I am Amazed by ...

Nomenclature of this blog has changed from today. In line with the new name AMAZEMENT I list down my top 10 Amaze-rs. 

People whom I follow to get Amazed: (Order is Alphabetical,  intensity and area are different)

1) Guy Kawasaki 

For his book Enchantment & APE

2) Hillary Clinton 

For what she is and her mission to become US president.    

3) MK Gandhi

For his conviction and determination. 

4) Narendra Modi 

For his passion , vision & action for India's development.

5) Richard Branson 

For his passion for his customers. 

6) Seth Godin 

For his book Linchpin & daily blog posts  making sense of world around us (May be his initials matches with mine !!!)

7) Shrimad Rajchandra

For his clarity of thought about soul and its journey , his religious writings and powerful spiritual treatise in verse Atma Siddhi & Apporva Avasar showing clear road map to Moksha.

8) Steve Jobs 

For his passion for customers , scintillating products , public speaking style. 

9) Swami Vivekanand

For his powerful messages for human beings.

10) Tom Peters 

For his books - Circle of Innovation , Re imagine and  The little big things & various presentations.

11) Tony Hsieh 

For his culture of doing business at Zappos and his present mission of delivering happiness across the globe.

Who are the people amazing you? 

Service Design - Most critical but Mostly Ignored

" Design is not HOW it looks but how it works." Steve Jobs.  

Product & service design is an integral part of over all customer experience. However it is easier to find out bad product design from its usage but equally difficult to know bad service design. 

There is a saying that if there is a physical queue / waiting for anything  , it is a bad design. If user is finding it difficult to fill a form it is bad design. 

In every product & service there is an element of design. 

You go to buy a railway ticket or buy a insurance policy, apply for insurance claim, opening a bank account or availing bank loan, buying a house from a real estate company , availing medical treatment at hospitals, buying a movie ticket and watching movie in a theater, roaming in a mall, roads & traffic flow ,  hotel booking, check in/out process everything is a design.  

Now if these intangible services are not deliberately designed keeping customer/users ease , convenience & comfort in  mind, it will happen without deliberate design and is likely to spoil customer experience. 

No part of business or enterprise activities happen automatically. It is not either it is deliberately designed or deliberately not designed but most of the time it is not designed as entrepreneur or service provider is not aware that it has to be deliberately designed. 

All physical aspects are designed by various design experts, however its final flow to the customer i.e. sales process, after sales process, actual service av-ailment process skip the design aspects. It is these gaps in service design creates bad and frustrating customer experience (CX). Hardware & tangible are designed but soft & intangible parts remain un-designed. 

Otherwise how expensive airlines , finest of hotels & hospitals , sophisticated banks & insurance companies and great home builder - real estate companies fails in customer experience miserably? 

In every aspects of intangible service design , CX designers' intervention  can improve customer experience and help solving many problems in Govt services. 

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.

Business Process & Drained Customer Experience

When was the last time your business processes were realigned keeping customer experience in mind ?

Do you know business processes are the major culprit in creating damaging customer experience ? 

When fulfilling a customer need - business processes can play a key role in making it happen with ease , speed and delight. 

Process complexity delays the delivery , irritates the customers , break the relations and customer looks for elsewhere. 

Business process mastery can give you competitive advantage. Flipkart is the shining example of process mastery. Their enviable TAT is the result of process mastery keeping customer at the center of the process design.  Whatever the processes employed customer gets speedy delivery. 

Huge money invested to built brand on media , huge money invested in technology and logistics. However before they built brand through media there was already word of mouth online brand building happening through customers. Media helped them to achieve tipping point but ground work was kept ready through their superior logistics for only one product - Books. 

There are plenty of leakage points in offering superior customer experience but business process is the critical part which makes or breaks the business. Business process re-engineering which keeps customer's need and not company's need at the core archives what the company ultimately wants - superior PROFIT through superior CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.    

" You have got to start with CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE and work backward for technology , process & people"  Steve Jobs.

Shake well before use - Your company / Institutions & Even Yourself

Unless you shake up the bottle, you will get diluted version of the medicine. Unless you shake up the institutions /companies, you get diluted performance. Therefore shaking up MUST be a part of regular activity if medicine or institutions have to perform at its finest potential. 

Our Institutions and companies for that matter perform below the potential merely due to non shaking up regularly. Mr Arvind Kejriwal & Team Anna have shaken up our democracy. People are now more forthcoming , speaking up and participating in democratic process and issues concerning them. 

Even at companies new CEO can bring life if he is enthusiastic and have capability to see things in different light. Status-Quo is the biggest challenge everywhere. Status Quo is nothing but unshaken condition. 

Look at the leaders who shook up the things. 

Public Life: 

Arvind Kejriwal , Narendra Modi , Nitish Kumar , Rajiv Gandhi , TN Seshan, CAG Vinod Rai , Manmohan Singh of 1991 , Ex BMC Commissioner Subodh Kumar........

Corporate: 

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Narayana Murthy (IT), Kishor Biyani (Retail), Dhirubhai Ambani (Capital Market and Business)...... 

