This was in response to @marihuertas, who also thinks there’s no such thing as social media experts.
Recently I fell into the categorization trap…
We are doing some branding work for a publicist. Specifically coming up with an identity that’s uniquer to her. When doing this type of work, an anything for that matter, you start off asking the client about them. You want to find out what makes them unique, sometimes this is easy but most of the time this is hard. Ultimately you want this process to result in creating an identity that the client will get excited about but also people will remember and love.
But sometimes you let old habits take control. You let the client direct what they ‘supposedly’ want. It’s a balancing act letting the client ‘direct’ and then proposing alternatives. We fell into the trap of letting the client direct and not get any traction because our client is ‘not sure’ of what she wants. Our client can tell us she wants X, Y and Z; we have to transform this into a look and feel.
We were frustrated because we haven’t hit the nail.
It then occurred to me that we might be trying to do this taking a practical approach, and as result we’re not getting excited about this process. We are not directing the scene but getting directed. And as a result our enthusiasm is sapped.
I had to remind ourselves that there are two types of work: the visionary and audacious and the practical and predictable. The first leads you to inspire others to adopt a vision. It’s all about excitement. The other leads to ‘me-too-ism’, predictability.
It’s that simple.
Defy categorization
Practical steps come into play when we want to fit into a category, in our case our client is a publicist. We take steps that worked for us before or that worked for someone else. And when letting our client direct the scene, she’s going to follow what’s in her head about what a publicist looks and sounds like because that’s the way she sees the world.
Our job is to short circuit this and propose alternatives. To stretch their minds. Our job is to excite and inspire as much as it is about executing.
After exchanging emails with my team for about half an hour, I continued pondering our mistake. I quickly glanced at Tweetdeck and saw this tweet by @lindegaard (which brought a smile to my face):…
Apple is once again telling the world that it’s a User Experience company that just so happens to make consumer electronic products. Apple is reportedly working on a way to sync iPods with iTunes wirelessly. It’s just another step in Apple’s steady march toward making wires and cords a thing of the past.
A few days ago I was making room behind my desk for the laptop, external HDD and speaker wires. As I was rearranging I started pondering how long it would take until we live in a world without wires and who would take us there.
My first thought was Apple.
What I find interesting, is that if any other ‘consumer electronics company’ would set out to eliminate wires, it probably would not be a big deal. You kind of get the idea that if Microsoft would be the first to remove wires from our lives, that they would screw it up in some way. Therefore eliminating our excitement for the ‘new experience’.
Because we know Steve Jobs to be a perfectionist, we know and trust that Apple will deliver the goods. The new experience.
And we actually want Apple to be the one to do it. Not Microsoft. Not HP. Not Dell.
Apple.
Why?
Because their reputation precedes them in the area of creating great consumer products that are as much about the experience we have as what we use them for. It is this reputation that sets them apart. It is now hardwired onto our brains that Apple creates the best consumer electronics products period.
Heck, some of us are starting to wish they should start making cars just for fun.
User experience is all about removing obstacles. Eliminating extra steps that don’t add any value. Apple is a user experience champion. They own it.
They’ve become the ‘most’ at delighting and exciting us with their products. This is key.
You can’t be “pretty good” at everything anymore. You have to be the most of something: the most affordable, the most accessible, the most elegant, the most colorful, the most transparent. Companies used to be comfortable in the middle of the road — that’s where all the customers were. Today, the middle of the road is the road to ruin. What are you the most of?
With that said, we would all do well and learn from Apple and begin thinking about what we want to be known for. Because if we get to such a place, this is where Greatness is forged.
I have a client who has (so far) the only SaaS payroll management solution for small businesses in Mexico. This is both great and bad. Let me explain…
In our initial meeting I was told they used Workday as an example to follow. Their reasoning was that Workday has a very simple to use and intuitive interface, plus they are the ‘leaders’ in the field. The studied them rigorously and brought the same principles over to their solution.
This hasn’t worked as planned.
Workday has and used a distinct set of capabilities that my client doesn’t have (development experience in new technologies for one). Plus the customer is also different. And Workday’s cluster of capabilities go beyond simple copy and paste design, look and feel.
These cluster of capabilities have to solve the customers problem, make his life easier. Ultimately that’s what matters.…
Apple is on everybody’s minds these days. Yesterday, along with my partner and new team member (@dario_rivera), I was talking to a client about a few observations we had about some processes in their restaurant operation and how we think they are creating bottlenecks.
Our conversation ended up being about how there seems to be a race towards simplicity. It seems us humans are hardwired to keep on adding stuff and quite scared of eliminating.
But when everyone competes on ‘out-featuring’ (adding) the other guy, your best bet is to do the opposite and subtract (reduce/eliminate) features. It’s not that simplicity is the new normal, it always is.…
One of the problems of measuring an organizations innovativeness is R&D spending. If you ask people: Who’s more innovative between Apple and Microsoft? They’ll say Apple. Yet if we measure them based on patents and R&D spending, most people don’t know what they’re talking about. Microsoft blows Apple out of the water on R&D.
Yet, the reality is that Apple is more innovative than Microsoft.
You can spend all you want on innovation, but you can’t guarantee success. In fact, the most innovative companies are not necessarily the biggest spenders, according to Booz & Company’s recent global innovation study. What matters instead? The ability to build the right innovation capabilities to connect with the overall business strategy and other critical capabilities.
But what the heck does that mean?
These lists make for good conversation, but they also prove to be worthless if not approached with objectivity. Why?
