Jim Bampos, VP of Customer Quality at EMC Corporation, was one of [...]]]> When you can attribute a 20% revenue gain to a customer centric culture or program, you get noticed. And that’s exactly what happened to several Voice of the Customer thought leaders during the annual Allegiance Engage Summit 2011 in Deer Valley, Utah.

Jim Bampos, VP of Customer Quality at EMC Corporation, was one of the show stealers–and for good reason. Unlike many companies who talk a good game about putting customers first, EMC can prove it.

EMC dances on the leading edge of the Voice of the Customer (VoC) movement.

Click here to watch the 7 minute Jim Bampos EMC interview.

VoC programs emerged from the market research milieu. This term describes the in-depth process of capturing a customer’s expectations, preferences and aversions. Specifically, VoC systems produce a detailed set of customer wants and needs and prioritizes them in terms of relative importance and satisfaction with current alternatives. Highly evolved VOC program leaders also analyze and act upon free form customer comments from multiple sources, including call centers, salespeople, Twitter, etc.

VoC solution providers such as Allegiance, based in South Jordan, Utah, have flourished in response to the VoC movement. EMC became one of their early adopters out of necessity.

Although EMC was enjoying double digit growth, it was facing intense competition. They needed to think differently about the customer experience. Says Bampos, “We really did not understand the full customer life cycle from the time that they were made aware of our solutions to the end of life of our products. The professional services organization was the first to launch a pilot VOC program to bridge the gaps between the customers and the internal support organization.”

EMC’s VoC pilot program gained traction within two years. Since launching the VOC program, they have witnessed a 30 point Net Promoter Score improvement and over 20% revenue increase–representing hundreds of millions of top line revenue.

Other competitive industries are following suit. During her Summit keynote presentation, Bonny Simi of JetBlue also shared details about their Voice of the Customer program. “Our mission is to bring humanity back to travel. How can you know how you are doing without asking your customers?” Simi, an accomplished business strategist, Olympian and airline captain, described their palpable two year VOC journey. Simi and her team juggle 50,000 survey responses per month and 1.6 million Twitter followers. Gathering and analyzing customer data is a small piece of the VoC puzzle. She spends a great deal of time demonstrating the value and ROI of their program, as well as gaining sponsors across departments and locations.

Click here to watch the 5 minute Bonny Simi JetBlue interview.

The right survey tools can help smooth out the VoC journey, but should not precede solid branding, a customer-obsessed culture, and strong executive sponsorship. Bruce Temkin, founder of Temkin Group in Boston Massachusetts, emphasizes that companies need to master four customer experience competencies in order to become truly customer-centric: purposeful leadership, compelling brand Values, employee engagement, and customer connectedness. Temkin posits that “It turns out that companies are only as strong as their weakest link. VoC Programs are often an important tool in building the Customer Connectedness competency. We recently had more than 200 large companies complete our competency assessment and only 3% ended up at the highest level of customer experience management maturity, what we call a Customer-Centric Organization.”

After spending three days with over 300 VoC zealots, these statistics do not surprise me. The majority of companies attending the Engage Summit are still in the early stages of determining the ideal data collection and validation methods. VoC leaders still spend most of their time discussing the right listening posts, choosing the questions to ask, and debating ideal metrics to use.

Clearly, most B2B companies have a long way to go towards becoming truly customer-centric. Allegiance is clever enough to create an annual event that attracts fervent customer evangelists–half of whom are not yet their customers–to accelerate industry adoption.

If your company is considering a VoC program launch, beware of the rush to select a technology solution. First, invest the time in defining the purpose of your program. Executive support will take time. Tell people why you are embarking on the program, and how you will use the customer data once you have collected it. VoC programs typically provide these benefits:

1. A detailed understanding of the customer’s requirements
2. A common language for the sales, marketing and product development teams going forward
3. Valuable, real time input to set appropriate design specifications for the new product or service
4. A springboard for innovation.

VoC evangelists Bonny Simi and Jim Bampos have their work cut out for them. With only two years of VoC under their belts, the journey ahead will be met with some resistance. Let’s hope they focus their energies on the art of enchantment and influence, and leave the community building and tool making to market leaders such as Allegiance.

Lisa Nirell is the “Chief Energy Officer” of EnergizeGrowth® LLC. She advises B2B companies who aspire to create sustainable companies by attracting great customers.  Companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Wells Fargo Advisors, and dozens of mid-market companies have worked with Lisa to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.  Visit www.energizegrowth.com and http://blog.energizegrowth.com to assess your company’s readiness to grow by downloading your complimentary Wealthy Company Scorecard.
Copyright 2010, Lisa Nirell. All rights reserved.

The second principle I learned [...]]]> Many (many) summers ago, when I was in training to be a lifeguard on New York’s Lake George, the first principle I learned was how to safely approach a swimmer in distress. A safe approach included talking to them, letting them know I was there to help them, and giving them instructions.

The second principle I learned was how to get out of harm’s way if I didn’t successfully execute the first principle. Good to know.  If the victim locked his arms around my neck, my automatic moves were: my right arm over his arms, right hand under right side of his chin, strongly

push chin to right as my left hand pushed up on other arm, lower my head, swim down and away. Regroup, approach swimmer again, safely.

