Tag Archives: Lean CX

Lean CX Infographic – Would You Like A Piece Of $260 Billion?

October 13, 2017Lean CX Infographiccreate a disruptor, disruptor, disruptor framework, infographic, Lean, lean book, Lean CX, lean infographic, online shopping cart abandonment, online shopping cart statisticsDavid McLachlan

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Would You Like A Piece of $260 Billion?

Recent research by the Baymard Institute found that more than 69 percent of customers abandon their shopping cart instead of buying a product or service. From that same research Baymard Institute found that companies with an online checkout experience could see a 35% increase in conversion (read: sales) just by having a better checkout design.

That means reducing areas that can go wrong for a customer, making things easier to buy, and making the experience more streamlined.

In fact, they found that the average online checkout had around 14 fields, while they needed only 7. Amazon, of course, are doing it with just one, using their “one click buy” buttons, and reaping huge rewards as a result.

How Do You Quantify “Better Checkout Flow and Design”?

Just saying they need a better checkout flow and design is one thing, but how to you actually quantify that? How do you measure better flow or reduced complexities? How do you measure the Customer’s Experience?

The good news is there is a book called “The Lean CX Score” which combines the most customer-centric improvement system from the last century with the most important life-blood of any business – its customers. And it also contains an exact framework for measuring the usability of your customer’s experience and knowing whether they are likely to return, or likely to abandon you.

You see, without customers paying for your product or service, and returning time and time again, there is a good chance you won’t be able to pay the bills to keep the lights on, and will subsequently go bust. It’s not exactly rocket science. And as we’ve seen, by making things easy for our customer to do and easy for them to buy, we can significantly increase the number of customers and the number of times they return. More customers, more profit, means keeping and thriving in your business.

Lean CX Is The Key To The $260 Billion Door

All of which means that if you want a piece of that $260 billion, you’d better start making things easy. For the price of a couple of cups of coffee, you can get “The Lean CX Score” by David McLachlan which outlines, step-by-step, how to create disruptive products and services that are more streamlined, faster, and easier to use than your competition. And when you use it, get ready to see your business thrive and your competition bite the dust.

Lean CX Is The Key To Creating Disruptors

A disruptor is a product, service, or entire business that changes the rules of the game, so that it is seen as better, can scale and grow faster, and sell more than anything in its industry. But what people don’t realise is that disruptors are most commonly created in fields that are already existing – selling products or services that already exist and we know that customers want anyway. The disruptive business just finds ways to streamline the process of creating and delivering what the customer wants. As the Baymard Institute research showed, that can start with an increase of 27% to your online sales channel, but as you continue to use the Lean CX framework to improve and if you ultimately become a disruptor, history has shown us that the sky is the limit.

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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 – 27% Of Checkouts Are Too Long Or Complicated

October 13, 2017Lean CX Infographicbaymard research, complicated process, customer experience, infographic, Lean, lean book, Lean CX, Lean CX Score, online business, online shopping cart abandon, shopping cartDavid McLachlan

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Your Complicated Process Is Driving Customers Away

Have you ever tried to buy something online recently? With online business taking off like never before, there is a good chance that your answer is “Yes”.

And just like 69% of people, there’s also a good chance that you’ve tried to buy something online but abandoned your shopping cart before you were able to buy.

Did you know that 27 percent of those people who abandoned their online shopping cart, and who weren’t just browsing, abandoned it because the checkout was too long or complicated? That’s a lot of people leaving you at the most critical time, and the good news is “long and complicated” is actually something we can fix.

The Lean CX Score Fixes “Long and Complicated”

What would it mean to you if you had a proven, step-by-step framework for reducing that time and complexity in your checkout experience? For one (as we’ve just seen), you would have a good chance of improving the online sales to your business by up to 27% or even more, which would mean a very tidy jump in profit for you too.

