Lean CX Steps | Project Success

“I am absolutely thrilled to introduce the Lean CX Score, and an excerpt from the Introduction of the book below. The book starts with a bang and never lets go, and even within this short piece of the Lean CX Score you will hear stories and see research with the power to help you create disruptive products and services. I hope you enjoy it!”

– David McLachlan

This is an excerpt from "The Lean CX Score." Get your copy now and start creating disruptors that completely annihilate your competition.

Oh and good news! You'll be improving the speed, morale and engagement of your teams at the same time. Get the Lean CX Score now.

Introduction

Tom Corley woke up early one morning and realised something incredible.

He had spent the past five years following more than 300 people with the aim of answering a very specific question, and he finally had the answer. You see, Tom had always wanted to know if our habits – the things we did every day – really did have an effect on our lives.

More specifically, Tom wanted to know if there were certain habits that separated the country’s wealthiest people – with a net worth of $3.2 million or more, and those who were just getting by, with a net worth of $5,000 or less.

Was the difference to do with their family? Was it where they lived? Or where they went to school? No, it wasn’t any of those things. In fact, when Tom finally found it, it surprised even him.

The number one habit of the country’s wealthiest people was something that anyone could do, although most people don’t. It was reading. But not just any reading. It was reading for self-improvement *¹.

It was something that you are doing right now.

I told you this story because I believe by reading this book you are doing something special. After all, how often is it that someone picks up a book like this? It could have been that person you work with, the person browsing the books next to you or maybe someone else in your family. But it was you.

Reading for self-improvement was also what I was doing, before the discovery of the Lean CX Score. I was searching for answers, and I was searching for improvement just like you. I read hundreds of books on ways to improve life and business, and in fields such as strategy, team building, personal psychology, business improvement and project management.

It’s no accident that this number one habit makes such a difference. It works because the more you learn, the more people you can help. And the more people you can help, the more you, too, are rewarded – with a better business, happier team-mates, more paying customers, a better income, and a happier life.

The most successful companies provide a service to thousands (if not millions) of people, and are rewarded with millions (or billions) of dollars in return. Apple, Uber, Amazon, Zappos, Microsoft, Google, Netflix – the names may change but the principles stay the same. It was in studying these companies that were a success that I discovered the six key things anyone can do to make their own lives a success.

These six key things not only created businesses that completely outdid their competition, but they also improved the morale, speed and productivity of normal teams and tasks as well. It was something that needed to be revealed so all could benefit, instead of just a chosen few.

It was something that needed to be shared.

The Customer is Always Right… Right?

It needed to be shared because most people aren’t getting the full story, and even then, the information is often conflicting.

Take just two recent examples, both from first class institutions. The Harvard Business Review revealed that while “delighting customers” was the focus of many CEOs and leadership teams, it wasn’t the key to keeping customers coming back. Reducing their effort – the work they had to do to get their problem solved – was the real solution to repeated sales *².

But research by a firm called Ebiquity took the opposite view, where they found in 2014 that 75% of customers who received a “delightful” customer experience were willing to spend more with the companies that gave it to them *³.

Which one is right?

You’ll have to read on for the answer. But when you do, you will see exactly how this research works, and how you can use them both to seriously improve your own results. We will use real life stories and research, and it will be a handy resource to keep and have all this information in the one place.

If you’re curious to learn more about it, let’s reveal a little piece of the Lean CX Score to get started.

What is the Lean CX Score?

The Lean CX Score is a set of six separate, actionable steps, all equally important to your CX. Each step in the Lean CX Score has one question. If you answer the question positively you get a point, but if you answer the question negatively you have some work to do to improve. Five out of six points means you are delivering an outstanding customer experience. Anything below that means you have an opportunity for greater profit by improving – or face the threat of your competition stealing your customers. It’s that simple.

Here are the steps…

To see the rest of the Lean CX Framework, its research and stories, you can get the full Lean CX Score on Amazon now, and be the disruptor, not the disrupted!

More chapters from The Lean CX Score book:

Lean CX – The Emperor And The Wise Man

By now you may have heard about the Lean CX Score, and are wondering to yourself “What’s all the fuss about?” So let’s cut to the chase. Below are the six separate, actionable steps in the Lean CX Score. Each one by itself can create incredible growth, profit and scalability in your team, your startup, your business and your life. But together, they are truly the greatest secret to creating disruptive products and services in any industry – new or old.

The six Lean CX Score steps can be remembered with the acronym ROVE CP (at least that’s how I remember it).

Repeatable Process
One Step Flow
Visual (and Audio) Management
Error Proofing
Check and Stop
Problem Solve for Exponential Growth

The steps also become six questions, which you can use to get your point for that step. The questions look like this:

Is my customer experience the same great experience every time?
Did it take only one step for my customer to get what they wanted?
Can my customer understand what to do first time, without having to ask?
Is it impossible to make a mistake?
Is there a check to see if my customer got what they wanted?
(How) do we use feedback?

If they don’t make much sense now, don’t worry. By the time you’ve been through the stories and real life research in this book, you will be an expert on them.

Which brings us to a quick note on reading this book. Some people may be tempted to think that they know all about these steps just by seeing the headings, or to skip ahead to the last chapter and see how their business measures up. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – different people learn in different ways, and sometimes getting an overview (such as in Chapter Seven) can help you learn more quickly.

Just remember that each chapter has the finer details you’ll need to take things to the next level, and in skipping ahead you may miss some of those things. Also remember that these are not the same tools you may have seen before. I’ve made the process simpler, faster, and easier to use with a few adjustments – adjustments I’ve made by seeing the results on the actual front lines of customer service and CX over many years. If you approach this book with an open mind, you will see some amazing things begin to happen.

You may have heard the story of the Emperor who asked the advice of the wisest man in his kingdom. When the wise man appeared he did not speak, and instead asked for a cup, together with a saucer and some tea. He poured the tea into the cup with great poise as the court watched with amazement, but even when the cup was full he kept pouring until tea was spilling down the sides and onto the table.

Finally the Emperor could take it no longer and yelled “Stop, stop you crazy old man! Can’t you see that the cup is full?”

It was then the wise man stopped pouring and said: “You are like this cup – I cannot pour my wisdom because your cup is already full. If you truly seek my council, your cup must first be empty.”

Your cup must first be empty.

If you genuinely want incredible results, start this journey with a “beginner’s mind”, where you leave your pre-conceptions at the door and your cup is able to be filled. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s there are few.

So read the chapters to get a full understanding, read the stories of people who have done it before, and read how they used it to win. At the end of the book you’ll see how to rate your own business or team, and start to see the incredible rewards that good CX can bring.

Let’s do it!

More chapters from The Lean CX Score book: