Tag Archives: Lean CX

Lean CX: Recognise Disruptors Before They Become A Reality

March 6, 2018Lean CXDavid McLachlan, dispruptor, disruptive, framework, Lean CX, lean management, operational excellence, strategyDavid McLachlan

Recognise disruptors before they become a reality.

Lean CX is a step by step framework for Operational Excellence and how it relates to disruptive companies and technologies – especially as they grow and are ready to scale.

Disruptive companies are those that can deliver something a customer wants faster, cheaper, with better quality and sufficient brand recognition. Think McDonald’s in the 1950s, the model T Ford in the early 1900s, the Apple iPod in the early 2000s or the iPhone in 2007, Uber disrupting the cab industry, Netflix disrupting DVD hire and Amazon disrupting retail.

All of them have at least three of these four in common:

Disruptive Delivery Disruptive Quality Disruptive Cost Disruptive Brand

To take advantage of these customer driven measures, crush compliance and regulation, build your start-up to scale and move toward disrupting an industry, use the step-by-step framework of Lean CX for operational excellence.

Lean CX Lean Management Operational Excellence

Get “The Lean CX Score” book by David McLachlan now, and scale your business, crush compliance and regulation, and achieve operational excellence.

#6 Lean CX Comic – Complicated Work

October 27, 2017Lean CX Comiccomic, complicated work, customer experience, cx, David McLachlan, lean book, lean comic, Lean CX, make it simpleDavid McLachlan

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The Cycle Of Complicated Work

There’s a vicious cycle damning your business to mediocrity, and it’s the cycle of complicated work.

Whether it’s a product you sell, a website or app User Experience you are guiding people through, or a task that your team needs to complete, you are wasting some of your most precious resources and losing money as a result, if it’s more complicated than it needs to be.

But the worst part about it is if your work is complicated, there’s a higher chance that you will be so busy putting out fires, and not have the time to actually improve the work itself. Many managers don’t even know how to design their team’s work for happiness and engagement, but more on this in a moment.

Not only does unnecessarily complicated work take more time, but time costs money, and the increased complexity also drains the attention and focus of your customers and staff. Research has shown that “cognitive load”, or the brain cycles required to complete a task seriously impacts the likelihood of a person continuing to do something, or making mistakes and setting it aside.

Forming Habits and Complicated Products

That means that complicated things also damn the products you sell into a quagmire of mediocrity. In his book, “Hooked”, Nir Eyal describes one of the key things necessary for forming a habit. It is the action your customers need to take, and it should be as easy as possible for them to learn and engage in quickly.

Sure, some customers might put in a larger amount of effort than others, and they might stick with you when something isn’t immediately obvious, but the majority of people – both team mates and customers – are more likely to leave if the work is unnecessarily complicated.

“Unnecessarily complicated” can actually be quantified, and it has been quantified in the book The Lean CX Score by David McLachlan. In that book are outlined five key scenarios that contribute to complicated work. If you remove them, you are many times more likely to enjoy the benefits of happier employees and returning customers.

They are:

Rework, or having to do something more than once to get the required result,
Waiting, or having to wait too long for something to occur,
Excessive Hand-offs, or passing things around between departments, pages or applications,
Excessive Steps, or having to perform too many steps that may not add value, and;
Not getting what they want, or not receiving the actual outcome that was intended.

Lean CX is absolutely the key to designing your work in a mindful way that improves employee engagement, improves customer retention, reduces customer friction and seriously reduces cost.

That means that if you are one of those leaders who wants to improve their results and their team’s engagement and outcomes, but doesn’t know where to start, the absolute best place to start is with the step-by-step process of the Lean CX Score.

I highly recommend you check it out today.

See all the Lean CX Comics here

Get "The Lean CX Score" now, and start creating disruptors in your industry 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.

Lean CX Infographic – The Huge Benefits of Employee Engagement

October 27, 2017Lean CX Infographicbenefits of employee engagement, customer experience, cx, David McLachlan, employee engagement, highly engaged employees, increase productivity, increase profitability, increased sales, Lean, Lean CX, lean infographicDavid McLachlan

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It’s Official: Employee Engagement Has A Huge Impact On Your Profit

For years the greatest leaders have had an inkling that teams who are most engaged actually perform better, and bring more prosperity to their business. Well now it’s official. As the latest numbers from the Gallup Engagement Study show, in the state of the American workforce there is a very telling difference in the productivity, sales, and overall profit of businesses within the top quartile of engagement.