The Lean CX Score is that proven framework. Revealed in the book of the same name by David McLachlan in 2017, the step-by-step framework of Lean CX combines the most important asset of your business (your customers, who pay your bills by buying your product or service, remember?), and Lean or the Toyota Production System, which is one of the most incredible customer-centric improvement methods of the last century. Lean CX has modified both in a ground breaking way to suit Customer Experience and white collar jobs, reduce time and improve ease of use.

Reducing Waste Improves Speed and Happiness

The Lean CX Score outlines five Customer Experience “wastes” – common scenarios that when you fix will have customers clamouring to buy from you. Just a few of those wastes that you need to remove are:

Waiting
Extra Steps
Extra Hand-offs, and;
Rework

While reading the book will give you the full outline of those Lean CX wastes and how to remove them by using the Lean CX Score, you can get an idea of them just with the list above. Let’s take a look:

Rework, or having to redo things, can easily happen on an Online Shopping Cart experience when you have to enter your payment details more than once, or after making a mistake, or having to refresh a form that times out.

Extra Steps could be extra form fields that aren’t really necessary, or that could easily be reduced. In fact Amazon got rid of its form fields completely with its “One Click Buy”. How is that for reducing extra steps?

Excessive Hand-offs could be too many online screens to travel through, where further mistakes can be made.

Are You Ready To Improve Speed and Make Things Easy?

The Lean CX Score is the first book of its kind, that completely outlines an exact step-by-step framework for improving the speed and simplicity of your customer’s experience, helping them buy easily and buy more often.

When you’re ready to profit more, enjoy more happiness and easier work, then I highly recommend you get the book.

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Lean CX Infographic – Online Shopping Cart Abandonment at 69%

October 8, 2017Lean CX Infographicbe like amazon, create a disruptor, customer experience, disruptor, disruptor not disrupted, infographic, lean customer experience, Lean CX, lean cx book, shopping cart abandonmentDavid McLachlan

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69% Of Customers Are Leaving You At The Most Important Time

Online business is booming. Everywhere you look around the world there are businesses ranging from small startups, to huge corporations, to single parents selling home-made items out of their garage, and they’re all moving their sales channels online.

If you are in one of those businesses, this infographic should terrify you. The Baymard Institute found that 69% of customers were abandoning their online shopping carts instead of purchasing the product or service, leaving at the most critical moment for a business in the customer journey – the moment where they actually fork over their cold hard cash.

Businesses Need Money, And Customers Have Money

It seems simple, doesn’t it? Customers pay you money for a product or service, and you use that money to operate your business and (hopefully) turn a profit. The more customers you have, the more money they pay you. The best businesses in the world finds ways to serve millions of people and make billions of dollars in return.

Customers can be business to business (B2B), or business to customer (B2C), or any other type you could think of, but the point is that so many businesses forget about that crucial element – where the money comes from – that lifeblood of any business endeavour. And the key that unlocks that door is Customer Experience, and more specifically Lean CX, but I can’t tell you about that just yet.

This Knowledge Can Make You A Disruptor

So how can this knowledge help you, then?

We know that 69% of customers abandon their online shopping carts, but what can you do with that?

They say “Knowledge is power”, but let’s be honest – you and I already know that knowledge alone is not enough. Having knowledge is definitely a start though – after all, most people you know or work with don’t know this information and in the land of the blind, the one eyed person is king.

No, knowing this is not enough, unless you have a repeatable framework – a lens to look through – that can give you the right action to take. That framework is the Lean CX Score.

The Lean CX Score is a set of six repeatable steps – six questions you can ask that apply to any business endeavour, any product or service and any task your team provides. Step two of the Lean CX Score just happens to be a little thing called “One Step Flow”.

One Step Flow – The Key To Reducing 69% Online Shopping Cart Abandonment

When you have this framework – this repeatable framework you can apply to anything – then suddenly the Baymard Institute research becomes clear. Suddenly you are a genius, instead of another disrupted company.

One Step Flow asks us “Can I get what I want in One Step?”

That means no logging in, no filling out details, no getting your credit cards, no forgetting your password, no checking your balance, and no additional steps that would cause a customer to abandon. Can you think of someone else who created a one-step customer experience?