There are many institutions and companies that are looking for someone who really can shake them up and enable them to realise and/or  regain its true potential. 

Shekhar Suman Show Movers and Shakers might have lived its life, but we need Movers/Shakers everywhere, or else we all r likely to go sleep. 

Are you a Shakers or waiting for one?  

Name some of the Movers & Shakers known to you? 

Everything is up for Re-imagination

Yes. True.

World around is slowly but surely changing at speed not easily recognisable.  However change is happening and happening everyday.

New WORLD we are daily experiencing is the result of thinking or re-imagination of people around us. Someone somewhere is re-imagining the existing way of doing things and living life.

Steve Jobs re imagined laptops, mobile phones, music dispensing system  , Bill Gates re imagined operating system , Starbucks re-imagined coffee shop experience, Narendra Modi re-imagined politics of development & governance, Capt Gopinath re-imagined low cost airlines, Zappos re-imagined customer experience, Dr Kurian re imagined milk collection & distribution system,  Mark Zuckerberg re-imagined social networking, Baba Ramdev re-imagined Yoga for masses , Steven Spielberg & most movie makers are in re-imagination business, & Gandhiji re imagined use of non violence to achieve independence. Many people around us are re-imagining our world and doing their own bit to make the difference. Tom Peter has written a book Re-Imagine.

We all  have to re-imagine the world. Re imagine relationships, re imagine commuting , re imagine travelling, re imagine businesses, re imagine politics, re imagine parenting, re imagine governance and management , re imagine education , re imagine jobs & re imagine religions. There is no limit or restriction on any thing as far as Re Imagination goes. Its not about small changes here and there. Its something complete NEW and unheard of.  Conditioned mind will find it difficult , it requires unconditional mindset to re imagine.

 Re imagination capacity is the most valuable asset a person and organisation can have. Any entrepreneur, organisation and individual can create huge difference in the world by her power of re imagination and action to make imagination a real one.

Point is : World around is subject to change  and all those who can re-imagine the life and world around them & work towards achieving that change will  be the most sought after people. 

What is your re-imagination agenda?

My 2011 Best of 5 Blog Posts

One) 

“you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology."

Steve Jobs - Life & Death - Quotes & Salute 

Two)

Battle for Profit is won with great relationship ( suppliers, employees & customers ) and not by logical /rational analysis of left brain thinking alone.

5 things MBAs MUST learn from Entrepreneurs 

 

Three)

Just shut up , create memorable customer experience and allow/ enable customers to become brand ambassadors.

5 Reasons Why Traditional Marketing is (almost) DEAD in Digital World !!!! 

 

Four)

Unexpected Speed ( Execution, Thought, Response ) WOWs !!

12 Ways to WOW !!!!! - ( For ) Individuals & Enterprises

Five)

No focus on CUSTOMER. - Business Plan/Strategy defines everything else but  Customer Experience company propose to offer.

9 (old) + Three (new) Early Warning Sings of a Troubled Company

By D'fault are you HAPPY or SAD???

By D'fault are you HAPPY or SAD???  { Pause and Check for a minute }. We read motivational books , watch movies, go on a tour , picnic , movie and drama. Go out for dinner , parties play with kids. Celebrate birthdays , other important days, marriages, people who drinks go for it. We develop hobby to remain engaged in activities we like. In an otherwise painful realities of our life, we feel happy to watch movies, which take us away from the realities.

We try to escape from { painful } realities to all these places and resort to these activities.  We like to remain HAPPY.{ always }

Corporate world has to take clue from our need to become and remain HAPPY. Happiness is not only in demand but is @ Premium. Yes make your customers HAPPY and you will neither have to find customer again nor worry about the profit. Equation goes like this - Delivering HAPPINESS = Customers plus Profit.

Happiness Drivers:

- Extra ordinary customer service.

- Extra ordinary product knowledge/Insight { today experienced at a restaurant from chef } .

- Unexpected pleasant surprise { read somewhere that a restaurant on a particular day offers select diners free dinner on random basis. Not announced marketing scheme but genuine un-announced pleasant feeling of surprise. Word of mouth can brings more customers than marketing gimmicks }.

- With-out expectation authentic kind gesture. Authentic word is critical as most marketeers have failed to invoke this feeling in customers. Sale not Solution is the ONLY motive. (Met a politician today and cud sense this - getting a voter base may be at back d of his mind but during the meet genuine urge to help and not seeking vote was his gesture) .

- Designing extra ordinary products / service is a work of an ART. Art will always attract its fol{lowers}. ( Steve Jobs is d recent inspiration, there are a few others too  ).

In our entire chain of business processes and touch points - what will make my customers HAPPPPY or what will remove sadness and pain from his life??? Ask & Act.

{ Happy to state this blog has completed 10000 hits in a year of its existence. Thanx to all visitors/readers. }

Steve Jobs in U too !!!!!

" Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."  - Steve Jobs

Of the so many quotes of Steve Jobs, according to me, the above quote is most powerful and highly inspiring. 

