CX Competency: Purposeful Leadership (Video)

Temkin Group has found that the only path to sustainable customer experience differentiation is to build a customer-centric culture. How? By mastering Four Customer Experience Core Competencies.

This video provides an overview of one of those competencies, Purposeful Leadership, where the goal is for leaders to act consistently with a clear, well-articulated set of values.

Here are the Five P’s of Purposeful Leaders:

An Inspiring Mission Is An Employee Magnet

If you want to recruit the best employees, make sure that your organization has an inspiring mission.

Temkin Group recently surveyed 10,000 U.S. consumers about their preferences for a new job. Respondents chose one of these three attributes: the company’s mission, pay level, or new boss.

An inspiring mission was the most popular option–and it wasn’t even close. Here’s what people selected:

• Inspiring mission: 54.4%
• Above average pay: 26.9%
• Great boss: 18.8%

We also examined the responses across age groups. As you can see below:

• Mission is the most important attribute for every age group
• 65- to 74-year-olds is the group that cares the most about the mission
• 25- to 34-year-olds is the group that cares the most about their pay
• 25- to 44-year-olds is the group that cares the most about their boss

Why does Temkin Group care about this? Because attracting the best employees is one of the first steps in building employee engagement, which is one of our Four Customer Experience Core Competencies. Also, as we celebrate The Year of Purpose, we will continue to highlight the importance of meaning for both people and organizations.

The bottom line: Make your mission more inspiring.

Podcast: Purposeful Leadership With Tom Feeney, Safelite CEO

As part of Temkin Group’s celebration of 2017 as The Year of Purpose, I interviewed Tom Feeney, President & CEO of Safelite Group.

Temkin Group defines purposeful leadership as operating consistently with a clear, well-articulated set of values. That also describes Tom. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Tom for many years, and believe that he is a great example of a purposeful leader.

While Safelite is by far the largest auto glass repair and replacement company in the U.S., the podcast does not focus on the company’s strong financial growth. Instead, Tom and I discuss Safelite’s purpose statement: Making a difference by bringing unexpected happiness to people’s everyday lives. Enjoy the podcast!

You can also download the podcast

Tom Feeney’s Bio:
Since joining Safelite Group in 1988, Tom Feeney has held several positions within the organization including senior vice president retail operations. In October 1991, Feeney was promoted to senior vice president, client sales and support and again in 2003 as executive vice president and chief client officer with responsibility for Safelite Solutions. Feeney became president and CEO of Safelite Group in 2008 and introduced a new vision for Safelite supported by two core principles: “People Powered, Customer Driven.”

Free Customer Experience Training For Non-Profit Organizations

I’m really excited to announce that Temkin Group has launched its Non Profit Scholarship Program (NPSP).

During 2017, the company will provide free enrollment to its U.S. workshops for up to 20 employees of non-profit institutions. The NPSP will enable these employees to gain access to customer experience training that their organizations may not have been able to afford.

Temkin Group recently labeled 2017, “The Year of Purpose.” As part of the company’s commitment to elevating purpose, it launched the NPSP to help non-profit institutions better deliver on their missions. By providing access to its world-class customer experience workshops, Temkin Group hopes to provide employees in non-profit organizations with the skills and knowledge to deliver better experiences to their constituents, whether they’re customers, members, patients, visitors, students, or donors.

Any employee of a 501(c) organization with an operating budget of at least $10 million can apply for the NPSP at TemkinGroup.com/scholarship. Temkin Group will chose winners of the scholarships based on its assessment of the value that the workshops will have on the applicants and their organizations.

NPSP winners will be provided free tuition ($1,895 value) to attend any of Temkin Group’s public enrollment workshops in the U.S. throughout 2017. Here is the current schedule for workshops during the remainder of the year.

• June 14 & 15, 2017 in Boston: Mapping and Improving Your Customers’ Journey. This workshop provides attendees with the insights and tools to use customer journey mapping, an important customer experience capability.
• August 16 & 17, 2017 in Boston: Driving Customer Experience Transformation. This workshop provides attendees with the knowledge and skills to become change agents and drive their organizations to be more customer-centric.
• October 24 & 25, 2017 in Boston: Mapping and Improving Your Customers’ Journey. This workshop provides attendees with the insights and tools to use customer journey mapping, an important customer experience capability.
• December 4 & 5, 2017 in San Diego: Driving Customer Experience Transformation.This workshop provides attendees with the knowledge and skills to become change agents and drive their organizations to be more customer-centric.

