Westpac wrong on closing bank branches

This is a sign that this banks is now starting to understand that customers want to deal with real people. But is it going far enough? There is more to delivering successful customer outcomes than dealing with people in person but at least the bank is empowering branch managers to make decisions for themselves.

See http://bit.ly/20sDxl

Finally - A Bank That Wants to Help Their Customers

Now here is a bank that is looking to provide services that its customers might actually need rather than telling the customer what they want. Financial services provider Malayan Banking (Maybank) has launched an online income tax payment service for its customers.

See http://bit.ly/1FcVu5

The Evolution of Business Process Excellence

Here is an excellent article on the evolution of Business Process Excellence. It starts with the early days of Total Quality Management, Business Process Improvement, Six Sigma, Lean, BPM and concludes with an explanation of Customer Expectation Management; an emergent management and business approach with the powerful idea of defining your business, not in terms of the goods and services you provide, but in terms of "customer expectations."

See http://bit.ly/RAYOp

The Opportunity for Business is the Customer Inexperience

The reason businesses are in business is to serve customers. "There are many opportunities for businesses to help customers free up time to get things done."

By looking at the customer process from outside-in, business can create both new opportunities, improvements and innovations. In delivering on the customers expectation, a business will position itself ahead of its competition, providing it with an overall strategy that will allow it to ultimately be successful.

See http://bit.ly/30laE

Apple iPod

It is interesting that throughout history, there are many examples of where the first person or company that created something new were not able to capitalise on the first mover advantage and nothing is more true than in the MP3 market. At the time the iPod came out, there were a lot of MP3 devices already in the market. So what made the iPod the defacto standard?

First of all, marketing helps and when gadgets look cool, then people are drawn to them. Comparing the iPod to the generic USB-looking MP3 devices around at the time there was no comparison, the iPod won hands down.

Next is the interface, the early MP3 players either had an LCD screen, the later ones had a colour screen but really did not take full advantage of it. The iPod on the other hand displays song information and provides album covers and cover flow, which is a nice touch and ads to the user experience.

Next, user interaction - click buttons versus click wheel. This innovation made it easy for users to scroll through large songs lists and immediately raised the customer expectation. Once you've used it you'll never go back.

Finally, the complete end-to-end experience. For acquiring MP3 files, generic MP3 manufacturers leveraged off third party systems such as Windows Media Player. This proved to be problematic. Any problems users experienced due to software updates, upgrades, software errors, connection problems and so on were not considered to be the fault of the MP3 manufacturer, nor did Microsoft take any responsibility for the problems because it was associated with a third party device. No-one owned the user experience. Apple looked at the user experience from end-to-end and their response was to provide iTunes, an application which made it easy to acquire songs on iPods and other Apple devies.

Now the Apple iPod, iTouch and iPhone have become the defacto standard as mobile entertainment platforms and they have helped make Apple one of the most successful technology companies of the 21st century. Apple is defintely a good example of an outside-in company and this year, Apple was named 6th in the Millward Brown Optimor TOP 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2009.

Why customers may never become customers again

Where there is so much competition around, you have to earn a customer's loyalty and that means providing "great products at the right price and backing it up with great service". Shouldn't all customers deserve this quality, not just new customers but even customers that have already been loyal. If it really is better to save an existing customer than to find a new one, why do companies not look after their loyal customers better? Is it because they have already given enough of their money that they have already become profitable? Is it because companies have customer aquisition strategies in place but do not have similar strategies in place to keep customers?

In another example of where every customer interaction is a moment of truth, if a company makes it easy for a customer to leave then the customer may come back in time. Make it difficult, and the customer may never return.

See http://bit.ly/7ixuK

How company's waste money

Here is a great blog post from The Process Ninja about Fantastic Furniture. This post highlights the importance of process and what can happen when processes are not in place. This classic example highlights how every customer interaction is a Moment of Truth and every MOT creates work.

See http://bit.ly/TlN1Q

Example of Inside-out (United Airlines) v Outside-In (Southwest)

Here is a great example of how looking outside in, delivering upon successful customer outcomes can provide long term business success. The comparison is made over a decade and makes for an interesting comparison. So does Outside-In really make a difference?

See http://bit.ly/gw5fC

Who are the customers of government?

A very relevant article on the importance of knowing who the customer is and delivering to the customers expectation in the public service. Unfortunately this ideology appears to be lost to both the Australian federal government and NSW state government at the moment. So the question has to be asked, isn't the sole purpose of the government supposed to be to look after the will of the people?

http://bit.ly/IdoQr

British Airways asks staff to work unpaid for up to a month

Last month, British Airways posted a record annual loss of £400 million (US$656 million). Here is what contributed to this record loss:

• demand for the airline's passenger seats and cargo holds fell during the last financial year
• its fuel bill rocketed to almost £3 billion (US$4.7 billion)
• British Airways, like its premium-class competitors, is losing customers to cheaper rivals

So what has the airline decided to do?

The company has made a switch in strategy, trying to tempt passengers with lower fares, sacrificing profit per seat for "bums on seats." This idea is not new and comes from the budget airlines such as EasyJet, who know their customers and what they want. See http://bit.ly/pnQTr.

Interestingly that it should take a crisis such as this to force the company to provide its customers cheaper seats when this has been going on for some time now.

See here for the details of the crisis http://bit.ly/P90Nk

This strategy is unlikely to help significantly because the company is still looking at things from the inside out and it would take a complete re-evaluation of the company's focus, looking at things from outside in, to dig it out of this hole.

Does Outside-In Make A Difference?

The combination of the latest results from the fourth annual BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands from Millward Brown Optimor, with the list of established BPM companies makes interesting reading:

- 7 of the top 15 companies are outside-in, with all producing positive yearly results
- 4 of the top 15 companies are inside out, with all producing negative yearly results

See here for full details: http://bit.ly/3NgBj

American Airlines Follows Southwest's Lead

American Airlines is no longer going to accept cash on board flights, going fully plastic and following the example set by Southwest in 2008. How is this outside-in, follow the link below to see the full article.

http://bit.ly/OUmzU

Zip-top bags, monkeys, BPM and business rules

One of my personal favourites about BPM and monkeys and the moral to the story is "Don't beat up the guy trying to improve your business processes with the clear goal of rationalizing you and your collegues?"

http://bit.ly/o2vNP

Google Wave

Once again Google is redefining the way we do things or will do things in the future. This time, it is called Google Wave, a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web. How do Goolge define it:

It's not a product. It's a user happiness pill

See it here:

http://bit.ly/oEKbk

How Can Air Travel Be Free?

I breakdown of where Ryanair gets its revenue from. Once again, knowing your customer and knowing where their journey starts and ends is the key.

http://bit.ly/11bJNJ

The Manhattan Effect

The excellence of any business depends on the willingness of its customers and employees to provide direct and honest feedback. Real-time feedback is crucial to addressing the customer's complaint and fixing the problem before the next customer comes through the door. The ability to measure things begets new behaviours.

http://bit.ly/TWTxj

Ryanair set for £8 flights to US

How can an airline offer flights for £8 to anywhere? The answer is to know your customer and where the customer experience starts and ends.

http://bit.ly/xo7gM

Profits jump at Virgin Atlantic

Some companies look outside-in, some companies still look inside-out. Virgin understands the new business paradigm whilst BA just doesn't get it.

http://bit.ly/V3feY

And here is a link to help understand why British Airways is unable to compete in today's market, largely because they are using a 70's or 80's mentality to improve processes without looking at successful customer outcomes - http://bit.ly/AmW9o

Reference - http://bit.ly/geXSf