The Customer Experience Journey To Oz June 28, 2009
Posted by Bruce Temkin in Customer experience, Forrester's Customer Experience Forum, Managing in a recession.Tags: The Wizard Of Oz
trackback
My opening keynote speech at Forrester’s Customer Experience Forum was titled “Charting Your Customer Experience Journey Through Tough Times.” I made a lot of references to Dorothy’s journey in The Wizard Of Oz.
Dorothy had to overcome a lot of obstacles (flying monkeys, cranky witches, etc.). It turns out that the key ingredients to her success are also the key ingredients for a company’s customer experience efforts in these tough economic times:
- Heart (Tin Man): These economic times are unsettling for customers and employees. So companies need to raise the bar on their empathy to cater to the changing needs of customers and to build engagement with employees.
- Brains (Scarecrow): It’s easy to make sweeping across the board cuts to respond to a tough economy. But companies need to think more deeply about their business to distinguish what’s really important (and shouldn’t be cut) from those things that are not important (and can be cut).
- Courage (Lion): While the natural tendency is to get into a defensive mode during a recession, companies need to prepare for the future and strengthen their business. I referenced this quote from John F. Kennedy:
The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity.
There’s some debate as to the accuracy of JFK’s interpretation of the Chinese characters, but the sentiment is absolutely correct!
I ended my presentation with a rewritten version of the song “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.” Here are the lyrics:
Click here to download the song (.wav, 13.5MB)
There was a lot more in my speech, like the Yellow Brick Road of customer experience maturity. So I’ll be writing more about my comments and other parts of the forum over the next week. Stay tuned!
The bottom line: Don’t wait for a wizard to improve your customer experience
[...] http://experiencematters.wordpress.com/2009/06/28/the-customer-experience-journey-to-oz [...]
Bruce: would appreciate your comments on our blog “corporate fortitude”. We use many references to OZ. Great myth and parallels for business. Mary Witte http://www.accelerateroi.com
Mary: I couldn’t find your blog… so my only comment is to make it more apparent on your Website.
Bruce,
Sorry for the long delay – I hadn’t realized until now that you responded. Try http://corporatefortitude.com
Thanks
The linked ppt file has no embedded audio (the icon links to a wav file located on Your C:/Documents and settings/…)
By the lyrics it has to be so good. Where can it be listened?
Hi Zoltan: Thanks for catching this. The sound worked on my PC, but I guess not on others. I actually bought an upgrade on WordPress, so you should be able to download the song now. It’s a big file (13.5 MB), so it might take some time to download.
Tnx for the qucik answer and fix.
[...] Customer Experience Forum. Tags: Wizard Of Oz trackback I’ve written about how my opening keynote speech at Forrester’s Customer Experience Forum was based on Dorothy’s journey in The Wizard Of Oz. Given the story that I was telling, I [...]
[...] written about how my opening keynote speech at Forrester’s Customer Experience Forum was based on Dorothy’s journey in The Wizard Of Oz. Given the story that I was telling, I [...]