For more information about the NPSP or to apply for a scholarship, visit TemkinGroup.com/scholarship.

2017 Customer Experience Trends (Video and Infographic)

We recently published our annual listing of CX trends. In case that wasn’t enough to satiate your needs, here’s a recorded webinar and an infographic describing the trends…

 

Click on figure above to download infographic as a .png file, or click here to download it as a .pdf.

The Power of Purpose (Temkin Group Video)

As you may know, Temkin Group has labelled 2017, “The Year of Purpose.” As part of our effort to infuse more meaning and purpose to our community, we created the Elevate Purpose campaign, where we will share relevant thoughts and research.

A new piece of content is this video, The Power of Purpose. I hope that you enjoy it…

I hope that you enjoy this video and find it inspiring. If so, I invite you to join Temkin Group in making 2017 “The Year of Purpose.” To find out more, visit ElevatePurpose.com.

Celebrating MLK Day in the Year of Purpose

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

In this Year of Purpose, it seems more appropriate than ever to celebrate MLK Day. When Temkin Group evaluates purposeful leaders, we look for someone who operates consistently with a clear, well-articulated set of values. MLK was one of the most purposeful leaders in the history of the U.S.

On this MLK day, I hope that you elevate purpose in your life. If you want to see what purpose looks like, here’s an excerpt from MLK’s “I Have A Dream” speech:

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exhalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

The bottom line: Follow MLK’s lead and elevate purpose in 2017.

 

2017 Customer Experience Trends, “The Year of Purpose”

It’s once again the time of year when I publish Temkin Group’s CX trends. In my post last year, we named 2016 “The Year of Emotion.” With my previous post, we declared 2017 “The Year of Purpose.”

During this year, companies will be:

1. Elevating Purpose. Over the past year, we’ve seen more articles discussing purpose, and leaders are beginning to recognize the role that it plays in motivating employees. At the same time, we believe that the uncertainty around the world creates an increasing desire for people to find purpose and meaning in their lives. For these reasons, we’re calling 2017 “The Year of Purpose.” In 2017, we expect to see more leaders sharpening and sharing their organization’s purpose.
2. Operationalizing Emotion. After our push to Intensify Emotion in 2016, I’m happy to say that the needle is moving! As we anticipated, many companies started to recognize the importance of emotion, with the help of many vendors who are working to demystify this key area. In 2017, we expect to see even more organizations focus on customer emotion and start to embed these efforts in their ongoing operations.
3. Orienting Around Customer Journeys. Customer journey mapping continues to grow in popularity as companies recognize the need to develop a more customer-oriented viewpoint. That’s why we see so much demand for our customer journey mapping workshops. However, this tool only affects a small portion of an organization. To help companies embed thinking about customer journeys into day-to-day decisions across the entire organization, we created Customer Journey Thinking©. In 2017, we expect more companies to realign their metrics, analytics, experience design, and innovation around customer journeys.
4. Continuing… Mobile, Mobile, Mobile. Mobile continues to become an increasingly dominant interaction channel… and now can be accessed through increasingly varied types of devices (including those described as “Internet of Things”). In 2017, we expect more companies to shift to a mobile first strategy and to design customer offerings with the assumption that the primary interface may be a remote digital device.
5. Embracing Employee Engagement. Employee engagement (EE) has been one of Temkin Group’s Four CX Core Competencies for more than six years. While EE has always been critical to how we view customer experience, companies are finally starting to recognize that it’s a limiting factor to their CX efforts. In 2017, we expect to see a jump in EE activities and we hope to see CX and human resources groups finally coming together to work on engaging employees.
6. Federating Customer Experience. We’ve seen many companies make great strides in their CX efforts by using strong centralized teams. However, as these efforts mature, companies often find that they need to distribute CX efforts across their organizations. In 2017, we expect many companies to shift to a federated CX model by developing CX Centers of Excellence, Enterprise CX Coordination, and Distributed CX Skills and Mindset.
7. Predicting Through Behaviors. With the rise of digital and mobile interactions, companies have more data on what their customers are doing. This behavioral data can both provide rich insights into what drives customers and fuel strong predictive models. In 2017, we expect more companies to start collecting behavioral data and then using it to predict customer attitudes and future activities.
8. Tapping Into Speech Recognition. Text analytics tools have become mature enough that they are now frequently a staple in customer insights toolkits. As these tools mature, companies are setting their sites on the next vein of unstructured data – customer calls. At the same time, we see a rise of voice interfaces, from Comcast’s XFINITY remote control to Amazon’s Echo. In 2017, we expect more companies to increase their use of speech recognition for insights and interfaces.
9. Smartening Self-Service. Our research shows that people prefer to handle of lot of their interactions using self-service. While companies have been enabling these capabilities for years, technology is getting better for anticipating and customizing these interactions. In 2017, we expect more companies to incorporate technologies such as virtual agents and interactive guides to enable even smarter self-service.

