What Farmers Can Teach Our Entrepreneurs ?

REAP WHAT YOU SOW , is a universal truth. 

If your organisation has systems , processes, targets , thinking and culture of MAKING MONEY at ANY cost. Your people are out there in the market will mis sell, over commit , indulge in unethical business practices, do all kinds of accounting jugglery , evade tax , do environmental harm, breaks laws. In the process your organisation will become anti social organisation though doing so called legal business.  You will attract and recruit people with similar culture and mindset. 

Fruits on the tree are the result of its seed, root, water , fertilizers & environmental support it consumes.

If you want Apple you need to sow seeds of Apple. This is the first and foremost requirements. Business culture percolates from the top is seed for the business. You cant expect your people to be honest when top management is indulging in all sorts of wrong doings. 

After the first step of sowing the seed, you need to nurture the tree with regular water, fertilizer and allow sun rays in right quality to get the best fruit. Even organic and inorganic fertilizers can impact the outcome. Likewise business processes, training and soft skills of the people, IT systems, leadership everything matters and impact the customer experience your company is offering to your customers. 

When you need to offer Kashmiri Apple roped with organic fertilizers , you need that kind of environment and nurturing.  You will not get the same Apple if you grow it in different environment and offers inorganic fertilizers like cosmetic culture. 

Therefore if you wish to attain SUSTAINABLE competitive advantage of offering delightful customer experience (CX), it starts with seed i.e. culture.  Only system, processes and training wont last much. Look at all companies known in CX space and you will  realise how their culture is and why they are leading in CX space.  Be it Virgin, Starbucks, Zappos or Apple. 

You can create delight factor for sometime or for some products/services or for some processes  but it wont be sustainable if it is not through culture change. Seed has to be right for delightful products or else delightful products are by chance and not by choice. 

Problem is top management expect best of the fruits - business performance but they turn blind eye on what it takes.  

Indian firms can lose 18 to 20% of the business due to lack of clear customer experience strategy.

The above report indicates possibility of loss of business internationally by Indian firms. However within India due to poor or not so delightful customer experience how much business local firms can lose to competing firms is yet not known. 

Bottom line is clear , if you want better bottom line , focus on CX and if you want better CX focus on seed i.e. culture at the top. 

Are you selling what you are making?

Are your brand management and product design teams in sync with the kind of customer experience your company wish to offer ? 

Most of the time it is seen that there is no connect between brand commitment company conveys through all kind of communication , product design team actually creating an experience and customer service team managing the gaps between the two. 

Customer experience design is a deliberate DESIGN & therefore involving CE team in inception of product design , process design , advertising , branding  , marketing and training is CRITICAL.  

When music symphony is orchestrated , every aspect are planned in order to achieve the kind of experience symphony director wish to offer to the audience. Everything is in sync with the expected outcome. 

Offering scintillating customer experience which is truly a competitive advantage requires entire company to behave in sync with expected outcome i.e. experience which company aim to deliver to the customers.  Your branding and marketing team shall not behave which makes people disbelieve your brand.  Unfulfilled brand promises can cause disaster for the brand it self. 

No company can afford to forget words of wisdom of Steve Jobs " You have to start with Customer Experience & work backward for technology, process & people." & even branding & marketing.

Indian Retailers’ Priority Mismatch

I was going through  RAI – TCS Study 2013.

What I found interesting is this:

At retail store level priority wise  focus area for 2014 are 

1) Overall Profitability

2) Improving Customer Service

At organisation level priorities are ; 

1) Improving Bottomline

5) Improving Customer Services

6) Improving Loyalty  and Retention

9) People Training

10) CRM and

11) Process Improvements

Companies want to improve customer experience (CE) at store level however things which improves customer experience finds priority 5 onward at company level.

This is the problem not only of retail industry but most of the industries.

Every companies in every industries have become aware that Customer Experience is the way to be and that is the only thing that will give them sustainable competitive advantage. This is even clear from the above study as companies wants Customer Service as priority Number 2. I still doubt that what companies means customer services is not what customer experience is all about. However lets for a moment assume that what they mean customer service is infact customer experience.  Even though priority to better that is not visible at enterprise level.

Companies want to better Customer Service/Experience but do not put the same at higher priority @ enterprise level.  Therefore at enterprise level action will not be commensurate with the priorities stated at store levels.

For real experience creators like Starbucks, Virgin , Apple or Zappos , customer experience is the  top most priority. It is the better CE that drives bottom-line. These companies have focus on better and better CE which in turn drives top as well as bottom-line. CE has assumed the role of key differentiation for these companies.

Forrester Research says better CE drives bottom-line, top line and builds brands on social channels. In surveying nearly 5,000 consumers, Forrester found that across many industries they prefer better experiences than lower prices.  There are case studies which suggests better CE can support triple bottom-line i.e. profit, people and planet.

Point is , better CE drives top-line & bottom-line , Indian retailers wants the same at retail store level however at enterprise level they act differently.  Unless enterprise as a whole focus on better CE and aim to become champion of CE in their own segment , they will continue to have this kind of mismatch and they will continue to find bottom-line growth where it is hardly available.

This report is telling all the players in retail industry why they are struggling to achieve their priority number 1 i.e. bottom-line growth.

Put better Customer Experience at the center of your store level and enterprise level priority number – 1  ( Irrespective of Industry ). That is the starting point of every other initiatives and focus area.