ASQ asks, "How will this shift to an experience economy affect the quality industry? What quality practices can be applied or adapted to ensure success in this new economic structure?"
In the Experience economy your products and/or services can surpass competitors by creating a consistently superior experience for your customer, delivering increased perceived value. In today's experiential economy the reliability and quality of products and services alone are considered "expected" or "basic" levels of quality achievement. Today's savvy consumers want satisfying experiences throughout the value chain, from when they first gain awareness of your product or service, to its purchase and even post-purchase transactions. Every step along this value chain is an opportunity (aka touchpoint) to delight the customer. In this experience based economy, a satisfying customer experience delivers a demonstrable competitive advantage. Higher levels of satisfaction lead to increased customer loyalty. The ultimate expression of such loyalty is customer advocacy of your products and services. Customer advocates provide trusted word of mouth advertising, resulting in increased sales, revenue, and growth. A great way to begin understanding the customer experience with your products and services is to construct a "Journey Map" for each customer type.
In their book, A leader’s guide to innovation in the experience economy, B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore state that "Mass customization is the route up the progression of economic value (see Exhibit 1), customizing a good turns it into a service, customizing a service turns it into an experience and customizing an experience turns it into a transformation. Companies should focus on reaching inside of the individual, living, breathing customer, making their offerings as personal and as individual as the customer – whether it’s a consumer or business desiring that offering."
What quality practices can be applied or adapted to ensure success in this new economic structure?
In order to achieve the goal of delivering consistently superior customer experience, the organization and its Quality professionals must focus on the customer. Everyone in the organization - from the CEO to management, staff, production, and support must understand who their customers are and what they value; understand the organization's strengths and weaknesses, who are your competitors and what are your customers' perceptions of the competitors' advantages. A customer-focused organization must also develop strategies, objectives and tactics to meet future customer requirements and organizational needs.
The Baldrige Criteria offers a well-structured framework to build organizational performance excellence, focusing on the key areas of:
- Leadership
- Strategic Planning
- Customers
- Measurement, Analysis and Knowledge Management
- Workforce
- Operations
- Results
Understanding your organizational profile and situation are excellent places to begin the improvement journey. Customer-focused organizations typically require that EVERYONE become a Problem Solver, often implementing such improvement strategies as Lean, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management, etc. Strategic Planning should include an environmental scan and benchmarking to reveal the organization's strategic challenges and opportunities, and encourage intelligent risk to drive innovation. The organization's core competencies must be identified, strengthened and leveraged to achieve its strategies and objectives. Strategic planning, business execution and change management are areas ripe for the quality professional to build upon his/her ancillary skills.
A customer focused organization that consistently delivers superior customer satisfaction resulting in loyalty and advocacy can only be achieved with an empowered and engaged workforce. "Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first." (Simon Sinek). An engaged employee gives his/her utmost. Again, per Simon Sinek, "The responsibility of leadership is to serve their people so that their people may better serve the customer. If leaders fail to serve their people first, customer and company will suffer." Quality professionals can strengthen their indispensability to the organization by building on their competencies of process and systems thinking to enhance teamwork dynamics and manage organizational white spaces, resulting in improved organizational communication, alignment and performance.
Implementing a measurement system to monitor customers' perceptions of your products and services is another key area of focus for the Quality professional. In today's connected world, metrics around social media content and customer feedback are necessary to understand and improve customer relationships. Commercial services now exist to help an organization listen to its current customers, lost customers and potential customers.
Improving the quality of your organization's performance effectiveness will deliver delightful customer experiences.