Then again, there’s always holding your breath. But, if you’re like me, you can’t do it for long enough for the hangers-on to let go.  The “be caught and released” scenario was my out.  (Fascinated with people who do seeming inhuman feats? David Blaine broke the Guinness world record for breath-holding by staying underwater for 17 minutes and 4 seconds on “The Oprah Winfrey Program.”)

A leader must learn to recognize when they have been put in a headlock by the circumstances and are being pulled under, away from their vision, away from leading.  The leadership moves are:  Put your right hand on your belly and breathe deeply 3 times, with your left hand strongly push your chair from the desk, raise your head, stand up and take 3 steps away from the riptide called your  “not-done” list.

Regroup by answering: What is it I need to do this moment to be most effective? (Prioritize? Remake promises?  Stop doing what is comfortable and do what’s needed? Request support from my colleagues? Call my coach?)  Approach work again, safely, from being centered and focused.  Disengaging from the never-ending riptide of circumstances will help you stay on the surface so you don’t have to learn how to breathe underwater.

Camille Smith understands what it takes to change at the individual, team and organizational levels. It’s not easy, it’s worth doing, and it’s required of everyone today, not just leaders. Specializing in transformational leadership, Camille provides the knowledge and coaching to teach others to create and sustain breakthroughs in performance. She doesn’t bring the answers, she creates them with you. Reach her at camille@wipcoaching.com.

In David Allen’s own words, his presentation was a seminar in Advanced Common Sense. Of course, common sense is neither very common nor always obvious; and [...]]]> Along with Howard Morgan, we hosted a terrific session with David Allen on July 8. Thanks to the magic of streaming recording, it’s not too late to access that discussion.

In David Allen’s own words, his presentation was a seminar in Advanced Common Sense. Of course, common sense is neither very common nor always obvious; and David’s observations and insights were frequently eye-opening and extremely helpful.

Essentially, David articulated the mechanics of how we get busy, what we typically do to manage our work and lives, and how to employ better strategies to improve our productivity, creativity and openness to opportunity – something he called, “the freedom to make a mess.” The best practices he discussed work not only for individuals but at the organizational level, too.

David likened the ideal state of mind to the experience of being an advanced martial arts practitioner. You cannot be prepared for every crisis or surprise in life, but if you have a clear mind – a mind like water – then you can react quickly and appropriately to new events.

To give us a sense of where people are at, mentally, with regards to daily affairs, David introduced the GTDIQ grid. People with no control or perspective feel like victims. But that’s a negative word for a state everyone finds themselves in at least several times a day. When we’re in victim state, we’re essentially being responsive to everything that happens. Sometimes, David said, we’re just being responsive to our previous Great Ideas. (That’s the kind of insight into the human condition that makes David’s work so thoughtful.)

A victim’s instinct is to gain control. And to do so we are inclined to become micro-managers. But that mode is too structured to allow much flexibility or creativity.

Organizations stuck in micro-management mode are usually inclined to bring a visionary. But a visionary without control is a “Crazy-maker” – someone who causes others to scramble in their wake and take care of details.

When you have the appropriate amount of control and perspective, you are, what David calls, a Master and Commander – someone who has their eye on the horizon, their hand on the helm, and has a gut-feel sensitivity for what needs more immediate and personal attention.

So how do we get there? David’s long-term research has distilled the issues of control and perspective to their simplest requirements, and he outlined them for us.

There are five stages of control. First, we Identify current reality; then we Clarify “stuff” into categories; then we Organize those categories into appropriate levels of urgency; Reflect on what needs to be done to manage them; and Engage with them in a timely and appropriate way.

As David noted, most people and organizations start with Organize and don’t develop a system for what to do with the “stuff” that bombards them. He also explained that “Stuff” is not bad – but it needs to be captured and clarified to be organized and managed.

Next, David explained how perspective works, and he offered a hierarchy of focus. It starts with Purpose and Principles, through which people and organizations determine what’s important for them to focus on; next comes Vision which is the 5-year horizon that matters to them; followed by Goals which are typically achievable within a year. Responsibilities must also be taken into account – and these are activities that help us maintain, ranging from keeping on track of the merger, to watching our health or checking account balance. Next we have Projects which are things we need to finish to achieve goals and vision; and in support of projects are “Actions” or the tasks we must perform to accomplish projects.

None of this is easy. David noted that the typical executive has 40 to 100 projects on the go, and each of us has about 100 to 200 actions they need to accomplish all the time. The challenge is determining what is important to take on, while recognizing that it’s difficult to ignore anything. Nevertheless, the more control and focus you can achieve, the more productive and creative you can be.

David left us with a final message: Start paying attention to what has your attention. If you don’t, those things will start taking more of your attention than they deserve.

Howard Morgan fielded a lively Q&A session at the end of David’s presentation. Over the coming months, we’ll post excerpts from that discussion on our site.

We thank David Allen for his insights and words. His work continues to advance and make a real difference for people in these busy and confusing times.