The bottom line: Please join us in Elevating Purpose in 2017!

Welcome to 2017, The Year of Purpose

Dear Readers:

Every year, Temkin Group highlights one theme that we think will be particularly important for companies in the coming year. In 2016 we focused on Emotion, in 2015 we focused on Employees, and in 2014 we focused on Empathy. And now, in 2017, we are focusing on … Purpose.

Why “purpose,” you might ask? At Temkin Group, we have always been passionate about what drives and motivates human beings – regardless of whether they are leaders, employees, or customers. So we have been paying close attention to recent findings from fields like positive psychology that show that purpose and meaning are essential ingredients to our well-being.

As John F. Kennedy once so aptly said:

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

Purpose is powerful. It provides a context around all that we do, which alters our feelings, beliefs, and actions. A strong sense of purpose can:

• Inspire us to find joy in our lives
• Energize us with a sense of hope
• Propel us to overcome obstacles
• Uplift us to feel good about ourselves
• Connect us with others around a shared goal

The business world is finally starting to appreciate the importance of purpose in driving human behavior and aiding decision-making. Over the past year, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of articles discussing purpose. We’ve also observed more leaders recognizing the role that purpose plays in motivating employees and customers, and we see leaders beginning to explicitly connect the purpose of their organization to the purpose of their people.

However, when we at Temkin Group discuss purpose, we are focused not only on how a person interacts with a company, but also on what provides meaning in that person’s daily life. Now more than ever, we believe that feelings of uncertainty around the world are prompting each of us to look for more purpose and meaning in our own lives.

That’s why Temkin Group will spend 2017 Elevating Purpose. Much of our research focuses on helping organizations master four CX core competencies. As you can see in the figure below, purpose is an important component across all four elements: Purposeful Leadership, Compelling Brand Values, Employee Engagement, and Customer Connectedness.

This year, Temkin Group will be dedicating some of our research to this topic, leading to new reports, infographics, videos, and other content, which you will be able to see on our new Elevate Purpose page. Our goal is to help you embrace the power of purpose and tap into this power with your employees and customers. More importantly, we hope that our focus on purpose will bring increased meaning to your life as well.

Please join me in pledging to make 2017 The Year of Purpose!

Warm regards,

Bruce

Infusing Humanity Into CX, Discussion With Barry Schwartz

It’s CX Day in New Zealand, so that’s reason enough to kick off Temkin Group’s CX Day celebration. I can’t think of a better way to start CX Day in The Year of Emotion, then to share my Q&A with Barry Schwartz.

During this one hour video focused on Infusing Humanity into CX, we discuss some of Barry’s key findings about people and happiness, and explore what it means for customers, employees, and leaders. Sit back and enjoy the discussion, and then follow the links below for more information.

In case you don’t know Barry (and you should!), he’s the Emeritus professor of psychology at Swarthmore College, and has spent forty years thinking and writing about the interaction between economics and morality. 

This Q&A was a real pleasure for me, because Barry has heavily influenced my thinking over the years. He’s one of the key thought leaders of our time, and I believe that all CX professionals (and all leaders) can learn from him.

