39:21 unclear) by different types of people who understand digital in different ways. The bottom line is that we have experienced in the last 10 years have change the way we interact with companies, so throw companies into using the same things that didn’t work 10, 15, 20 years ago just because we have a little bit of a better understanding. That’s not going to benefit the customer or the company in my opinion.
Graham:
(39:44) Customers have the same job that has to be done that they have had many many years ago…
Esteban:
(39:48) No they don’t, It’s a very different one. The complexity in the world has changed and the information…
Graham:
(39:52) The jobs are the same. What’s changed are the expectations and the resources that we have available to do those jobs. So in the past I would have to cycles to see my friends when I was a lad living in Lincolnshire. Today, I can pick up the telephone or I can use WhatsApp what I can do other things as well. The same job, communication, different resources, different expectations. So the jobs have largely stayed the same, the expectation and the resources available to us have changed.
(40:19) So but companies have an evolutionary cycle. Companies don’t change overnight, large or small. We know that’s the case. Companies can’t prosper by serving everybody. They have to make their choice it, and that’s what all comes down to at the end of the day, whether it’s done by profit or loyalty or affinity or something else, companies have to make choices otherwise they quickly become unprofitable or unwieldy.
Esteban:
(40:42) But the difference is the choice gives us a false sense of control by you deciding on an experience, versus the choice of investing the same resources and investing in document and mapping of this journey and bringing the content and data to them. Then take those same resources and create an infrastructure that is so flexible and dynamic that allows the customer to do whatever they want to do. It costs the same, it takes the same. The resources are great great greatly different in the sense that they give the customer more control, and I’m sorry I know we keep interrupting the conversation and you guys want to say something.
Graham:
(41:15) But to change your complete system sitting underneath then you are well out of pocket, which is why change takes so long.
Esteban:
(41:24) That’s the thing the Infinity that the cloud provides in renting versus owning, the ability to make mistakes and start again in a very short time, we have shortened cycles from two years to 6 months….
Graham:
(41:39) … If you look at the capabilities and if you look at Britain at models that say Ashridge, or PA Consulting and others have been developing, you have a family of whole capabilities and technology is one part of that. Data is another part, and data is quite complicated to get hold of sometimes. But then there are processes, and then there are rules and responsibilities and that’s how we collaborate. And then there is the work climate and the organisation, and how we govern things. All of those things are related to each other, and you can’t just add lots of new technology. In fact, the explanation that I have always used and I’m sure you’ve heard it before is old organizations plus new technology equals expensive old organizations and you are describing having expensive…
Esteban:
(42:21) I totally agree with you, but here’s the thing. What we have changed is not only the technology that we have reduced business cycles that used to take years to nothing. Not only things in technology, but things like the ability to do things in a different way, different thinking, and different people that are involved in this.
(42:37) But I agree with you on all of this, and what I am saying is like you know, all of this if it hasn’t changed, and it’s already changed, and the reason we have boards and executive team is talking about digital transformation and the reason that Vala has a job actually, congratulations Vala.
(42:50) The reason Vala has a job is by being an evangelist for digital transformation is because we are at the point of where all of these things that you are talking about have evolved over the last 10 years, and we need a new model to make that happen. That’s the part I’m saying, and I’m not disagreeing with anything that you are saying. It’s expensive, it’s complicated, it’s lengthy. Is everything, but it needs to happen in a certain way and I’m sorry guys I’ll give you back the control.
Graham:
(43:11) You know, I totally agree with you. Things do need to change and we are moving into an always on environment where the customers are socially connected, their mobile. If you lose your wallet, you know that within an hour or so if you lose your telephone you know within 15 minutes. It is always with you, and it is always nearby and it’s always on society. But changing how organizations operate, they don’t even know how to operate. If you look in the October at Harvard business review, there is a brilliant article by Michael Porter and Heckleman, about how we organize, structurally how we organize to cope with the enormous changes being brought on board by the service of Internet of Things. We have no clue how to organize these things at the moment.
