Customers are the North Star
With the change in how we use technology, customer experience is more important that ever! And with the constraints of keeping profit healthy, it's a fine line/ becoming a dark art.
The tired cliche of “the customer is always right”, is somewhat of a misnomer. However, that doesn't stop the customer being the 'North Star' in terms of thinking ‘upstream’.
Now there's a few key authors who have phrased the messages that I'm trying to covey better than I ever could, so for this article I will rely heavily on quotes.
What Are You Trying To Achieve With the Customer As the 'North Star'?
So the purpose of putting the customer at the front of one's thinking when approaching any problem, is not to put them on a pedestal or try and 2nd guess them. It is used as more of a guidance, as ultimately as businesses (and especially ones that create or drive services) have to have customers.
And if the customer isn't at the front of ones thinking, then you can easily get bogged down into silos and echo chamber thinking. And that leads to (and re-enforces) the “that's not my problem attitude”, which is self serving and will lead to the destruction of creative thinking, and potentially a company.
“So often in life, we get stuck in a cycle of response. We put out fires. We deal with emergencies. We stay downstream, handling one problem after another, but we never make our way upstream to fix the systems that caused the problems.”
Cops chase robbers, and doctors treat patients with chronic diseases, and call-center reps address customer complaints. But crime and chronic disease and customer complaints are preventable! "So why do our efforts skew so heavily toward reaction rather than prevention?"
Paraphrased from Upstream by Dan Heath
3 barriers to upstream thinking
Problem blindness – the belief that negative outcomes are natural or inevitable.
A lack of ownership – all parties say That’s not mine to fix.
Tunnelling - when juggling lots of problems people give up trying to solve them all.
So How Does Having the Customer As the 'North Star' Help?
It moves ones mindset into a more collaborative effort, and empowers people to flag problems, risks and opportunities to the business. Let me give you two very high level examples (completely fictional);
Bob works in the platforms/ system team and notices a bug in the code on the production WebUI. It's not an obvious bug and it only happens in some edge cases. Now by Bob might not have access or the experience to fix it, however by empowering him to flag it, then the right team can address it before the customer even notices.
Sally works in the software engineering team, the code she's working on does a complex set of tasks and needs access to various systems to perform it's main function, however she notices that it could be improved by accessing one additional set of data. When she tries to get the data the system holding it doesn't respond, however if she doesn't add this ‘nice to have’, then she will still complete her task. So by empowering Sally to speak up and ask for access, then the right team can help (and no dodgy back doors are created), and the customer gets an improved experience.
So How Can We Change Mindsets?
The key to this is using an upstream/Infinite thinking approach and being supported and empowered to do so.
Downstream/ Finite Thinking
Downstream thinking is defined as being reactive and typically uses system 1 ‘thinking’ (more on system 1 vs. system 2 later). Ultimately it is finite thinking, as the rules and boundaries are set and so you are ‘trapped within the box’.
“Finite games are played by known players. They have fixed rules. And there is an agreed-upon objective that, when reached, ends the game. Football, for example, is a finite game.”
The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
Upstream/Infinite
Upstream thinking is defined as being proactive and typically uses system 2 thinking. As it is therefore infinite thinking, as (at least mentally) you keep pushing forward as if nothing is in your way and/or anything is hanging over you to hold you back.
"A couple of guys are sat on the river bank doing some fishing, hanging out, and suddenly a child appears in the river in front of them and is struggling. So one of the guys jumps in and pulls the child out.
A few minutes later, another child comes down the river, so they jump back in, pull out the child. And this keeps happening. After a little while, the guys are getting pretty exhausted of pulling these kids out. So one of the guys starts walking up the river. The other guy shouts to him to ask where he’s going, to which he replies “I'm going to go and find the person who's throwing these kids in the river”."
Upstream by Dan Heath
“Infinite games, in contrast, are played by known and unknown players. There are no exact or agreed-upon rules. Though there may be conventions or laws that govern how the players conduct themselves, within those broad boundaries, the players can operate however they want. And if they choose to break with convention, they can.”
The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
So How Do We Avoid “The Customer Is Always Right?” Trip Hazard?
Whilst keeping an upstream/infinite mindset, it can be reframed into a service orientated mindset. This helps focus into the Kiazen as described in Setting the scene for things to come my previous article Searching for Success.
“The reason a service orientation is so important in the Infinite Game is because it builds a loyal base of employees and customers (and investors) who will stick with the organization through thick and thin. It is this strong base of loyalty that gives any organization a kind of strength and longevity that money alone cannot provide. The most loyal employees feel their leaders genuinely care about them . . . because their leaders genuinely do care about them.
In return, they offer their best ideas, act freely and responsibly and work to solve problems for the benefit of the company.
The most loyal customers feel the company genuinely cares about their wants, needs and desires . . . because the company really does. And in return, this is why loyal customers go out of their way or pay a premium to buy from that company over another and encourage their friends to do the same.
And the best-led companies feel like their investors genuinely care about helping the company become as strong as possible in order to advance the Cause because the investors really do care. The results benefit all stakeholders.”
The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
How Can We Get Customer Onboard with This?
Friction
Whilst the above has a heavy focus on how employees and business leaders can drive the positive effects, the customer too needs to be taken on this journey, even if there's no direct engagement or awareness of the businesses enlightenment.
"Reducing their customers’ psychological friction became Uber’s key challenge, and so they launched an entire in-house team of behavioural (data) scientists, psychologists and neuroscientists in what would be called ‘Uber Labs’.
“In their research, Uber Labs discovered several key psychological principles that impact a customer’s satisfaction with Uber and their perceptions of the overall experience: the peak–end rule, idleness aversion, operational transparency, uncertainty anxiety and the goal-gradient effect. Understanding these five powerful psychological forces allowed Uber to completely redesign an entire industry and create a business valued at $120 billion.”
** “UBER IS A PSYCHOLOGICAL MOONSHOT"
The Diary of a CEO by Steven Bartlett
Transparency
Keeping customers in the loop in a meaningful and educated way removed the need for unnecessary anxiety on the part of the customer. Keeping messaging clear, simple and timely goes a long way … however there will always been someone who just wants to call in for a conversation.
“UNCERTAINTY ANXIETY
In 2008, Domino’s Pizza experienced an interesting operational and customer experience challenge. Customers who were waiting longer than they expected for their pizza would phone Domino’s to ask where it was. The whole process of pizza making would then be interrupted, because the person making the pizza would be asked why there was a delay by the person who’d answered the phone, and the customer would ultimately be given a vague and uncertain answer. A calling customer was unwittingly delaying the delivery of their own pizza, because of the lack of operational transparency they’d been given.”
The Diary of a CEO by Steven Bartlett
And finally
If you stood in the first Netflix office sometime in the fall of 1997, you would have seen a room that resembled some unholy cross between a computer geek's basement and a politician's on-the-road campaign war centre. And that's just the way we linked it.
Our office sent a clear message; this isn't about us, it's about the customers. The reasons for working there weren't exotic perks or free food. It was the camaraderie and the challenge, the opportunity to spend your time solving hard, interesting problems with smart people.
You didn't work for us because you wanted a beautiful office.
You worked for us because you wanted the chance to do something meaningful.
That Will Never Work by Marc Randolph