Jeweller - May 2022

BUSINESS
Management
Entrepreneurship 101 for leaders
and those who want to be
Business data and intelligence are vital in any organisation. MICHAEL HINSHAW explains
the mechanics in leveraging customer-centric actions to better manage your business.
Most businesses intuitively understand
the need to connect their products and
services to the needs of the market.
Failing to determine a specific need and
align your offerings to meet it leaves you
with little chance of success.
Early into venture creation, the pursuit of
product-market fit is driven by identifying
and closing the gap between customer
issues and proposed solutions.
As a mentor and teacher, I share my view
that customer-driven evidence must lead
to conclusions without letting biases get in
the way of what the market actually needs.
My role as a mentor is mirrored in my job
as a customer experience strategist. I
help small businesses understand what
customers need and act based on what
is learned, while building the institutional
muscles to do so.
Unfortunately, many retailers have
difficulty dealing with customer
perspective. They are hindered by tradition
and habit - established processes,
systems, rules, and reward structures.
Whether you’re establishing a business or
improving customer experience, the most
common factor associated with success is
an understanding of customer needs and
providing them in ways that are relevant
and unique.
Customer development manifesto
Bob Dorf and Steve Blank, authors of
The Startup Owner’s Manual, a guide to
building a great business, created a list
of 17 customer development principles
but I’ve narrowed it down to eight that
are equally relevant to any established
organisation striving to connect with their
customers regardless of size, industry,
location, or product.
#1. Get outside
There are no facts inside your building,
so get outside! You don’t know what
customers think without interacting with
them. Using one-on-one interviews,
qualitative focus groups and formal data-
A factor associated with success is an understanding of customer needs.
gathering such as surveys and behavioural
analytics, there’s no substitute for looking
at your business from the customer’s
perspective.
#2. Finding the heart
Whether you’re improving existing systems
and processes or designing products,
services, or experiences, the ability to
gather, analyse, integrate, and act on
customer input is crucial in changing
expectations. Adopting an iterative design,
deploy, and assess approach to experience
improvement is at the heart of the most
customer-centric businesses.
#3. Insight-driven pivots
What worked yesterday may not work today
or tomorrow. Consequently, you must
have the ability to shift focus or direction
based on insights from your customers
and data. Continually identify pain points
and experience gaps, then prioritise their
improvement based on customer needs
and your business objectives.
#4. Validate hypothesis with experiments
Always aim to turn your informed guesses
— another definition for hypothesis — into
facts by testing improvements with the
customers who actually use or interact
with them. In the context of customer
experience, think of your efforts as ‘pass/
fail’ experiments that provide insights to
learn from and take action on.
What worked
yesterday may
not work today
or tomorrow.
Consequently,
you must have
the ability to
shift focus or
direction based
on insights from
your customers
and data.
#5. Failure is an integral part
As noted in Mark Coopersmith and John
Danner’s book The Other “F” Word,
failure can be a game-changing resource
— provided you learn from it. It’s about
finding what works and what doesn’t,
based on what the data and outcomes
reveal. And of course, set yourself up
to fail small, since tests and iterative
improvements lead to big gains over time.
#6. Startup metrics are different
Businesses are comfortable with
traditional metrics like balance sheets,
P&L, and cash flows. Customer experience
metrics link customer interactions to
the feelings those interactions drive and
behaviours customers exhibit. Those
behaviours are what drives traditional
business metrics — and why linking them
is foundational.
#7. Communicate and share learning
Customer experience professionals need
to share knowledge with others, especially
affected parties across the organisation.
Customer-driven data is effective at
aligning the organisation around problems
and collectively pursuing solutions.
#8. Success begins with buy-in
Adopting a customer-centric strategy can
change almost every aspect of a business,
from go-to-market to metrics, systems,
and processes. Up-front stakeholder
buy-in is critical. But make no mistake —
any experienced leader will require you to
prove the value of your efforts.
After all, no matter how well-aligned to the
market your brand, messaging, products,
or services are, if the experience of using
them becomes challenging, customers
won’t use them at all.
MICHAEL HINSHAW is president of
McorpCX, which focuses on customer
experience management. Learn more:
mcorpcx.com
May 2022 | 51