Michael Jor­dan is well known for the “Break­fast Club” rou­tine that he cre­at­ed to build men­tal strength and phys­i­cal en­durance nec­es­sary to out­play the com­pe­ti­tion. This rou­tine was a gru­elling, ear­ly morn­ing work­out ses­sion in his base­ment gym, that took place dai­ly, no ex­cus­es. Whether it was a game day or not. The take­away here is that the in­vis­i­ble work set the foun­da­tion for re­sults and, in MJ’s case, for great­ness.

The same prin­ci­ple holds for ser­vice great­ness. Win­ning at vis­i­ble cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence means that a busi­ness first has to win on the in­vis­i­ble side of its op­er­a­tions. This means fo­cussing on En­able­ment, on Ef­fi­cien­cy and on Evo­lu­tion as three of the key levers that dri­ve cus­tomer suc­cess.

En­able­ment in­cludes the tech­nol­o­gy that pow­ers the busi­ness, the hor­i­zon­tal col­lab­o­ra­tion across de­part­ments, da­ta an­a­lyt­ics that dri­ve busi­ness in­tel­li­gence and cus­tomer in­sights that in­flu­ence mar­ket­ing de­ci­sions.

Many busi­ness­es have in­vest­ed in on­ly the “min­i­mum” re­quired tech­no­log­i­cal ar­chi­tec­ture and dig­i­tal tools to en­able ba­sic buy-sell, or man­u­fac­ture-sell op­er­a­tions. The re­al play­ers in­vest in tech­nol­o­gy to gain a com­pet­i­tive edge in the mar­ket­place.

Dig­i­tal tools are used to go be­yond the min­i­mum de­liv­ery thresh­old. Those busi­ness­es that would have been in­vest­ing in tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­u­ous­ly, were way ahead of the dig­i­tal mi­gra­tion emer­gency caused by the pan­dem­ic. They would not have need­ed to move at break neck speed to sur­vive, like some of their lag­gard coun­ter­parts.

Hor­i­zon­tal col­lab­o­ra­tion con­nects the en­ter­prise. When a cus­tomer comes to the front desk or the front­line counter for ser­vice, he or she ex­pe­ri­ences the lev­el of in­vis­i­ble hor­i­zon­tal col­lab­o­ra­tion, across de­part­ments, at play.

“Talk” de­fines the lev­el of pre­ci­sion with which trans­ac­tions are ex­e­cut­ed. If the “talk­ing” is har­mo­nious, then the trans­ac­tion is seam­less and ef­fort­less. If “talk­ing” is spot­ty, the re­sult is ser­vice fail­ures, com­plaints and, even rep­u­ta­tion­al im­pair­ment.

There are few busi­ness­es that have en­gaged da­ta and cus­tomer an­a­lyt­ics as a strate­gic im­per­a­tive in their de­ci­sion mak­ing. The ben­e­fit of util­is­ing cus­tomer an­a­lyt­ics for ex­am­ple, lies in re­al­ly get­ting to know and un­der­stand cus­tomers’ pat­terns of be­hav­iour, buy­ing mo­tives and val­ue ex­pec­ta­tions.

When a busi­ness fol­lows through on these deep in­sights, cus­tomer per­sonas can be cre­at­ed to make the mar­ket­ing ef­fort, as well as prod­uct and ser­vice dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, more tar­get­ed and there­fore, more pre­cise.

Ef­fi­cien­cy is up next on the podi­um. Through the eyes of the cus­tomer, a busi­ness is ex­pect­ed to be “Prompt and Pre­cise.”

Which is why it’s so dif­fi­cult for cus­tomers to ac­cept sus­tained er­rors, some of which are so fun­da­men­tal that they should not be part of the er­ror log. Hu­man er­rors out­strip the num­ber of ma­chine er­rors gen­er­al­ly. To cus­tomers, un­re­spon­sive­ness, for­get­ful­ness, lack of fol­low through and lack of tech­ni­cal knowl­edge are some of the usu­al sus­pects in ser­vice fail­ures, while repet­i­tive er­rors tend to come up as the most ir­ri­tat­ing.

Be­fore the dis­cus­sion about cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence man­age­ment even comes up, a thresh­old stan­dard should be that ze­ro er­rors is en­forced to which every de­part­ment is held ac­count­able.

Three good start­ing points to achieve this stan­dard­i­s­a­tion, would be to en­sure per­ma­nent fix­es for er­rors, to elim­i­nate hu­man er­rors and to com­mit to do­ing things right from start.

If this shift to­wards qual­i­ty con­trol be­comes a non-ne­go­tiable busi­ness guar­an­tee, I guar­an­tee that we will see an up­lift in qual­i­ty as­sur­ance.

The pan­dem­ic caused ne­ces­si­ty to be­come the moth­er of ac­cel­er­a­tion, pro­pelling many busi­ness­es to com­press two to three years of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in­to two to three months. So, why stop here?

Hav­ing made the leap to a new space in 2020 that your busi­ness had not en­vis­aged in 2019, it just makes sense to keep evolv­ing your busi­ness.

We of­ten dis­cov­er what we’re ca­pa­ble of achiev­ing when we’re un­der pres­sure. Just think of jump­ing over a six foot high wall, just to es­cape be­ing mauled by a cou­ple of rag­ing dogs.

Why should busi­ness­es wait to be un­der pres­sure to put every­thing un­der the mi­cro­scope and ex­plore the op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­no­va­tion?

They should do now what the Fu­tur­ists tell us to do. Take a deep look in­to the fu­ture, see what changes are ex­pect­ed to hap­pen with­in the next five to ten years, dis­as­sem­ble ex­ist­ing busi­ness blue­prints to match what they’re see­ing in the crys­tal ball and ac­cel­er­ate the re­quired changes.

Busi­ness­es, like hu­mans, crave sta­bil­i­ty. Un­cer­tain­ty feels alien, pro­duces fear and there­fore en­cour­ages re­laps­ing to a rou­tine that feels com­fort­able and emo­tion­al­ly calm­ing. But, this state is de­cep­tive­ly at odds with the need for ac­tion, sim­ply to re­main com­pet­i­tive in the world of busi­ness, giv­en the con­flu­ence of changes that are com­ing hard and fast.

We are liv­ing in in­ter­est­ing times. In one fell swoop, the ex­pe­ri­ence of the past four months has pushed us to the point of new re­al­i­sa­tions of what is pos­si­ble when faced with lit­tle choice. The ex­pe­ri­ence has re­vealed that lim­i­ta­tions ex­ist large­ly in our minds and, if noth­ing else, that busi­ness­es can set and achieve bold tar­gets.

So if your busi­ness is in­tent on win­ning with its cus­tomers, all that has to be added to the new play­book, is the will to en­able, to be ef­fi­cient, to evolve and the im­me­di­ate ac­tion to back up the will.