Here’s some of Barry’s work that we discuss:

• Paradigm of Choice. More choice can creates decision anxiety and buyer’s remorse. This key concept helps frame customer experience from an emotional (not logical) point of view. See his excellent Ted Talk and the book, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.
• Practical Wisdom. I love this quote from Barry’s fantastic Ted Talk “Wise practitioners are like jazz musicians, able to improvise when the situation demands it. They are able to take the perspective of the people they service, and to balance the empathy of care and concern with a detachment that permits clear thinking.” It moved me so much that I wrote a post about the talk, and even researched how many U.S. workers have practical wisdom (30%). Here’s a link to the book Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing.
• Why We Work. This is Barry’s latest book, which I think is captured well in this quote “Work is structured on the assumption that we do it only because we have to… I think that this cynical and pessimistic approach to work is entirely backward. It is making us dissatisfied with our jobs — and it is also making us worse at them.” And, of course there’s a great Ted Talk.
• …And here’s a link to Barry’s appearance on the Colbert Report that I mention.

Here’s some of our research that we discuss:

• My blog post showing that compensation does not cause employee turnover.
• The Four CX Core Competencies, where we discussed employee engagement and purposeful leadership. Customer connectedness was an implicit part of our discussion throughout the conversation.
• You can see a lot of Barry’s views on work embedded within my current push for Modernize Leadership: Shifting 8 Outdated Management Practices.

The bottom line: Thank you Barry Schwartz!

Three Ideas to Re-Humanize Patient Experience

I was recently interviewed for an article that discusses a post where Fox News journalist John Stossel describes his experience as a lung cancer patient at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

First of all, I hope that Stossel’s treatment is successful. And although I don’t fully agree with his analysis of the industry, I do agree with his observation “…I have to say, the hospital’s customer service stinks.” Yes, there is a problem with patient experience.

I’m reminded of this picture from a post that I wrote in 2009, which comes from Cleveland Clinic’s 2008 Annual Report.

With all of the focus on costs and liabilities, the medical system has forgotten about the soul of the patient. It’s become dehumanized.

The wellbeing of a patient often takes a back seat to rigid processes and procedures, and there’s little understanding of how to help patients make increasingly important financial/medical trade-offs. It’s not that doctors, nurses, and hospital staffs don’t care. It’s just that the entire system has conspired to de-emphasize humanity.

This problem is not unique to healthcare. In research that we did in 2013, we found that only 30% of employees have what Aristotle called “practical wisdom,” the combination of moral will and moral skill. This is the capability that Barry Schwartz explains is critical for infusing humanity within organizations.

While there are many structural issues in U.S. healthcare (which I won’t go into here), there are still many things that can be done to re-humanize the patient experience. Here are some ideas:

• Apply better experience design. Health care leaders should learn and apply the the principles of People-Centric Experience Design: align with purpose, guide with empathy, and design for memories.
• Develop a value mindset. As patients take on more of the direct financial burden for healthcare, doctors must do more than recommend treatments and procedures. They must help patients understand the value of those activities, so that they can make smart financial/medical trade-offs.
• Build decision-support technology. Patients should be able to understand the efficacy and full costs of the treatments and procedures that they are being asked to “purchase.” Health plans need to take the lead in providing tools for making this information transparent, and empowering patients to make better decisions.

The bottom line: It’s time to re-humanize healthcare

 

Modernize Leadership: Steve Jobs Demonstrates Purpose and Values

In a recent post, I discussed how management practices have become outdated and that there’s a strong need to Modernize Leadership. This change requires eight distinct shifts in how we lead organizations.

I just ran into this great video of a speech that Steve Jobs gave in September 1997. It’s really worth watching. Jobs demonstrates a few of the elements that I discuss in Modernize Leadership, and in particular he does a great job of highlighting this necessary shift:

5) Goals and Objectives to Purpose and Values

The bottom line: Tap into your purpose and values to drive simplicity

Modernize Leadership: Shifting 8 Outdated Management Practices

Over the previous decade, I’ve had the opportunity to work with and study thousands of companies. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that the world has changed a lot, but organizational management has stayed substantially the same.

