Customer engagement and service design in 2011
February 7, 2011 : General Team Building
Picking up on the thread of last month’s ‘Top Tips’ blog, Lead Consultant David Hicks, a specialist in customer engagement and service design, shares with us some of his crystal-ball visions…
“There are a number of things that you need to consider, things thrown to the fore by the dynamics of austerity. Here’s what we’ve been asked to look at with our clients in the coming year:
1. Looking past austerity – organisations need to have one eye on austerity whilst interpreting what it means for them as a unique entity. It’s about defining clearly what austerity might mean for you, your team and your organisation. It’s about moving past ‘working smarter not harder’ to identifying and making sense of levers that can be managed.
2. Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration – yes, Phil and Kirstie might have the location thing pinned, but for organisations it’s about how they will do better with less through various forms of collaboration – internal collaboration linked to external collaboration, specifically with their customers (think customer engagement, service design and operational branding).
3. Operational Branding – if you don’t know what this is, Google it now to find out! It’s what happens once the advertising ends and how the brand promise is delivered to your customers. It’s a mix of points 1 and 2 above with bells on. On a need to know basis – you need to know!
4. Porous organisational boundaries – you need to have these to get ideas from the outside to improve your competitiveness from the inside.
5. Well-designed rapid prototyping – there’s not enough time or money for big scale market research, focus groups or long winded innovation. 2011 will be about how organisations manage the best ideas, try them out real time and implement them fast. We’re working with companies to set some big ideas up for launch in a small but quick way. (Heard of pop-up shops? This is about pop-up innovation).”
For more information on the above or any related area of interest in organisation development and Learning & Development in Edinburgh, Scotland and across the UK please contact Sandy Smith on 0131 333 0066 and sandy@maximillion.co.uk.
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