If employee engagement is something that you are struggling with, or even just want to improve, I have some good news.

There Is A Proven Way To Higher Engagement: Design Your Work

The Lean CX Score, a book by David McLachlan, outlines six key steps to creating disruptive products and services, and it also improves the speed, morale and engagement of your teams.

With the latest research pointing to the fact that engagement and profit are inexplicably linked, it may not surprise you that if the Lean CX Score impacts speed and morale, it also has a higher likelihood of creating disruptive products and outstanding businesses.

The six key steps of the Lean CX Score have been linked to research in psychology, business, and plain old motivation. But the main aspect of all of them is the principle of intentionally designing your work, and intentionally designing your product and your experience, so that it meets the needs of your users in a way that keeps them engaged.

When we say “keeping them engaged”, it works for both your customers and your team. Engaged customers are the ones who return to your product, again and again. They are the ones who are your biggest fans, the ones who would walk an extra block to buy from you instead of your competitor.

And engaged team mates are the ones who will go the extra mile for their managers and for their customers – whether it is internal “customers” that they serve with a report or task, or the final, end customer who pays their wage by buying your product or service.

If you haven’t got a copy of the Lean CX Score, I highly recommend you check it out. I guarantee it will have a huge impact on your life.

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Lean CX Infographic – Employee Engagement (and Disengagement)

October 27, 2017Lean CX Infographiccustomer experience, David McLachlan, disengaged employees, disruptor, effect of low engagement, employee engagement, engagement scores, Lean, lean book, lean customer experience, Lean CX, lean infographicDavid McLachlan

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That’s Right – 67% Of Employees Are Disengaged At Work

And that’s just in the U.S, where people get coffee breaks and are paid more than two dollars an hour. It’s even worse if we look at the broader world where those things aren’t guaranteed, factories can pay a handful of dollars with inhumane conditions and employees are not protected by basic laws.

But having 67% of your employees be disengaged is still pretty bad. After all, disengaged employees are the ones who are more likely to leave, more likely to be sick on average, and even (according to the research) more likely to steal.

But there’s more, and it is discovered and outlined in the book, “The Lean CX Score” by David McLachlan. In the Lean CX Score, David outlines the benefits of designing your work, and your products, properly. And they all point to improved engagement and improved profit as a result.

For a start, disengaged team members or employees are six times more likely to leave their job than their engaged counterparts. That’s a 600% difference. Do you think it’s expensive to acquire customers? Well it’s extremely expensive to find and hire good staff. Between the downtime caused with a lost employee, to the cost of advertising, vetting resumes, interviewing, and training, it is much easier to keep them engaged in the first place.

Engaged team members are also more likely to make you more money. A study by Kenexa found that businesses with highly engaged employees – those in the top quartile of engagement – achieved twice the annual net revenue on average, when compared to businesses with lower engagement scores.

It’s for these reasons that there are entire companies dedicated to the discovery of employee engagement around the world, and companies are lining up to buy their services. Engagement matters.

But You Don’t Have To Suffer Through Low Engagement

If you’d prefer to live in the higher engagement end of town, there is good news. You don’t have to suffer through low engagement scores, as a business owner, a leader managing a team, or a “leader without a title” inside a team of your own where you feel engagement could be higher.

Designing your work for happiness has been proven to have a huge effect on your employees, and it doesn’t have to be complicated.

Take just two steps in the Lean CX Score book – a Repeatable Process, and Checking In.

In 1961, a US psychologist called Mihaly Csikszentmihali interviewed 1000 peole, asking them about the circumstances that made them happy. He called this happiness a state of “Flow”, when things went well, and things just seemed to flow well – when participants felt on top of the world. Mihaly found five main things in common when it came to creating happiness. It happened when his subjects were:

Intensely focused on an activity,
Had control over the outcome,
That was neither too easy not too hard,
That had a clear objective, and;
That gave immediate feedback

The good news about this is having a Repeatable Process, whether it’s interacting with a product in a predictable way each time, or knowing the boundaries of your work so you can easily move into a flow state, has a deep impact on happiness and flow.

