Seven years ago the NACCM Chairperson was Kathleen Peterson, the Chief Vision Officer of Powerhouse Consulting and this year we were once again graced by her presence, her humor and her keen insight on the current business environment. She congratulated the audience, companies that understand the customer experience as a differentiator, for having negotiated the “budget minefields” to get here and called us all the leaders in the customer revolution.
She reminded us that there was an enormous brain trust in this room and encouraged us all to participate and be a contributor. She reinforced that we – the participants – would be responsible for contributing and sharing our take aways, and that we would be compiling a executive summary at the end of the program. Great encouragement to be alert. Kathleen reminded us what we learned from Bruce Kimbrell of the Disney Institute last night. We are required to be cross functionally aligned. Everyone needs to know what the Customer Experience feels like – looks like – and what is it we are trying to accomplish. We need to know the nature of who we serve – what can we deliver – each person in the business unit has something to contribute – the frontline is the bottom line. Bruce shared many of Disney’s challenges and how they overcame them. Focus. Pure focus.
Kathleen says to focus on the what – what is it we want to have happen – what does really good mean. What does it mean in your organization? – Do we want to make sure our customers are recognized when they call in? Everything cascades from the specificity. I completely agree. ( And I love the word specificity.) She says we have a chronic problem – jumping to solutions . We need to think in terms of WHAT and then the HOW . We are fortunate – here at this conference we will find answers in both categories. She is so right when she calls this a Socratic café. We will spend a few days looking at the options and learning, we will develop an exec summary from our own key take aways and we will support each other in moving the customer centric message forward. This is a revolution and I am so proud and excited to be part of it. More soon…