Yes, we live only once and we mostly forget the same till we are close to the death. & how many of us will get the chance like Steve to know that d death is near!!!! While I am writing this I am also watching Discovery Channel's programme Super Structures of America. What an imagination , mammoth effort and dedication is required to create these super structures !!!! Amazing. Yes but once achieved these structures remain in the world for years to come. 

Combining the two - Steve's Message & lesson from channle's programme - Bottomline is: We only live once & leaving a mark on the earth requires all d three i.e. imagination , efforts and dedication. (that to in limited time and ignoring other's opinion in what we are doing with our inner voice).

How unfortunate that we always need social proof to do something and even to know whether what we are doing right or no. Whether to listen, whom to listen and what to listen is very rarest of the skills.

Therefore two things to remember - Just do it and Making an Impact of our Action on this World. 

• If u are a writer - write like a Booker prize winner writer
• If u are a builder- built every structures as a monument and wanting to make it to city sightseeing itinerary.  
• If u are an employee - first & foremost be happy & smile while dealing with customers and co workers. { mostly that is lacking }   , act like a CEO of your own life as you LIVE for the self not for your employer. Live yr passion too.   
• If u are mother - not only love yr children but make them the finest citizen too.
• If u are a father - not only earn for your family but give time and attention to your children too. Expose them to best and the worst of the realities of d world.
• If u are en entrepreneur - your product and service may bot be d best in the world but be known for integrity and customer passion.  Become problem solver not only seller and marketeers.  
• If u are an activist -  obviously making an impact is yr job. { Keep self interest aside. }
• If u are passionate abt something - start today to fulfill yr dreams. It may be start small and grow later but START TODAY is a MUST.  
• If u are a blogger - well,write immortal posts and again making a impact is innate desire. { more suggestions welcome }

" Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

I started to underline the important words in the quote above. But immediately realised, every words are important , relevant and powerful. So I highlighted the entire phrase with BOLD.

Steve Jobs gone and we all we will also go. But till the time we go, we are living. Make most of your living. You time is limited and started long back. 

Share yr views, dreams and passions & what will change fro  TODAY?

Steve Jobs - Life & Death - Quotes & Salute

Today this Blog is completing its FIRST year. Last Dussera (English Calender 18th Oct 2010) it all begin and today happy to share that over the year there were total 113 posts, above 9200 visitors and visitors from some more than 30 countries. Thank you all of you who have visited, read my blog and even shared this blog with their friends base. Feeling of WOW !!!!

Well today I wanted to write something fascinating but wondering what to write on first anniversary !!!! However with Steve Jobs' death , I cannot think of anything else but to write about his thoughts and what people thought of him.

Tone and theme of this blog all along has remained Customer Experience and who better than Steve Jobs can define and create better customer experience. Two of his quotes are highly indicative:

“you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology."

"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

No one man can write Obituary of a man like him so I have decided to present all the tweets about him by some of the well known people:

Death: 

  

President Obama described Steve: …Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it…

Mark Zuckerberg's tribute to Steve Jobs: Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. & Today, we lost one of the most influential thinkers, creators and entrepreneurs of all time.

Ratan Tata : Jobs has changed the way of life of many.

Richard Branson: RIP Steve Jobs. A truly great businessman. Inspiration to so many. A real Family man. He will be sorely missed.

Sergey Brin - (Google):  (Steve's) passion for excellence is felt by anyone who has ever touched an Apple product.

Anupam Kher: Steve Job made a person like me too, feel a complete tech savvy. That was the ease of his brilliant mind. Will miss his persona. RIP.

Steven Spielberg:  Steve Jobs was the greatest inventor since Thomas Edison. He put the world at our fingertips. 

Sushma Swaraj : Rest in peace Mr Steve Jobs - entrepreneur and inventor par excellence!

Pritish Nandy: I think I will stick to Steve Jobs. Dassera will come again.

Sucheta Dalal: Yes, as a late convert to Apple, I think the greatest tribute to his genius would be to walk out of Windows & to a Mac World!! & we all remember Steve Jobs for his Apple inventions but he also built Pixar, one of the most original animation studios

Tom Peters: The way to honor Steve Jobs is to take your current project [today] and turn it upside down and shake it up with all your might!

Anand Mahindra: Steve, the only way I can commemorate you is by committing to cut the crap from my life&to dance to the tune of an inner voice..

Shashi Tharoor: 3 Apples changed d World, 1st one seduced Eve, 2nd fell on Newton nd d 3rd was offered to d World half bitten by Steve Jobs.

Javed Akhtar: Great are those who. Could think of what has never been done before and do what has never been thought before. Jobs was one such person.

 

Bill Gates: I’m truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs’ death. Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work.Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives.The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.

Life: 

Finally his own powerful views on life ,business & death: 

Death is the destination we all share. ... It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.

A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.

The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore!

The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predictament.

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life.

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

Finally actionable for all of us as rightly said by Tom Peters:  

The way to honor Steve Jobs is to take your current project [today] and turn it upside down and shake it up with all your might!