And Checking In, which is step five in the Lean CX Score, means we check regularly to see if we’re on track – with our customers, our users, or our team.

There are many more stories and a lot more research in the Lean CX Score book, making it a nice, easy read that will have a huge impact on your results.

I highly recommend you get yourself a copy today.

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Lean CX Infographic – The Ideal Shopping Cart Experience

October 21, 2017Lean CX Infographiccreate a disruptor, customer experience, disruptor, Lean, lean book, lean customer experience, Lean CX, lean infographic, online customer experience, shopping cart statisticsDavid McLachlan

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Customers Are Leaving Your Online Shopping Cart

Recent research by the Baymard Institute found that up to 69% of customers were leaving your online shopping cart instead of buying your product or service.

They also found that 35% of those online abandonments were recoverable solely through a better checkout flow and design – in other words most businesses are making things more complicated than they should be, and customers are leaving as a result.

Needless to say, keeping even a small portion of these abandoned orders would have a significant effect on your profit as a business. But the best part about it is that it makes sense, because I know I have been guilty of leaving a complicated shopping cart, and there’s a good chance you have too.

Fast and Easy, or Long and Complicated, Which Would You Prefer?

If you had a choice between your checkout experience being fast and easy, or long and complicated, which would you choose? It might seem like a silly question – even an obvious one – when we put it like that, but the truth is most companies are answering “Long and Complicated” without even knowing it.

They’re answering “Long and Complicated” because they haven’t put in the work or thinking necessary to reduce the complexity in their shopping cart and make it as simple as it needs to be. And they haven’t put in the thinking because they don’t have a simple step-by-step framework like the Lean CX Score that is proven to make it simple and improve their profit as a result.

Reduce The Steps, Reduce The Checkout Fields

The latest research by the Baymard Institute found that the average online shopping cart had more than 14 form fields for a customer to fill out. But the shocking thing is they also found that the ideal customer flow included just seven form fields – around half of what most companies had.

Companies were making it more complicated than it needed to be, which prompted a reduction of 35% of customers in buying their product or service.

Amazon Did It In One Step

Of course you know the story by now – there’e a good chance you have used Amazon.com’s online shopping cart and in many cases, such as with their prime service or Kindle store, you can buy what you want in just one click. If customers leave too often with 14 fields, and a checkout can be done in 7, then Amazon have taken it to the next level and reduced the steps to one.

Do you think that had an effect on their profit? Of course.

Doing things in “One Step” is also one of the recommendations in “The Lean CX Score”, by David McLachlan. In that book there are many more real life examples of companies getting things to a customer in “One Step” instead of many, and gaining stellar results.

There are also five scenarios similar to the “too many fields” dilemma, where customers are prompted to leave a company. Outlined in the “The Lean CX Score”, they are scenarios where a customer leaves because their experience is harder than it needed to be. Apart from extra steps, it might mean extra hand-offs, having to redo things over and over, and having to wait too long to get what they wanted.

If you haven’t read The Lean CX Score yet, I highly recommend you get a copy today.

Get all the infographics here

Lean CX: (un)Complicate

October 21, 2017Lean CXcreate a disruptor, customer experience, disruptor, Lean, lean book, lean customer experience, Lean CX, Lean CX Score, simplify, uncomplicateDavid McLachlan

(un)Complicate – Don’t Be Fooled By Complicated Things

Have you ever had someone explain something to you, but the way they explained it was just too complicated? And no matter how they tried, it just got more confusing, not less.

Here’s some good news – it’s not your fault that it seemed complicated. It’s not uncommon for some people to try and confuse things to make you comply, or to try and make you feel less because you don’t understand. But the real reason something might seem complicated is that if someone doesn’t understand a topic well enough, then they cannot explain it simply.