Technology has enabled entirely new practices and we’ve developed a much deeper understanding of what drives human behaviors and business success. But these new realities have not been translated into how leaders run their companies. Instead, management techniques continue to reflect outdated assumptions such as:

• Mainstream economics works on the assumption of Homo Economicus, a model of people as rational self-interest maximizers. So “agency theory” informs management that employees can’t be trusted to act on behalf of the firm and, therefore, controls must be put in place to align their efforts.
• Strategic planning cycles (annually, quarterly) have been established based on a constraint of limited data availability. When these processes and cycles were initially created, it was impractical to more frequently pull together meaningful insights about the business.
• Management focus has been driven by economists like Milton Friedman who argued that corporate officials have one core responsibility: making as much money as possible for their shareholders. But the value that a company creates comes from a combination of resources contributed by different constituencies (not just investors) who’s returns should also be maximized, especially employees who contribute their knowledge and skills.

While these underlying assumptions aren’t necessarily discussed explicitly, they frame the basic structure of today’s approach to management. Well, it’s time to Modernize Leadership. We need to redefine how we run organizations based on the realities of today, which will require more inspiring leaders in the future.

To help make the shift, I plan to write individual posts that describe eight key shifts required to modernize leadership. In those posts I’ll describe the move from:

1. Command and Control to Engage and Empower
2. Strategize and Plan to Learn and Adjust
3. Amass and Review to Detect and Disseminate
4. Measure and Track to Observe and Improve
5. Goals and Objectives to Purpose and Values
6. Problems and Solutions to Strengths and Appreciation
7. Process and Projects to Culture and Behaviors
8. Price and Features to Experience and Emotions

The bottom line: Let’s Modernize Leadership together!

Report: Lessons in CX Excellence, 2016

We just published a Temkin Group report, Lessons in CX Excellence, 2016. The report provides insights from eight finalists in the Temkin Group’s 2015 CX Excellence Awards. The report, which is 100 pages long, includes an appendix with the finalists’ nomination forms. This report has rich insights about both B2B and B2C customer experience.

Here’s the executive summary:

This year, we chose eight organizations as finalists for Temkin Group’s 2015 Customer Experience Excellence Award. The finalists for 2015 are EMC Global Services, Hagerty, InMoment, Safelite AutoGlass, SunPower, The Results Companies, Verint, and Wheaton | Bekins. This report provides specific examples describing how these companies’ CX efforts have created value for both their customers and for their businesses. We also highlight best practices across the four customer experience competencies—purposeful leadership, compelling brand values, employee engagement, and customer connectedness. We have included all of the finalists’ detailed nomination forms at the end of this report to help you compile examples and ideas to apply to your own CX efforts.

Download report for $195

Here are some highlights from the finalists:

Still A Lot To Learn From Martin Luther King Jr.

Whether or not you celebrate MLK Day (it’s a Temkin Group holiday), today is a great opportunity to reflect on some of Martin Luther King Jr.’s inspiring messages. I find that his words of change, personal accountability, and love hold true across many settings, including how we run our organizations.

This year, I’ve decided to highlight (without any additional commentary) one of his quotes that fits well in The Year of Emotion:

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.

Here’s what I’ve written about MLK in the past:

Last year, I shared four of his quotes that I find to be particularly meaningful:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

The time is always right to do what is right.

In 2014, I shared some of his quotes that discuss empathy with a connection to our four customer experience core competencies and added a question to think about after each quote:

• Purposeful Leadership: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” How willing are your leaders to trade-off short-term results for longer gains in customer experience and loyalty?
• Compelling Brand Values: “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.” Is your brand clear, strong and well understood enough by employees so that it empowers them to do the right thing, even if it means breaking some rules.
• Employee Engagement: “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” Are you focused enough on making sure that employees understand and are committed to the goals and direction of your organization?
• Customer Connectedness: “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.” Are you treating important customers well enough so that they are more than just satisfied, and become raving fans?

In 2013, I honored the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech from August 28, 1963, by sharing a word cloud from the speech.

The bottom line: We can all learn from MLK.