CX Book Gems #1: "Outside In" by Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine
Book summary of "Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business" by Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine.
This week’s book is Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business (2012) by Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine.
📘 Book summary
Customer experience (CX) is the key differentiator for businesses in the modern marketplace. The book emphasizes the need for businesses to adopt a customer-focused perspective, prioritizing customer needs and their experiences with products or services over internal processes.
Outside In reveals a new imperative: creating and nurturing a system of interdependent, self-reinforcing practices that align employees, partners, processes, policies and technology around customers. This is not just the same old “focus on the customer” message. It requires a new way to manage, looking deep into every process to see whether it supports the overall goal: Deliver a great customer experience.
We have entered the age of the customer where empowered buyers have more power than ever and demand customer focus.
Mature CX organizations excel at 6 essential disciplines:
Strategy practices: Set of practices for creating a CX strategy, aligning with company’s overall strategy, and prioritizing across the organization.
Customer-understanding practices: Set of practices for creating a consistent shared understanding of customers, what they want and need, and how they perceive their interactions.
Design practices: Set of practices for envisioning and implementing customer interactions that meet or exceed customer needs.
Measurement practices: Set of practices for quantifying CX quality in a consistent way across the organization.
Governance practices: Set of practices for managing CX in proactive and disciplined way.
Culture practices: Set of practices for creating a system of shared values and behaviors that focus employees on delivering great CX.
These disciplines represent the areas where companies that are consistently great at customer experience excel.
MindMeister mind map
Download the MindMeister mind map of Outside In at https://www.mindmeister.com/3154356959/outside-in-by-manning-and-bodine.
💎 3 CX gems
Customer journey: Understand your customers’ entire experience, from first contact to final interaction. This holistic view can reveal gaps in service and highlight areas for improvement. As a business leader, prioritize this process to align all departments towards the common goal of customer satisfaction.
Customer feedback loop: Establishing a feedback loop allows customers to share their experiences and insights. Use this information to make data-driven decisions and keep improving your product or service based on real customer needs.
Empower employees: Empower your employees to take ownership of the customer experience. Make sure they understand the importance of their role in shaping customer experiences and equip them with the necessary resources and training to perform effectively.
The key message is crystal clear – businesses need to put the customer at the center of everything they do. Let’s shift from an inside-out to an outside-in perspective.