(43:58) Most organizations are organized for a model that would have been as fitting for Albert Chandler or Peter Drucken in the early 20th century we have no idea at the moment how to organize these things. Little (extrudinous?) things like holacracy are being tried by some organizations, and M-shaped corporations and what have you. These are all experiments, because it is very difficult to change a how organizations operate without causing such disruption were those organizations would be at risk of failure. So totally agree with you. We do need a new way of thinking and there is some great stuff coming around from B2B and all those sorts of models, but they take time to develop and we have to work out exactly what the capabilities we need to be able to operate those. We have to try and experiment and making those things work and a lot of things we can do on a Facebook page (unclear 44:46) for everybody else.
Esteban:
(44:48) I’m not disagreeing with you, but what I’m saying is like you know, like trying to make that happen versus expecting this that it will happen organically in some time, but without it I think it’s time to go back to Michael.
Vala:
(45:47) Well what do you think Michael?
Michael:
(45:15) I think it’s pretty interesting because as a co-host of a show, usually you and I are the ones who sort of guide things, and I certainly wouldn’t use the term control, because how can humble co-host like ourselves control our guests, just like how can humble brands possibly control what their customers do. And yet at the same time we’ve seen what happens when the controlling authority if you will totally get run over. There is a beauty in the chaos that arises I will admit. But yet at the same time the symmetry of Pythagoras and Plato is lost.
Esteban:
(46:26) Thank you very much for 132 episode of CXOTalk.
Vala:
(46:32) Well I hope Michael we get Paris question one the next time we have Graham and Esteban on the show. I thoroughly enjoyed it and hopefully we will cover journey mapping on our next time we get together. My one second own journey mapping is if you have audience, personalization, content, channel and your fifth layer is journey mapping, unless you have that hierarchy journey mapping doesn’t work. But it is a very powerful tool for precision and precision needs to stay relevant, but we will leave that for an episode in the future to discuss.
Michael:
(47:10) Yeah, I’m afraid the term relevance, because of we start discussing relevance now and we bring in the notion of context and the notion of data that can be collected through sensors and through digital interactions that now can feed into the customer interaction. Suddenly, from that single point we have another hour long debate.
Vala:
(47:35) Relevance is the new currency, and unless you leverage technology, processes, complete culture, talent management and all of that you lose relevance. The average age of a company on the SNP 500 now is 10 years. It used to be seven 50 years ago.
Esteban:
(47:49) That is a wonderful soundbite that I would love to take on but I don’t think we have time.
Michael:
(47:54) And of course I’ve heard that trust is the new currency, so is it trust that the new currency or relevance that’s the new currency.
Vala:
(48:01) Can you be relevant if you don’t have trust.
Michael:
And brands are so dangerous to new currency, data is new currency.
Esteban:
(40:06) My God, this is too much.
Vala:
(48:17) Can we have a show on Esteban’s date journey mapping.
Esteban:
First date, in and out done.
Graham:
We need videos for that one though.
Esteban:
No there’s no videos dude.
Vala:
(48:29) Michael back to you.
Michael:
(48:30) Okay, well I guess it’s about that time. Esteban Kolsky and Graham Hill, gentlemen please take a bow.
Graham:
(48:43) Thank you very much.
Esteban:
(48:45) Thank you very much, Graham thanks so much I appreciate it.
Graham:
(48:47) And to you Esteban
Michael:
(48:49) And we’ve learned a lot about customer experience and journey mapping. Alright, it’s been episode number 132. Thank you everybody for watching. Vala I hope you have a good week ahead of you.
Vala:
(49:06) Thank you, you as well.
Michael:
Okay, bye bye everybody.
Esteban:
I’m sorry, Vala, you ain’t going to make it dude trust me. Have fun.
Companies mentioned on today’s show:
Amazon: www.amazon.com
British Airways: www.ba.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com
Gartner: www.gartner.com
Google: www.google.com
NTT: www.ntt.com
O2: www.o2.com.uk
Oracle: www.oracle.com
Telstra: www.telstra.com.au
Uber: www.uber.com
Three www.three.co.uk
Netflix www.netflix.com
AirBnB www.airbnb.com