I’m already at week eight of In a CX Minute? How did I get here?
Well, no one cared enough to win the prize of being my guest in a video, which means I have more writing to do now. Thanks a lot, all of you… I was looking forward to killing some lines with diatribe about a wonderful conversation that serendipitously happened – but instead, I will have to schedule it. So be it – you’ll love my next one, I can tell you that much.
Now, to the business at hand.
First, let me tell you – I am lucky to know a lot of smart people who both agree to spend time with me and chat about my crazy ideas, or who write good stuff that I can “riff” off of. And yes, it is going to be a musical day.
🎼 On the first part of the journey… 🎼
Hank Barnes (Gartner ) is one of those people mentioned above. He wrote this very interesting article a few weeks ago (Embracing a new vendor model to respond to the b2b customer life cycle) that is a very interesting exploration of journeys (in my opinion). True, it is a teaser for their innovation conference (maybe attend? I get 10% of the door… hee-hee) but you can see in this short article how he perceives journeys as non-linear (yay) and iterative (hmmm) at the same time.
This aligns very well with the concept of dynamic journeys we began to discuss a few weeks ago in this column. After all, a non-linear journey (rather, a collection of smaller journeys that aggregate into a complete, larger one) is exactly what we have in mind as we begin to put together what CX should be. And yes, more coming soon on dynamic journeys.
Speaking of more, I am going to begin to write more – but there is a plan behind that. I started this blog / article collection / weekly column with the hope of sharing with you some of the thinking, ideas, reading, and ephemera that makes up my daily life. Like giving you a peek into my crazy, messy brain. Of course, it is hard to write big ideas and complex concepts here, given the concept, so I started looking for a place, a way to share those bigger ideas.
Where do these things I write here end up?
How do they aggregate into a bigger idea?
How do they connect?
To answer those questions, and more like it, I will be starting in the next couple of weeks to publish in ZDNet with tri-weekly frequency (is that every three weeks? Why do we have a fortnight for 15 days – but nothing for 21 days? As an advocate for numerology, the number 21 is more interesting than 15 – there should be a word for it… other than triweekly). Stay tuned for – well, more.
🎼 There were plants and birds and rocks and things 🎼
One more thing for today, rather two – but this is the last link I want to share. Another very smart friend of mine, Allen Bonde, who is now working at Forrester, pushed in the last few weeks a link to a blog where he talks about marketplaces.
I don’t know if you have access to all the content he shares from there (you may need Forrester membership for some of it), but the reason I am mentioning this is because I am a firm believer in marketplaces as the “e-commerce model of the future.”
If you agree that Amazon (affiliate link – just kidding, but you felt you were back at the early days of social where every Josephine, Paula, and Mark – had one, non?) has changed the world of e-commerce, you also must agree that they cannot be the only ones in the world to do that. What they built is not an e-commerce site, it is a marketplace. A global marketplace. What about smaller marketplaces? National? Regional? By industry? By function?
Of course, the real question here is not what about them, but how are you going to support them?
How is your organization going to deliver the necessary integration for a marketplace?
The more important question – how are you going to take the data from the marketplace, talk about big data, or marketplaces and generate insights from them? How are you going to aggregate that with other data? How are you going to do that while you continue to comply with private and public regulations about privacy and data usage? You see where I am going… if I am right, and usually I am – with three well known exceptions I shared before in life – then how you’re going to support them is the easy question – how you are going to generate value from them is the largest and more complex one… again, stay tuned for more.
Ok, wrapping this up since Wondrous Jenn has limits to my talking-to-myself columns. Let me share a little bit of some research and some writing (and by that, I mean PowerPoint, of course) I did this week and last.
🎼 You see I’ve been through the desert… 🎼
I had to prepare a narrative for the market (CX) and the opportunity I see for us. I set out to collect research (I could drive Nicole crazy and say second party, but I won’t because she has enough in her plate to come over and fight me here – and because I know better than calling something second party) and tell a narrative of what the opportunity for CX with data is.
Came up with 5 (oops, sorry Jenn – five) areas where we can improve the outcomes/expectations balance for the organization by using CX (you do know about the outcomes-expectations balance, right? If not, read my previous columns here for more input).
Five ways CX can improve your org:
- Data synthetization (thanks to boss-man Mr. Bob Stutz for the naming, agree with him that mine was dated) talks to the difference between understanding how to generate insights and knowing what to do with those insights (this is, btw, the basic one that all other stems from)
- Communications talks to the actual use of channels, beyond cute marketing words like omnichannel, to meet expectations and what we do there
- Personalization talks to how we need to transform what we do as personalization it is not from our perspective, but from the customer perspective (9/10 think we don’t know them despite everything we collect about them – and they are right)
- Execution talks to the inability to tie CX initiatives with corporate KPIs and metrics that explain the execution behind CX (amen)
- Automation is of course the difference between what we say we are going to do with AI and what we are doing there (don’t get me started – I can’t even)
You will, of course, see a lot more of these in coming weeks both here and in my ZD Net column. Stay tuned, but…
As always, comments? Questions? Concerns? Discerns? You know where to find me apparently – because I am always hearing something about these things I write – in LinkedIn or at the worlds worse kept secret – my email address.
Talk soon.
Find the ‘In a CX Minute’ section HERE to catch up on my other musings.