Einstein Agrees

Einstein wrote: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” In other words, complicated things, products and complicated explanations are not the result of people being smarter than you – they are actually the result of people not understanding it well enough to make it as simple as it should be. Complicated things are the result of lazy thinking – things that haven’t been thought through well enough to be explained in simple terms.

And the same goes for your business, your products, and your team.

Uncomplicate

The Simple Truth About Complicated Things

It might seem like a paradox then, that in making things simple it actually takes more work, more thinking, and more intelligence initially. You have to do the thinking on where to reduce steps, where to perform steps more concisely, or how to get the outcome more quickly and efficiently.

And that is the kind of thinking that most people either don’t know how to do, or worse, can’t be bothered doing. After all, how many times have you been forced to do something at work in a more complicated way than it should be, or forced to jump through more hoops in getting a product from a company than you needed to? And it wasn’t because it had to be done that way – many times it was simply because it had always been done that way, and the complicated way became the default over time.

The good news is that The Lean CX Score offers you a repeatable framework for making things simple – the opposite of complicated – (un)Complicated. You can improve your work, your business and your products, and improve the opportunity for customers to buy from you as a result, using a simple, step-by-step method.

(un)Complicating Things Also Improves Sales Significantly

Every time a process is more complicated than it should be, and your customer is forced to go through it, you are increasing the chance that they will leave you.

“Breakpoints” are those places in your customer experience where a customer will leave, never to return. The Lean CX Score outlines five of the most common customer breakpoints, and how to solve them. Here are some examples:

By having too many steps in the customer experience – every extra step is another “breakpoint”, that could be a prompt for a customer to leave.

By having too many hand-offs in the customer experience – every extra hand-off is a breakpoint that is an opportunity for a customer to leave.

By making a customer redo things more than once – every extra time they have to redo it is a breakpoint that will frustrate a customer to the point of leaving, and;

By making customers wait too long for something – every minute longer is another reason for a customer to break up with you and leave.

(un)Complicating Things Also Reduces Costs Significantly

Let’s think about simplicity from a cost perspective. By reducing steps in your customer experience you are reducing the work to be done to get the customer what they wanted. By reducing the work to be done you are reducing the cost of the work. By reducing the cost of the work you are improving the profit of your business.

It’s the same principle whether you’re thinking about your supply chain in business, or your value chain in delivering goods and services, or the processes you go through to get the outcomes you want. Every time you reduce steps, reduce hand-offs, reduce waiting and any other Lean CX Waste, you are giving yourself the opportunity to get ahead.

You Don’t Have To Start From Scratch

If you’re ready to (un)complicate your business and your products, and put in the initial thinking required to make things more simple, the good news is that you don’t have to start from scratch.

The Lean CX Score provides you with the exact, step-by-step framework you need to (un)complicate and start seeing the success you deserve. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you get a copy.

#5 Lean CX Comic – Make It Simple (Or They Will Leave You)

October 21, 2017Lean CX Comicbusiness improvement, create a disruptor, customer experience, disruptor, entrepreneur, lean comic, lean customer experience, Lean CX, Lean CX ScoreDavid McLachlan

#5 Lean CX Comic – Make It Simple (Or They Will Leave You)

See all the Lean CX Comics here

News Flash: People Aren’t Buying Your Complicated Products

It’s official. People prefer doing things that are easy. You’ve been in that situation, haven’t you? Something has been too hard, taken too long, been passed along too may times, so you left.

If it’s hard to use, fewer people will use it. Sure, there might be a small percentage who put in the time and work through it – maybe they really like you or your company, or maybe there is another benefit like status or money involved. But keep it complicated for too long, and they won’t stick around forever.

What Does “A Complicated Product” mean?

Saying something is complicated is all very well, but what does it actually mean?

In the book “The Lean CX Score“, David McLachlan outlines five scenarios for complicated products, called the Lean CX Wastes.

Lean Customer Experience means exactly that – the customer experience is streamlined and not full of wasteful things or experiences. Things such as having to redo something over and over, having to perform too many steps to get what a customer wanted, or being handed off between too many people or departments. If you’ve ever had to do any of those you will know what I mean – the experience can be frustrating and every wasteful step you are forced to perform grates on your patience just a little bit more, until finally you leave.

