The optimism of #Purpose & science of #design in forging #digital customer experiences! Opinions my own!

To experience is to feel, innately human. While Customer experience (CX) has had the limelight for years, it’s only quite recently that we’ve valued it’s ‘store of value’ – now in my opinion, another reboot with the low-touch epoch and rise of cryptocurrency. Again, my personal opinion – as a practitioner/student for decades – we’ve all seen our far share of the different facets – the evolution – of Experience Management (XM). To be more holistic and inclusive I believe ~CX + EX = XM. Oh, EX = Employee Experience and the other part of the largely XM binary system; the ‘neglected’ part – kinda like the CDOs & default swaps of the early 2000s – we’ve swept it under the carpet for too long. That is, until the pandemic hit, and everything started to unravel..

I’d argue between CX and EX we have 80 maybe even 90% of the bulk/mass gravitational pull. But, there’s argument for ‘smaller’ masses of X – think of them like smaller planets on the outer reaches of the solar system – including Product, Brand experiences etc but we shall keep it simple for now.

We all know that CX hit prime time a few years (just shy of a decade) and has been a priority for businesses B2B and consumers B2C alike for some years now – but the idea that Experiences (distilled from constituent atomic parts transactions and interactions ) is a store of value (see the new #DeFi, crypto and mycelial network thinking now?) dates back to the start of this millennium when James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II coined the term “The Experience Economy,” see here. In the experience economy, experience is the repository of value — the property that commoditised products and services exploit to create (sustainable) competitive advantage. We just need to readapt/reimagine some of these nuggets for the Low Touch epoch. I’d also like to build upon some of those seminal ideas to introduce experience equity – possibly a sharper, crisper valuation method for XM. A few observations:

1. Void, tranches of value erosion due to the neglect of EX ; or rather overvaluation of CX perhaps ; for a large part of the last decade focus was on digital transformations, and most of these were to be more ‘customer centric’. Then we got into agile, new ways of working, scrum and backlogs and user stories – UX/UI and DevOps and Low/No-code systems impl went into overdrive. While the touch points washed away friction, became omnichannel, hyper personalised etc etc – our messy middle, back stage operations suffered , creaking under increased weight of execution. Kinda like a duck paddling faster and faster. The reason why businesses even exist. Sinek a few years back put it simply – golden circle – treat your employees right, and they will in turn do the same for your customers. Naïveté.

The pandemic really exposed this – made the effects/erosion of EX based equity – more obtuse and pointed. Maybe think of it as options; puts and calls, ex and cx. The equitable value of (solving for) EX has risen on top of CX.

2. Future proofing vs obsolescence; present forward bias & inertia (given earlier iterations of XM thinking..). It’s a longterm asset class and as such needs time to compound CAGR YoY. I’ve used fitness analogies before but this is perhaps more relatable to some. It’s kinda like value investing. XM is absolutely something you must invest in; your friend/enemy is time. The compounding effect – when you do things right. What’s right? In my opinion +/- 15degrees of #northstar as defined by a clear #Purpose manifesto.

Temporal lens, with a lot more Innovation needs to be baked in- instead of thinking in snapshots/tactical close gaps; also the accrual and unlocking of value (Trust built) – these are captured in journeys, not lifecycles – episodes and journeys are malleable canvasses for needs/wants/pain points – but with a twist. Journeys are transient and contingent on life moments and more accurately, highly dependent on ‘jobs to be done’

Design or ‘upstream’ thinking as I call it – is the 20% that makes or breaks the 80% ‘downstream’ – but more important than ever before – as it’s a derivative of #Purpose and we need to #restartwithwhy in order to be able to open up the ‘third eye’ of Innovation/temporal lens. Outcome driven methods like JTBD are in my opinion, the simplest/most elegant way leading to more predictable Innovation – I call it the Jeet Kune Do of Innovation – strike closest points with highest impact. Jobs, every customer/citizen has a job to do e.g. morning drive/commute to work (as described by the visionary Clay Christensen). They ‘hire’ products/svcs like bananas, muffins, bagels and a milkshake for their jtbd. Such simplistic elegance. Eloquence. McDonald’s quickly caught on and 7X’d their milkshake sales (vs innovating the product=milkshake in isolation w/ customer research). Turns out milkshakes competed with a way larger TAM – including bananas, bagels – but it nailed the job, better.

Extreme empathy; this doesn’t get enough airtime. The Low Touch phenom means humans will have to practise even more empathy to get through one another, to (re)connect. Sure it’s easier than ever to transact, eCom, digital, social distancing etc – but it’s harder than ever to be empathetic, to listen with our eyes, to connect authentically as human beings. The coefficient of Trust is fluctuating. If you think Bollinger bands it’s either high or Low, never in between.