Amazon.

Their online checkout features a little thing called “One Click Buy”, where a customer is already logged in, usually via an app, and only has to click the buy button and the rest is taken care of. No address details, no payments details, it’s already done.

Now – knowing that 69% of customers abandon their online shopping cart, Amazon effectively got rid of their shopping cart by using the Lean CX Score step of “One Step Flow”. What could that mean for their sales? Is it possible they could increase by 10%? Maybe 30%? What about the full 69%, as word of mouth gets around that they are easy to buy from, and costs are lowered because their process is so streamlined?

Amazon’s stock price has certainly seen some benefit of increased profit over the years (in other words, their stock price is going up, up and up).

Can You Imagine The Possibilities?

With the right step by step, repeatable framework, you can do the same thing as Amazon and completely disrupt the industry that you’re in. Part of disrupting your industry is the secret of One Step Flow, but there are five other steps in the Lean CX Score.

Imagine what you could do with all six? Maybe it’s about time you got the book.

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#3 Lean CX Comic – Be The Disruptor, Not The Disrupted

October 4, 2017Lean CX Comicamazon, borders, customer experience, disruptor, facebook, how to create a disruptor, lean book, Lean CX, Lean CX Comic, Lean CX Score, myspaceDavid McLachlan

#3 Lean CX Comic – Be The Disruptor, Not The DisruptedClick to Enlarge – or – Right Click and “Save As” to save.

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You are either becoming a disruptor, or you’re about to be put out of business by one. So many industries have already been completely changed in the past 10 years, and the disruption is not going to stop. If you don’t discover a formula now for creating disruptive products and services yourself, there’s a good chance your team or business won’t be around to see the next 10 years.

But what exactly is a disruptor? A disruptor, as we see it, is something that changes the rules of the game, so that it is seen as better, can scale and grow faster, and sell more than anything in its industry. As a result, other brands and products fall by the wayside, and ultimately disappear, often within a matter of only a few years.

The good news is, the Lean CX Score is an exact framework for creating disruptors out of normal products or services. In other words, you can be the Amazon, instead of the Borders. You can be the Netflix, instead of the Blockbuster. You can be the Facebook, instead of MySpace. And using these steps actually improves your team speed, morale and engagement at the same time. The rewards are incredible. It’s time to get your copy of the Lean CX Score today.

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#2 Lean CX Comic – Are You Checking Off, Or Checking In?

September 28, 2017Lean CX Comicchecking in, customer experience, jidoka, lean book, Lean CX, Lean CX Comic, The Lean CX ScoreDavid McLachlan

#2 Lean CX Comic – Are You Checking Off, Or Checking In?Click to Enlarge – or – Right Click and “Save As” to save.

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It’s tempting to forget about our team and our customers, and just assume they are getting what they want or doing OK. But studies have shown that Leaders who check in with their team at least once a week see increased engagement scores of up to 27%.

Engagement also has an effect on company revenue and profit, with companies in the highest quartile for engagement seeing twice the revenue on average as those in the lowest quartile for engagement.

And of course, “checking in” with our customer to see if they got what they wanted has been proven to show remarkable rewards. You may have heard of a little thing called the Net Promoter Score (unless you have been travelling through a remote desert). Well the Lean CX principle behind the Net Promoter Score is – you guessed it – Checking In.

Want to see the other five Lean CX Score steps, that create disruptors and improve speed and morale? Get the Lean CX Score book on Amazon now.

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Get the Lean CX Manifesto here:

#1 Lean CX Comic – Don’t Keep Them Waiting

September 22, 2017Lean CX Comiccustomer experience, Lean CX, Lean CX Comic, Lean CX Waste, The Lean CX Score, WaitingDavid McLachlan

#1 Lean CX Comic – Don’t Keep Them Waiting

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Waiting is one of the Lean CX Wastes. Remove it and you are one step closer to giving both your customers and your team an incredible experience that makes them beg for more. And you can remove waiting with the Lean CX Score.