It Works Everywhere

Recent research into online shopping carts by the Baymard Institute found that the average online shopping cart experience had 14 fields, when they really only needed 7 for an ideal checkout flow. They also found that 35% of abandoned online orders were recoverable solely through a better checkout flow and design. The research is there, and it happens everywhere. Online checkouts are one thing we can simplify, but what about the work your teammates or employees do when delivering a product or service?

All the way through the value chain your business is making things more complicated than they have to be, which increases cost, increases the likelihood a customer will leave and reduces your profit as a result.

After all, in chasing the latest gimmick or management fad it is tempting to forget about the lifeblood of any business – your customers – and the money they bring by buying your product or service.

Reducing complexity in your product prompts more people to buy, and reducing complexity in the value chain that delivers your product lowers the cost of delivering it.

The Lean CX Score Is The Step-By-Step Framework For Making Things Simple

If complex products or services are the enemy of good customer experience, then it makes sense to use the Lean CX Score framework as a step-by-step guide to making things simple.

One of the Lean CX steps is called “One Step Flow”, where a customer can get what they want in one step, instead of many different steps over many different people.

You will absolutely love the Lean CX book, because it gives many different real-life examples of One Step Flow – from signing up to watch Game of Thrones in one step, getting the best Energy deal in one step, a hospital getting cancer scans and diagnoses in one step, posting a job ad in one step, and much, much more.

That is just one part of the Lean CX Score – imagine what you could do with the rest of it too?

If you want to improve your business, team, or job prospects, I highly recommend you read it today.

See all the Lean CX Comics here

Lean CX Infographics

October 17, 2017Lean CX Infographicbusiness, create a disruptor, customer experience, David McLachlan, disruptor, entrepreneur, Lean, lean book, lean customer experience, Lean CX, lean infographicDavid McLachlan

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Lean CX Comics

October 17, 2017Lean CX Comicbusiness, comic, create a disruptor, customer experience, cx, David McLachlan, disruptor, entrepreneur, Lean, lean book, lean comic, lean customer experience, Lean CXDavid McLachlan

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#4 Lean CX Comic – Remove Rework

October 13, 2017Lean CX Comiccustomer experience, disruptor, how to create a disruptor, lean book, lean comic, Lean CX, Lean CX Waste, lean waste, reworkDavid McLachlan

#4 Lean CX Comic – Remove Rework

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Have you ever had to do something, and then do it over again? Maybe the first time wasn’t too bad, but by the third or forth time you have to redo something you might be just about ready to rage-quit. This kind of thing is happening to your customers – and guess what? When it happens they are ready to leave, and when they leave they are neither buying your product nor likely to return.

There are certain scenarios and behaviours that drive your customers away, and they have been captured in the five Lean CX Wastes within the Lean CX Score Framework.

“Rework” is one of those Lean CX Wastes – wastes that drive your customers and your team and employees crazy. Having to redo things is also a huge cost to businesses every year – in many cases simply by reducing the amount of times you have to redo something by one can cut a company’s cost and improve its speed by 30 to 50%.

Rework – Has It Ever Happened To You?

More importantly, you and I can most likely relate to Rework because it has happened to us before. Has your boss ever asked you to redo something thirty times, with micromanaged “improvements” that don’t actually move the needle of improvement that much? Or have you ever had to call a company back three, four, five times or more just to get what they should have been able to give you the first time?

Or what about a website, where is wasn’t clear what you needed to do to get what you wanted, so you had to click a dozen different places before you discovered the “right” thing?

All of this adds up to wasted time, wasted effort, which is why it is one of the Lean CX “Wastes”.

Lean CX Removes those Lean CX Wastes

If gaining and keeping customers is important to you (and if you’re in the business of making a profit, it should be), then removing the Lean CX Wastes will definitely be important to you. The Lean CX Wastes are:

Rework
Excessive Steps
Not getting what I want
Excessive Hand-offs
Waiting

They can be remembered with the acronym: RENEW (or NEWER). The five Lean CX Wastes are outlined in the book: The Lean CX Score, by David McLachlan, but this comic and article should give you a basic outline of one of the most important ones: Rework.

See all the Lean CX Comics here