We tend to fixate on whoever is #1, in business as with sports, tacitly assuming that the contest is mostly skill and therefore the tournament has selected the rightful leader. But I’m not so sure we know that skill/luck proportion. I’m not so sure we can assume the contest (marketing, sales, product) and tournament (the marketplace) picks #1 based on repeatable, codify-able skill-set. Same with #2 or anyone else.
That number #1 is dictated by a system, a market, not people. On top of that, if you give people a list of the most innovative companies; they’ll want to emulate #1. It’s that simple. We’re suckers for it.…
Recently I was in Mexico to have lunch with a friend. I went to pick him up from from a meeting but had to wait a few minutes outside of his offices. As I was waiting for him I parked in front of a pharmacy and it dawned on me that in this particular area there where five pharmacies in about a half mile radius. These pharmacies all looked alike, they were not from the same brand and the only distinction was the color of their walls. I have no doubt they operate the same way. It got me thinking about how I could differentiate one from the others…
Experience innovation is a difference maker
Innovating an experience improves or reinvents the customer experience in the purchase or usage of a product or service. Companies such as Disney stand out as a prime example of what it means to innovate a customer experience. Apple is right there too with their Apple store. The reason both stand out is because they’ve created an alternate reality, says Scott Gould.
Another great example of a company that stands out is Umpqua. We all know what a traditional bank looks like, well Umpqua does the opposite:
Umpqua’s 15-year track record of growth has little to do with the products it markets, which are virtually identical to the products offered by other banks. What’s distinctive about Umpqua has to do with how it offers those products — its commitment to reimagining the experience of interacting with a bank. Davis puts is this way: “If you took a person, blindfolded them, sent them to a bank, and took the blindfold off, 99% percent of them would say, ‘I’m in some bank somewhere.’ We want our customers to say, ‘I’m in an Umpqua bank.’ We don’t want the experience of banking here to feel like banking anywhere else.”
That’s why Umpqua designs its branches to appeal to all five human senses.
What Umpqua understands it that to be and stay relevant, you have to be different in every sense of the word. Not just ‘be different’ as marketing ploy, but ‘do different’ and make a difference. In the video below, Fast Company Co-founder, Bill Taylor starts talking about Umpqua around the 9 minute mark to help clarify my point (watch the whole talk, it’s worth it):
See what I mean?
What Not to be
Slice Perfect is another fine example. They’re not your typical pizza place. Just like Umpqua they started by asking ‘what not to be’. The result is a different kind of pizza place that goes deeper than just looks. When searching for a sustainable competitive advantage, experiences are the hardest to copy. No experience is the same. How many have tried to copy Disney and failed? Starbucks?
The Killer App of Trust
Trust is an often overlooked competitive advantage. The Ritz Carlton knows this very well and have been creating trust with it customers for a long long time. They understand than innovation is human behavior delivers sustainable competitive advantage. This means that that by creating a level of trust between a companies employees and it’s customers, authentic value in the form of better service can be delivered. That’s not manufactured value, it’s real authentic. Zappos also understands that by empowering employees to develop their own customer relationship breakthroughs it makes the customer experience more authentic. The result is more trust with customers.
Experience innovation is also difficult to accomplish. Jeffrey Phillips of OVO Innovation says:
Customer experience innovation requires understanding what customers value in the “touch points” and interactions with your products, services and your firm, and placing the right investments on the most important and valuable touch points. Customer experience needs to consider each “channel” a customer may use to interact with your firm: retail locations, telephone, web, email, direct mail, advertising, etc. The total customer experience cuts across a number of vertical silos within many organizations, including sales, marketing, products and customer support and service.
Authenticity is the result of human innovation
If you’re familiar with the Experience Economy, then all of the above is nothing new. But if you’re not, in the video below Joseph Pine talks about how customers really want an authentic experience:
So how do you start thinking about innovating your own experience?
Remember the What Works Matrix? Here’s the time to use it. I’ve already given you some examples of companies that have distinct customer experiences, you can pick them apart for ideas. You can then use the ‘What Works’ Matrix to cherry pick your way to a solution.
@Futurescape wrote a great presentation of the 4 practical steps he took to create the Ayurvedic MediSpa Experience. You can use the customer experience cycle map to look at where a ‘shake up’ might come useful to deliver a better experience to the customer. Once you identify those critical touch points you have your challenge that needs to be addressed, it’s time to go to the What Works Matrix and start searching for alternatives that you can the bring over and implement yourself.
Though going through these steps will not result in instant results, it’s an exercise in opening your mind on how your customers experience you. Once your mind is open you’ll be a lot more concerned about your customer experience and start thinking up ideas in no time.
Remember: Empathy drives experience innovation
Break out of orbit!
Disney, Apple, Ritz Carlton, Starbucks all provide a distinct experience when compared with the ‘old way’ of doing things. If you sell commodities (like Starbucks) you can change how your customers purchase or use your products or services to create a distinct customer experience.
The point is to understand this. Ask yourself: What don’t you want to be? Do you want to be like your competitors?
When no one knows what’s going to happen we’ll naturally look at other people for clues on how to behave. This is the basis of imitation, and it’s a survival tactic. Simply said, in an environment where the world is changing, the best strategy is lots of imitation. The problem with this is we’re rarely aware of how ‘much imitation’ is necessary and outright imitation is stupid plain and simple. It’s a balancing act to decide what to copy and what not.
Practice ‘Smart Stealing’
The best strategy is to ‘steal’ from different sources, ideally ‘the best’ sources outside your industry.