The Lean CX Score is a set of six separate, actionable steps that will help you create disruptive products and services, instead of fearing them. Gandhi said be the change you wish to see in the world, well I’m saying be the disruption you wish to see in the world! And do it before it is too late.

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Lean CX Score – What is Lean CX Anyway?

September 22, 2017Lean CX Book Excerptcustomer experience, lean book, Lean CX, The Lean CX Score, what is lean cxDavid McLachlan

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

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All Right, What Is CX Anyway?

If CX is the difference between success and failure, then let’s delve into it more deeply.

CX, as you might have guessed already, stands for Customer Experience. As the world evolves into an era of global trade, a few new terms have also developed: UX, CX, Lean, Agile, Kanban, AI, WIP and dozens more. Often no one really knows what to do with them, even though everyone says to each other that they are really, really important.

So to make sure we’re all on the same page, let’s begin with a quick definition.

CX is Customer Experience. It’s very popular, even if most people don’t really understand what it is. If your business doesn’t have a framework for CX, then it is really just a broad description for everything to do with your customer and how they interact with you. CX Specialists will often map out “Customer Journeys” and “Moments of Truth”, and other intricate terms that mean a lot to them. The good news is that the Lean CX Score steps get right to the common denominator of all those things. The even better news is, this book will give you a framework and a way to measure Customer Experience that actually works, so you can tell how well you are doing.

Often confused with CX is UX. UX is User Experience. It’s also a very popular term. For a User to have an Experience, they need to be using something. That something is most often a website – but it can be a product of yours too. UX specialists often do up wireframes and look at where a user clicks or touches, in an effort to manage where a customer is going. The good news here is, customers go where it is easy to go, and that’s exactly what the Lean CX Score is designed to do.

Finally, let’s not forget Customer Service, which is service given to your customers by an actual person. It used to be the largest part of CX, and it has shrunk with the use of technology. But it still remains extremely important.

Because a person can have a “CX” without engaging in a website or product “UX” (but not the other way around), Customer Experience becomes the more important of the two. And because feedback from Customer Service can help improve a product’s User Experience, the way they all interact looks like this:

Now, when we say “Customer”, who do we mean exactly? Most people make the mistake of thinking that we are only talking about the end customer – our paying customer. But customers exist within everything we do. Customer is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as:

“A person of a specified kind with whom one has to deal.”

In other words – anyone you provide a service to, whether it’s within your company or outside your company, can be classed as your customer: your boss, your team, other departments or more. Improving those interactions often improves your job prospects (makes you more employable), your business (brings you more customers), and your bottom line (makes you more money).

More chapters from The Lean CX Score book:

Introducing The Lean CX Score by David McLachlan

September 22, 2017Lean CX Book Excerptcustomer experience, David McLachlan, disruptor, how to create a disruptor, lean book, Lean CX, Lean CX Research, Lean CX Score, Lean CX Score book, Lean CX Steps, Lean CX WastesDavid McLachlan

“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

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 Score – Lean CX Shows You How To Create A Disruptor

September 22, 2017Lean CX Book Excerptbusiness leader, create a disruptor, disruptor framework, lean book, Lean CX, netflix versus blockbuster, strategic framework, strategic leader, The Lean CX ScoreDavid McLachlan

Lean CX Shows You How to Create a Disruptor in Your Industry

Over the past forty years there have been a handful of standout disruptive companies and products in the great world of business. A disruptor, as we see it, is something that changes the rules of the game – often in an existing field – so that it is seen as better, can grow faster, and sell more than anything in its industry. Traditional businesses are afraid of disruptors, because disruptors can seriously reduce the profit of those companies and they don’t understand what it takes to make one.

The Lean CX Score will give you the exact framework you need to create disruptors instead of fearing them. And the good news is, many disruptors are created in already existing fields.