3. Decentralised networks e.g. DeFi and NFTs are the (imminent) ‘store and transfer’ of experiential equity, Return on CX (RoCX, RoCE), Return on XM (ROXM) . Imagine NFTs being used by luxury brands for authenticity: this will be the rise of digital artists, content creation will never be the same. How we internalise experiences, will never be the same. My thoughts sway towards the mycelial analogy – contrarian to brands/products/services that sell/market/service – we will now cocreate, curate our own experiences. Imagine having a personalised luxury item immortalised as an NFT, transfer of value (its however much everyone – not just you – think it’s worth!)

Goes without saying everything is real-time, instant gratification but it also has to be the right time. With everything happening so fast (tablestakes today), creation & erosion of trust/value is always going to be fluid, in flux. Imagine how crypto markets are- goes up and down, swings 50% daily- bcos it’s not hit critical mass yet (soon). It will. Then the curves might look a lot more like the traditional money markets we are used to. But should it though.. (my opinion = no)

Evolution is frantically fast..It’s been just a year..

Just pasting something a little staid to show you how fast XM thinking evolves – this was last year – “Many a survey has found that customer experience is a top priority for the next few years – in fact a very interesting statement was that by 2020, CX would overtake product and price as the key brand differentiator.” A few giveaways. First, it’s CX lopsided (no EX). Secondly, lingo like product x price x other Ps are a little staid (there’s only the job to be done). Thirdly, bcos the pandemic wasn’t endemic then, the low touch aspect didn’t really come up. Fourthly, the need to be more precise in our valuation methods of experience equity.

An extra point on tech – undoubtedly the largest focus (not enabler!) of experience has been digital. IMO it has been over flexed – kinda like we’ve overspent, overcommitted on it; without the commensurate returns/potential . Don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying the value curves are diverging, or maybe it’s at saturation point. More positively, there’s alot of catch-up on the EX side (which will have its own fair share of tech). There’s time decay (theta) to sweat more of the ‘tech assets’ amassed (sunk cost) on the CX side of the house- much much higher potential (delta, Greeks) for the EX side to progress – as experience equity value curves show – exacerbated by the endemic – there needs to be heightened focus on employees, our people. People power!

The trend of focusing on customer experience began about a decade ago in certain industries. Some brands became synonymous with it – think Disney, who always provided great experiences in their theme parks and retail stores. The retail industry also offers some stellar examples and was among the earliest to progress toward digital customer experience. Financial services were late to adopt but have now come on board: in the latest EFMA Infosys Finacle Innovation in Retail Banking Study, 70% of financial institution respondents said customer experience initiatives would be a key investment area in 2021.MORE FOR YOUWhite People Prefer for Black People To Codeswitch at WorkThe Real Reasons Why Companies Don’t Want You To Work RemotelyWith FDA Approval Of Pfizer Vaccine Imminent, Universities Are Ramping Up The Mandates

Human Centered Design

These are times of extreme empathy; maybe a new class of meta-humans will evolve – the empaths 🙂 Jokes aside, it’s (made more) obvious investment in tech alone misses the point completely. If you watched the Big Short – then this analogy is for you: banks were boring before the mid70s; in fact banks (their jtbd) were supposed to be boring – then the CDO, CDS, subprime happened. In similar vein, tech is supposed to ‘boring’ plumbing. It’s supposed to enable. But with CRM, CEM then CX, customer-centricity and new memes annually (just IMO) we got a little greedy. Along the way, we might have lost the plot (maybe not, if you follow the film Big Short; the feds, bankers all knew it was a bubble)- the human element is the single only thing that really mattered;this makes perfect, intuitive sense bcos unlike products, which are tangible and distinct/inanimate, humans internalise experiences – positively Trust building. Much like how we did it as cavemen huddling together as groups to survive, hunt and eventually teaming to thrive. This is a nice segway to the rise of design (not art). Humans have told stories, expressed themselves with art since time immemorial– but good design, that’s meta, that’s in quest to better ourselves.

In another article here – I explore design thinking (vs systems thinking). Design gives to liveable functions/features and solves for complex (humans are complex..) problems. But think of it this way: design is a means, almost a language, for the innovators/visionaries/futurists/leaders to describe/communicate #purpose. That’s powerful. With design, we swim so far upstream, we are architects of the present and more importantly, future. I also explore innovation, future back and outcome driven innovation here – lovingly called the milkshake innovation as homage to Clay’s groundbreaking work.

