AltNyttErFarlig (Everything new is dangerous)

The problem I am working on is: How to design a simple model forcing workshop/team participants to dig deep down and find the root causes for customer behavior.

“grappling with digital disruption requires reframing the challenge from a technological challenge to a business model one. Unfortunately, that makes the problem harder, not easier, as business models are often hard-wired in what our colleague Mark Johnson dubs an organization’s rules, norms, and metrics, making shifts difficult to execute.” - Scott Anthony

Followers are often used as a measure of success on Instagram, but branded hashtags are another sign of an invested and evangelizing fan base.

L2’s Insight Report on Fashion Social Media finds a direct correlation between brand mentions and followers, and some brands have leveraged that more adeptly than others.

Companies face a deep and widening complexity gap; between their current offering and the emerging behaviors and needs of their customers. Failing to see the economy from the customer’s perspective and taking a back seat to behavioral change may drive the gap even wider. ...

The future is only complex if you fail to understand it from the point of view of what is driving the change. And currently most businesses and industries have safely positioned themselves as passengers in the back seat.

The Gastly Tragedy of the Suburbs

“In James Howard Kunstler's view, public spaces should be inspired centers of civic life and the physical manifestation of the common good. Instead, he argues, what we have in America is a nation of places not worth caring about.”

This is how you’ll shop in 2020

It’s as much (or maybe more) about branding as moving units. "The store of tomorrow is less about being transactional and more about the experience and ability to use the store as a media platform," says Ethan Song, Frank & Oak’s cofounder and CEO. "More important than the transactions we make is the idea of creating a sense of place and a feeling of community when a consumer steps into our stores. Allowing people to experience the brand firsthand and in person allows this sense of community to flourish. Incorporating things like social gatherings and coffee shops in our stores underlines our commitment to building not just a store, but a place people want to be."

The Internet Is Finally Forcing Management to Care About People.

“The humanist strand of management thinking that celebrates teams and collaboration through respect for customers and workers as human beings has a long and distinguished history.” .. “Yet despite almost a century of fine management writing and many successful initiatives, the ugly truth is that the lasting impact on general management practice has been limited.” .. “The locus of competitive advantage is now determined by interactions with the customer, built on the work of engaged and passionate workers.” .. “ this means orienting everyone to the goal of delivering more value to customers sooner, and aligning all decision-making with this goal. It is a shift in mindset from “You take what we make,” to “We seek to understand your problems and will surprise you by solving them.””

At conception ‘Industry’ and ‘core business’ are both sensible terms to frame and communicate the purpose of a business. But they are limiting. Especially when it comes to maneuvering or adapting the course of the business - as customers, markets and society demands alterations and redesigns...

The digital economy will become the outcome economy – outcome as in the quantifiable output the company’s offerings help produce on the customer side.

In the outcome economy the purpose of business is to help its customers produce measurable outcomes – and business will use its customers success parameters as their own. Companies become completely committed to delivering quantifiable value for their customers.

Why Strong Customer Relationships Trump Powerful Brands

“Technology is not oil to lubricate; it’s oxygen to grow ideas and change business. Modern businesses need to disrupt themselves at the very core, empowered by what new behavior and new technology make possible.”

In 2015 we stop referencing customers as marketing costs, and start identifying them as business outcomes.

In the meantime, here are several excellent  resources on Customer Experience:

“Customer experience … is a fundamental dimension of how a company competes.” - Joseph Pine, coined the term Experience Economy

“the rest have been forced to care because all other means of differentiation have been eroded over time.” - Ed Thompson, Gartner

"client-side marketers worldwide ranked the customer experience as the single most exciting opportunity in 2015, at 22%" - eMarketer

Customer 2020: Are you future ready of re-living the past - Accenture

“Too many companies see customer experience as a slogan exercise. We realized that if we didn’t build our strategy around how customers experience our products, a start-up with that focus could eventually overtake us.” - Philip Gerskovich, senior vice president, Zebra Technologies

Is Pepper Wrong? His definition doesn't help us create customer experiences - just keep people out. "The Customer Experience Is: The totality of a customer’s personal interactions with a brand, over time." - Don Peppers

“As we confirmed in our “Next 30-Year Vision,” which we created in 2010, our ultimate goal is to alleviate sadness and increase everyone's happiness to the greatest extent possible through the Information Revolution.” - Letter from the CEO, Masayoshi Son

Telus shifted its direction to Customer First and asked the question: How are we going to serve the customers better? The result is a proven success on all familiar business measurements, from shareholder return, growth and market share, to employee engagement and not least; customer value. - The Creative Economy - New Management Practices for the 21st Century

Starting with the customer they asked “what is the most important thing we can do for this customer”. And then they put the most important employees on the task of solving that most important problem. This was implemented across the whole organization with autonomous teams approaching different levels of problems. The result was outstanding, Salesforce for the fourth consecutive year, has been awarded the most Innovative Company by Forbes. - The Creative Economy - New Management Practices for the 21st Century

"If the position [Customer Experience] is lower down [than C-level], it tends to get buried in operational requirements.” - Amanda Whittaker, Deloitte