You may or may not remember what it was like to operate a computer in the late 1980s. Computers used an operating system called MS DOS, where you had to physically type in everything you wanted to do on your computer. Want to play your favourite game? (Take the original “Prince of Persia” for example, one of my personal favourites). Well, you had to:

Type in “C:\dir/p” – this would show you all the directories, one page at a time so you could find the one with your game in it.
Then “cd pop”, which would take you to the “Prince of Persia” directory.
Then “adlib.exe” to ensure the music was toggled correctly (you had to know the exact port your sound card was set to), and finally;
“prince.exe” to play the game.

Sounds tedious, doesn’t it? And then Microsoft Windows came along. It was a graphical user interface that made things much easier, and people flocked to it in droves. Now to play the same game you did one thing: Click on the game icon on the home screen. The founder of this software, Bill Gates, enjoyed (and at the time of writing, still enjoys) many years as the world’s richest man. Bill Gates didn’t know it at the time, but he had met all the criteria for a 100% Lean CX Score, and that’s why people used it. It was a disruptor.

Remember when you had dozens (if not hundreds) of cassette tapes or CDs, and had to avoid scratching them, getting the tape tangled or worse? Then the Apple iPod came along and put 1000 songs in your pocket, in the one place which you could play with one click. All of a sudden it was impossible to make a mistake (i.e. tangle your cassette tapes or scratch your CDs), and instead of changing CDs every time you wanted to listen to something you only had to click the song you liked. It completely upended the industry. Many people focussed on the technology as being the agent of change, but they missed the point of the principles – the Lean CX principles – that were used to get there.

How about this one: In the late 1990s it was common on a Friday night to get into your car, drive down to the local “Blockbuster Video” store, have a browse through the latest movies and then pay for one or two to watch that night. But it was around that time that NetFlix was born, where instead of going to all that effort and driving around, all you had to do was subscribe and then browse any movie you liked online from the comfort of your own home, without the need to go anywhere. DVDs were mailed to your home, and returned whenever you liked for free. Then in 2007 it released online streaming of its movies which you could sign up for and watch immediately, reducing customers’ effort even further. Was this simple, easy, and fast? You bet. And the stock prices of the two companies over the years (unfortunately for Blockbuster) tell the story better than I ever could. In 2003 Blockbuster peaked and began to fall, while Netflix began to rise. Their prices crossed over some time in 2008, and a few years later Blockbuster Video went bankrupt.

There are many more standout examples that we’ll look at in the next few chapters – Amazon Kindle disrupting the book industry, ZipRecruiter disrupting the recruitment industry, Frank disrupting the Energy industry – and you will see exactly how to create your own “disruptor” using the Lean CX Score.

The key takeaway is that amateurs focus on the technology, or the end result when these businesses come to light and then wonder how they did it, while professionals understand the philosophy behind their ideas so they can create them again and again. These were all things that were being done already – songs, games, movies, driving – the entrepreneurs behind these disruptors just looked at them with a different lens in order to move into new “blue ocean” areas. And this, dear reader, is just a fraction of what the Lean CX Score can do.

The Strategic Lens, The Business Lens and The Team Lens

Looking at something through a magnifying glass can give you an enhanced view, seeing greater detail than if you were viewing something with the naked eye. In the same way, by looking at your products, your business, and even your teams through the lens of the Lean CX Score you can see ways to improve them that weren’t there before.

With the disruptors example previously, it might look like this:But it also works at reducing costs, increasing speed and improving morale within your business by using it as a management system to lead your teams.

More chapters from The Lean CX Score book:

Lean CX Score – Someone Can Always Make A Better Burger

September 22, 2017Lean CX Book Excerptcompeting on price, customer experience, lean book, Lean CX, Lean CX Score, McDonalds storyDavid McLachlan

Someone Can Always Make a Better Burger

Let me ask you a question. Can you make a better hamburger than McDonalds?

If you’re anything like me, I’m hearing a resounding “Yes!” You might be a master of the barbeque, or a culinary queen. You know all the pieces – choice of patty, lettuce, tomato, maybe onions, sundried tomatoes or vintage cheese – and you can put them all together and create a masterpiece to outdo the creations of even the best teenagers working under the golden arches.