Experience beyond store of Value, into Equity

We should think of XM as a longterm asset class, it’s methods akin to value investing – made popular by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Strong fundamentals, rain or shine and commitment to success over time. Over time. They spoke about pricing power, and competitive advantages, barriers of entry; it seems Apple, have mastered the pricing of experience. We all know they’ve an ecosystem that’s a walled garden (keep people in, keep people out), and their fandom is one of legend. Sinek popularised thee golden circle and Start With Why (we now need to #restartwithwhy), in which Apple’s #Why is so relatable to all of us, and that’s how they risen to be the luxury (yes, not consumer electronics, but luxury!) brand they are today. But what they did was really to solve for job(s) to be done – granted some jobs we didn’t knew we had to hire for! – and my personal pun why Steve Jobs deciphered JTBD earlier than anyone else 🙂

These jobs that products/services were hired for – our jobs, much like a job market – are largely transient. To be specific, these jobs are interlaced between life journeys, embedded in episodes (we are a myriad of personas x archetypes, all at once, all at the same time!) Mind bending I know, but also fascinating.

The tenet is – focus on one job and do it well, get hired for it and nail it better than everyone/everything else. Clay (I love his examples) talked about the newspaper, and how they had (too) many columns trying to satisfy different jobs e.g. ads, sports, headlines – all displaced by your mobile phone. Then snail mails to emails, to send a pic of a loved one e.g. to parents when you’re busy – also displaced by emails and now social media. It’s really fascinating when you strip a product/service into function, features and overlay it with basic jobs they actually (try) to accomplish.

The idea is to differentiate using experiences aka innovate the product/service around the job that it was hired for. E.g. a shopping mall experience is exactly that – the job may be to ‘get out of the house’ but the experience around that may be enriched with adjacencies , such as food tasting or talent shows. In fact, we all know real estate needs to evolve and quickly at that – to become meaningful, cultural, eco, lifestyle spaces for us to ‘experience’ but the actual ‘transaction’ might be done digitally, at home, anywhere. Again, think about jtbd, strip down the job to be done – and then build it up/laterally again with experiences. This ‘framework’ helps predictable innovation in any industry/sector;

The Low Touch Future 

Old money markets attempted to monetise products and services, and then synthesised derivates of, which all hastened the destruction of the economy back in 2008. The people have since spoken – new generations have placed their increasing trust in #DeFi, decentralised constructs that ‘cut out the middlemen’. We trust each other, just not the ___________. Now as we go deeper into the experience economy (into the Low Touch epoch), the way to think about experience equity is perhaps to look at it as a ‘stock’. The stock is not the company, and the company is not the stock – although the markets would have them correlated heavily. A good company might generate positive experiences, build loyalty, increase trust – but it’s share/stock price might still be lagging, and not reflect. This as we know is market sentiment. Over time, the solid fundamentals will emerge and the market will self-correct.

Same with XM – it’s an Infinite Game and the never ending journey should be to embed it, practise it much like a ‘fitness’ program. When you get the fundamentals right, your swing, the ball will go far.

Experience is really downtrodden, takes a gazillion man-hours, forever to get right (and there’s no right, only a delta+ of what right was yesterday – suddenly an image of a carrot and donkey comes to mind 🙂 . As I’ve said to many, repeatedly, over the years. It is. it’s an Infinite Game.. to be played, to better oneself today vs yesterday. That immutable goal is a journey that never ends – I guess it can be described as one’s quest for perfection (or expressed as I’ve heard more refreshingly “we are all Work in Progress #WIP).

In the experience economy, according to Jim Gilmore and Joe Pine, time is the currency of value. I believe trust is the new currency of the low touch epoch (microcosm within the experience economy) ; as I’ve said many times tine, ease, frictionless are all still valid, fundamentals – just that an overlay of Trust is paramount during endemic times. Maybe think of it as deflationary market (vs the usual inflationary)

In another article, I explore the atomicity of experiences (how they’re catalysed from interactions, and they in turn from transactions) . The summation of all these is roughly called experience equity. Just bear in mind, some of these experience gaps are ‘best’ solved using tech, some process improvements but all are composites. E.g. 50/30/20, 40/30/30, 20/5/75 (people/process/technology). Now if you add up value synthesised from solving all these, you arrive somewhere at equity. Do take note, these are positive and negative values, they cancel out each other. Positive – value created. Negative – value erosion.

Goes to say, if you elevate up n-1 level you’re at the episodes/journeys (canvases containing these pain points remember ). Now you will see a colouring of these episodes- which you can prioritise. But priorities (do) change, as aligned to purpose. The idea is to rinse and repeat, indefinitely. After all, if XM is a long term asset class akin to value investing (side note – I think Shep Hyken has rock solid fundamentals like WB), then let time do it’s thang..