Customer Experience University - Winning Loyalty & Engagement One Customer at a Time

What‘s Science Got to Do With It? | Customer Experience Is Team Member Experience

This is the first post in a series titled "Customer Experience IS Team Member Experience."
As much as I am a people person, I worry that some human-focused leaders and consultants veer a bit too far away from research and data when it comes to understanding team member and customer behaviors. Amid extreme staffing challenges, I have read and heard a lot of employment guidance that runs in opposition to the science behind employee engagement. 
So, what is known about employee engagement (also referred to as role, personal, work, job, or organizational engagement)? Which widespread claims about employee engagement, or EE for short, are supported by research and which are not? 

Reflect and Integrate | Mindset & Agility – The Rocket Fuel for Customer Experience Success

Previously, I've unpacked the first six skills outlined in Professor W. Warner Burke's research-based model of learning agility, namely:
Flexibility
Speed
Experimenting
Performance Risk
Interpersonal Risk Taking
Collaborating
In this installment, we’ll explore the final three skills presented in Dr. Burke's book, Learning Agility. Those skills are:
Information
Gathering Feedback
Seeking Reflecting

Take Risks and Reach Out | Mindset & Agility – The Rocket Fuel for Customer Experience Success

Risk can come in the form of stretch opportunities or interpersonal sharing. In all cases, we need to proactively leave our comfort zones to grow and spark innovation. Volunteering for a new assignment, increasing appropriate, personal disclosure, and reaching out to others for collaboration, all require a courageous stretch.
Think of a project or task that would force you to grow. How would you approach "volunteering" for the new possibility?

How to Learn and Lead with Agility | Mindset & Agility – The Rocket Fuel for Customer Experience Success

Professor Burke is an organizational psychologist who began studying the characteristics of high potential individuals and high-performance teams. In 2017, Professor Burke released his ground-breaking book, aptly title Learning Agility, Dr. Burke, along with partners at the Center for Creative Leadership, assessed hundreds of leaders to determine the behaviors needed to adapt and maximize leadership potential.
Dr. Burke defines learning agility as a set of skills for dealing with new experiences flexibly and rapidly. These skills involve trying new behavior, getting feedback on those attempts, and making quick adjustments, so new learning occurs when there is no clear path to success.
How has your learning agility affected your impact as an individual contributor or leader in your organization?

Why Customer Experience Equals Open Mindset

Dr. Dweck is a Stanford University professor of personality, social, and developmental psychology. Her work looks at how beliefs shape individual differences, and her book Mindset -The New Psychology of Success is a must-read for anyone trying to drive personal or organizational change. Mindset offers insights on how belief systems foster or hinder growth and development. The good news from Carol Dweck’s work is that fixed mindsets don’t have to stay fixed. Like all behavioral change, the first step in transformation requires an honest assessment of the areas where your mindset is fixed. The next step involves a calculation of the risks that come from staying stuck and the benefits of growth. With honest self-assessment and a reason to change, the next step is to craft a plan that challenges underlying assumptions or breaks through those beliefs that keep you stuck. How would you rate your organization on a 10-point scale, with one being completely fixed and ten being completely growth-oriented? In what areas is your organization stuck, and in what areas are you growing?

Remove the NOT | Mindset & Agility – The Rocket Fuel for Customer Experience Success

Given the complexity of business, specialization is a natural and powerful force. Often in larger organizations, the research and development department owns much of the innovation. For example, a customer experience leader might enlist the services of their agile team to gather input, create a minimally viable solution, and iterate product or service improvements. In that case, it's easy to conclude innovation is NOT your area.
I’m convinced all of us can and should nurture our innate creative skills. As such, I often ask my clients to think beyond easy solutions by asking questions like "What else might you do?" or "Let's assume that option isn't available – now what?" As my clients internalize those types of questions, they hardwire creative inquiry and idea hunting into their company culture.
What excellent customer service ideas or innovations have come from people other than those tasked to generate them?

Embrace Ambiguity, Failure, and Fun | Mindset & Agility – The Rocket Fuel for Customer Experience Success

In A Whack on the Side of the Head, Roger suggests that clarity is essential for communication but can be limiting when it comes to ideation. In essence, when we don't embrace the multi-faceted nature of problems we often rush to simple and incomplete solutions (typically selecting the first logical solution that comes to mind). Similarly, Roger believes that errors "are a sign that you are diverging from the well-traveled path" since an error can be "a stepping-stone to some new idea you might not have otherwise discovered." He goes onto suggest that you must "strengthen your 'risk muscle.' Everyone has one, but you have to exercise it, or else it will atrophy. Make it a point to take at least one risk every twenty-four hours." Routinely, I help leadership teams enter a playful and safe ideation space before we tackle serious customer experience challenges. In what ways do you and your team embrace ambiguity?

There’s More than One Way | Mindset & Agility – The Rocket Fuel for Customer Experience Success

In 1983, while pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Southern California, I got a creative nudge from the book A Whack on the Side of the Head – How You Can Be More Creative. The book's author, Roger von Oech (who received his Ph.D. from Stanford in the history of ideas and creativity), offered keen insights which were foundational to professor Carol Dweck's work on growth mindset and professor Warner Burke's research on learning agility. Since customer experience elevation requires flexibility, creativity, and adaptivity, this series of posts will cover the work of Drs. von Oech, Dweck, and Burke and will start with three of von Oech's ten mental locks, which he says are hazardous to creative thinking.

World-Class CX Leaders | Storytelling – It‘s Worth its Weight in Gold…and Diamonds

Recently, I have been asked to highlight companies that demonstrate breakthrough (CX) customer experience innovation. So, before I launch into another series, I'll highlight a world-class CX leader named Zameer Kassam Fine Jewelry. As you may know, the Manhattan-based jeweler serves upscale clients across the globe who are looking for custom-designed jewelry, especially engagement rings or other items that celebrate a milestone. The CX superpower for Zameer Kassam is storytelling. How are you helping your customer create the story they will share about your product or service?

Deliver 5 Levels of Value | Team Member and Customer Experience Value

Fairly early in my career, I was fortunate to happen upon customer value theories and research conducted by Professors Sheth, Newman, and Gross. In their book, Consumption Values and Market Choices – Theory and Application, these authors reviewed more than 200 studies on customer value. The book is a rich resource on what drives customer choice, ways to inquire about customer value and data analytic approaches to consumer preferences. I will highlight the core tenets of the theory expressed and tested by these researchers and outline five types of consumer value.
Read more at https://www.josephmichelli.com/blog/levels-of-value/.