Articles

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We have written a number or articles on Customer Experience, Customer Loyalty and Customer retention. We now tend to write these as blogs, so please make sure you visit our blog page here as well.

‘Inside-out’ or ‘Outside-in’; how Business Process Re-engineering and Six Sigma promise but fail to consider the customer
By Steven Walden, Principal Consultant and Head of Research for Beyond Philosophy
BPR, Six Sigma and Lean are constrained by their inside-out view of business processes, being aligned more to a cost cutting than a value-creating or maintaining agenda. Indeed, the limitations of a purely cost cutting focus has been recognised by management gurus, Hamel and Prahalad (1994), who argue that re-engineering – when applied as a cost cutting tool – leads to “corporate anorexia”, and that corporations “can’t shrink into greatness”. Instead, they argue, companies should define their core competencies and try to use them to aggressively and proactively define the future of their industries and markets.

The Value of Emotions in the B2B Customer Experience
By Steven Walden, Principal Consultant and Head of Research for Beyond Philosophy
The three values of emotion From our business to business research we found three core values of emotion. These we define as follows: Intrinsic Value, Add Value & Risk assessment

Best Practice: NPS Survey Integrated with Account Planning
By Sue Morgan of Beyond Philosophy
Goal: Build customer experience metrics discipline into customer-led account planning. Individualized coaching to Sales/Account Managers to enable all accounts to complete the NPS survey; and successfully communicate results and action plan to customer, and integrate into account planning.

Customer Experience Council
By Colin Shaw, Founder of Beyond Philosophy
One of the big problems any organization faces is how to get their people to look at the customer’s end to end experience through the eyes of the customer, when they are only responsible for one part of that experience, i/e call centers or shops. As we know, when a customer starts their experience, many different parts of the organizational structure are effected and in so doing gaps and overlaps can occur.

Customer Retention: I could be dead for all they know...
By Colin Shaw, Founder of Beyond Philosophy
It never ceases to amaze me how organizations pour money into attracting new Customers, but comparatively spend little on retaining them. Everyone knows it costs far less to retain an existing customer than acquire a new one, some say it is 5 times more cost effective. Why then is there an obsession with acquiring new Customers and such scant regard given to existing customers? In this article we’ll get to the root cause of this dichotomy.

The DNA of Customer Experience: Chapter 1
Book By Colin Shaw, Founder of Beyond Philosophy

Experience is Perception
By Steven Walden, Principal Consultant and Head of Research for Beyond Philosophy
Experience is Perception About 25 years ago Lucozade changed their brand image from ‘Lucozade aids recovery’ to ‘Lucozade replaces lost energy’, shifting their target market from the sick to the sporty. The effect was dramatic, UK sales between 1984 and 1989 tripled to £75 million. Same drink, different experience!

Mind the Gap: How You and Your Customer Perceive Performance Can Be VERY Different
By Sue Morgan of Beyond Philosophy
It’s All about Perception. Think about how you perceive your company’s performance. Now consider what your customer would say about your company’s performance. Customers have an entirely different perception – a perception that ultimately determines whether or not they choose your service or product and whether they’d recommend your company to others. The more you know about your customer’s perceptions, and how they make their purchasing and business decisions, the more successful your company will be.

Naïve to Natural
By Colin Shaw, Founder of Beyond Philosophy
Aim for "Natural" Customer-Centricity—So Ingrained You Don't Have to Think About It By Colin Shaw, Beyond Philosophy In our research, I have found that the great customer-centric organizations are either comparatively new organizations that have started with a blank sheet of paper or ones with a leader who fundamentally believes the customer should be at the heart of everything the business does. Unfortunately, this does not apply to the vast majority of organizations. To create a customer-centric organization, the first thing you need to do is understand where you are today and then move onto deciding where you want to be, to enable you to define what you need to change.

The Need for Customer Insight to Support the Full Customer Experience
By Qaalfa Dibeehi of Beyond Philosophy
The customer has come of age with in corporate competitive strategy. Every successful big business has recognised that they need to listen to the “voice of the customer” in some form or fashion. The notion is so strong that almost all organisational change management methodologies incorporate a “voice of the customer” component. The message being that big organisations are purposefully moving towards the customer. In order to do so it is, of course, crucial to understand what customers think – to listen to them. Essentially this is the function of customer insight. No big news there. The interesting paradox is that often times the customer insight that these companies rely on is not complete. The research often only investigates the factors in customers’ rational decision making- even when they are intending to delve into attitudes and motivations.

Putting Promoters to Work: A 360% Increase in Revenue Over Three Years (A Case Study)
By Sue Morgan of Beyond Philosophy
A Fortune 500 sales team, in the high tech industry, selling to a leading retail company was tasked with dramatically increasing revenue over a three year period. Sales management already knew the customer was experiencing performance problems and were concerned there might be relationship issues, but were unclear of the exact impact on revenue. Sales management was extremely motivated to learn and apply any new tools to help them meet their revenue stretch goal.

Second Life, Internet Communities and the Next Wave in Customer Experience
By Steven Walden, Principal Consultant and Head of Research for Beyond Philosophy
Second Life, Internet Communities and the Next Wave in Customer Experience Imagine an island off the coast of Britain with a population of 11 million - growing at the rate of at least 1 million citizens per year - where the first language is English and the vast majority of the population are within the age range 17-30. Would you be interested in marketing to this group, could you afford not to?