You see, most people can make a better burger than McDonalds. But here’s the kicker. Can you SELL a burger, better than McDonalds?

For most people when I tell this story, the penny starts to drop. And it doesn’t hit the floor completely until they finish the last step of the Lean CX Score, when they have an exact formula for “selling a burger better”, and continuing to give a better experience every time they interact with a customer. But by that time they are out the door in a rush to put it to use, with barely even a goodbye.

It is all those parts that go into “selling the burger” that make the difference between success and failure. After all, iPhones and Apple products make up 43% of the mobile market in the U.S *⁴. Yet a factory in China could easily make a phone that looks very similar to an Apple iPhone, for a fraction of the cost. So why don’t they, and what’s the real difference? Hmmm… it might have something to do with our burger example above. Their patented software, their app store, their Genius Bars and ease of use all contribute to the Customer Experience, and you will see exactly why they work by the time you reach the end of this book.

Could you drive a car, better than some Uber drivers out there? Considering 85% of American drivers on the road today believe they are a better driver than others *⁵ (we’ve all thought this at some point, haven’t we?) I’m again imagining that the answer is yes.

You, or someone like you, could do all these things. Of course you can. But can you scale a business and sell a car ride better? Can you deliver the same complete customer experience that keeps people coming back? Not without the right framework, and that’s where the Lean CX Score comes in.

Simply being able to do something isn’t enough to bring you success, because the world is on the verge of the greatest time in history. Global trade has opened up like never before, and someone in England or any other country can sell someone in America exactly what they want and have it shipped there in record time. Many of the old-world businesses are becoming crowded as new people enter the market, and it seems that no one is safe.

Yet there are always a small few businesses, teams and individuals that make it – the ones that buck the trend and not only survive, but thrive in the face of competition. The unique pastry shop with lines around the block. The outstanding painters with a high demand for their work. The latest phone or gadget people have to have, the ice cream store, the energy provider, the bank. All of them fit the Lean CX model and are examples we will see.

What is it that makes them succeed where others fail?

Let’s start with a simple view of it. In many cases you have two choices:

Compete on Price (and put yourself out of business)

– Or –

Compete on Customer Experience (and stand out and become world-class)

What happens when you compete on Price?

Well, this is where most people start. And it’s most often the easiest thing to do – after all, if you drop your price, maybe more people will buy your product. The only problem is, your competition can drop their price too, and so the outcome of this scenario usually looks like this:

Competing on price is often done because a business doesn’t have the imagination or the know-how to create a remarkable Customer Experience. Luckily with the Lean CX Score, that’s simple to remedy, but it can also just be a mistake made by people who would usually know better.

Driving service Uber did a lot of things right when creating its business – so much so that it was able to scale and grow with lightning speed around the world. When it entered the Chinese market, it was able to do so with hundreds of millions of dollars behind it, and it went into China in a large way competing on price where ride subsidies, cheap promotions and more the order of the day.

Uber lasted three years before having to retreat completely after losing close to one billion dollars a year, selling their market share to local driving app Didi Chuxing *⁶. Understanding the customers you serve, whether it’s an individual, a society, government or country, matters. When you compete on price, no-one wins. The customer may get a better price, but at what cost? A sub-par product, an average customer experience and a company that won’t be around long enough to make a difference.

If products can be copied, price wars aren’t the answer and the world of trade is coming closer together, where does that leave us? It leaves us with a future where the only thing separating the bad from the good, the good from the great and the great from the remarkable is Customer Experience, otherwise known as CX. CX is the next and last great frontier, where the real battles will be fought and won. This is great news, as creating an amazing Customer Experience can be comparatively cheap to do (as opposed to developing a new smart phone from scratch, for example). And the steps in this book will show you how to keep it simple, and how to know when you’re winning. They lead the way to taking an ordinary product and creating an industry disruptor – something that is truly world-class.

More chapters from The Lean CX Score book: