The difference that really matters between CX leaders and practitioners is not their title, but whether they’re “building cathedrals” or just “laying bricks.” To help their organizations become more customer-centric, CX leaders need to actively participate in and shape conversations in their organizations around 5 key topics: Disruption, Loyalty, Data, Brand and Innovation.

1. B2B AGENCY OF THE YEAR WINNER
5 Conversations
for CX Leaders to Lead
Glen Drummond, Chief Innovation Officer
@QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #CX

2. Tweet: The difference between #CX leaders and CX practitioners: Not your title, but whether
you’re “building a cathedral” or “laying bricks.”
Where does “customer experience” fit in the organization? The answer depends on your
perspective. The classic story on perspective deals with three men working on a scaffold
loaded with bricks and mortar. When asked, in sequence, what they are doing, the first
answers: “I’m laying bricks”. The second: “I’m building a wall.” The third: “I’m building a
cathedral.”
Yes, there’s an organizational chart of course, but customer experience is, in fact, the
outcome of the collective efforts of every single person in your organization – for better or
for worse. Customer experience is not a department, it’s not a function, it’s the sum of your
firm’s accomplishments with your most important stakeholder.
This means there is a framing aspect to customer experience that has, perhaps, been
underestimated. As long as customer experience efforts are guided by the negative objective
of eliminating bad customer experiences you may be involved in building walls, but you are
not yet building a cathedral. Walls are general. A cathedral is a specific, positive goal. That’s
the direction that customer experience leaders are leading.

3. Tweet:5conversations#CXleadersneedtolead:#Disruption#Loyalty#Data
#Brand#Innovation.
Ifyou’regoingtobuildacathedral,you’regoingtoneedtoreframehowtheorganizationhas
beenthinkingaboutmultipletopicsrelevanttoCX.TheCXleader’sjobisframingthe
conversation.
Andnow,I’dliketointroduceyoutoanexperience-centricframingofsomebusinessterms
thatleaderscareabout.
Weallseetheseterms.Weallknowthem. Weunderstandtheirroleinthediscussionof
businessstrategyandexecution. But,towhatextenthaveweshapedtheconversation
aroundthesetermsandredefinedtheminthecontextofanexperience-driveneconomy?
experience-driveneconomy?

4. Tweet: #Disruption: When your customers leave you for another #CX they prefer.
The average life expectancy of a Fortune 500 business is 30 years, and declining.
The topple rate—the rate at which industry leaders are toppled from their seat is
accelerating. And, the topic of disruption is rarely far from the mind of executive
leaders who are responsible for large complex organizations.
We’ve all heard about disruptive technology. We’ve all heard about start-ups that
disrupt industries. But is it possible that the business world has collectively gotten
the location of agency completely wrong when it comes to the topic of disruption.
Kodak had a working prototype of the digital camera in 1975. Was Kodak really
disrupted by digital technology? Netflix offered itself for sale to Blockbuster in
2000. Was Blockbuster disrupted by an upstart competitor?
Here’s a more universal diagnosis of disruption that puts agency in the hands of
the only people who can and do disrupt your business: your customers. How do
they disrupt you? By leaving you for another experience they prefer. Happened to
Kodak. Happened to Blockbuster. Happened to every market-leading I can think of
that ever got disrupted.
Disruption is when your customers leave you for another experience they prefer.

5. Tweet: #Loyalty: a motivation we attribute to customers—until they bail
for a #CX they prefer.
Show me a market leader and I’ll show you a brand that believes it has
loyal customers. Remember how people talked about “Crackberries?”
Show me a toppled market leader and I’ll show you an organization that
has been dismayed by the disloyalty its customers have displayed. I’ll bet
that’s happening in the cable TV space today. And, what’s most
interesting, is it not often the case that the very most profitable
customers—the ones at the very peak of the “loyalty” algorithm prior to
disruption are the ones who leave first? That’s quite a co-incidence.
These observations lead to a cautionary and provoking definition of
“loyalty”– a motivation we attribute to customers, until they bail for a
customer experience they prefer.
And this unsettling observation leads us to ask: how did we come to
attribute this motivation to customers in the first place?

6. Tweet: #Data: an indirect source of knowledge, and a poor substitute for customer #insight.
The answer of course is data. If you are like most people working in most organizations today, you are
drowning in customer data. The issue is that data, in and of itself, does not contain answers about
causation, about motivation, or about trajectory. Data can’t tell you about the reasons why people
purchase from you one day and purchase from someone else the next. Those explanations are developed
through enquiry, observation, inference, discussion, abduction, and in the best case through consumer
ethnography and a thoughtful strategic interpretation of it.
But there is something seductively persuasive about data. It is, by definition, abstract, and yet it seems to
us concrete. It has the quality of being factual and reliable, and these attributes can cause us to gloss
over a key question: to what degree are the conclusions we draw from our customer data a transparent
interpretation of the customer’s reality, and to what degree are they a product of the choices we made in
collecting and structuring the data?
Causation, motivation, trajectory—these are complex problems, while data is, by comparison simple. Data
can help immensely, but it helps most if we understand it to be an indirect source of knowledge and a
poor substitute for customer insight. When we deal with data about customers, we should pay extra
attention to the caution of mathematician Alfred North Whitehead: Seek simplicity, but distrust it.

7. Tweet: #Brand: the feelings customers associate with you based on the
experiences you create.
Are there any words in the business lexicon that are as mis-understood as
“brand?” Brand is not a logo, it’s not a slogan, it’s not a cluster of named benefits.
Brand does not live in a handbook of graphic standards and it does not entirely
belong to global brand managers—no matter how great their desire for control.
Brand is the collaborative accomplishment of your actions and your customers’
memory. And, since memory is an unreliable reconstructive process – your brand
will be much more distinct in the mind of your customer if the experiences your
organization stages for that customer consistently invite them to participate in a
narrative where they are the hero – pursuing goals and aspirations you have
anticipated—and you are their helper on that journey.
Brand is the feelings customers associate with you based on the experiences you
create.

8. Tweet: #Innovation: not just new products, but new
value through differentiating customer experiences.
We’re too attached to tangibility when we think of
innovation. This has been proven by Larry Keeley’s
research where he reveals that the great majority of
“innovation” investment goes into the design of new
things, but the greatest payoffs in innovation come from
creating new customer experiences. These don’t have to
be polar oppositions, but a great lens for innovation is
the one that looks at the tangibles as inputs to a
customer experience that might also include—and be
enhanced by—intangibles.

9. Tweet: #Disruption #Loyalty #Data #Brand #Innovation. Are you ready to lead the
conversation?
So there we have it: a few familiar business terms and a few provocative
definitions that reframe these conversations in terms that create a place for
customer experience at the table.
And now, I encourage you to think about questions you can bring forward to
advance the CX conversation in your organization. Questions that are not just
about the laying of bricks or the building of walls, but questions that go to the real
outcome of customer experience.
Questions about the capacity of your organization to sustain its customer
relationships in the face of new competitors and new technology. About the ability
of your organization’s research and data-gathering systems to produce true
customer insights. About its ability to orchestrate experiences across channels to
produce a common impression of the brand at every touch-point. And about the
ability of your organization to think about innovation in terms of customer
outcomes, not the outcomes of a research and development process.
Are you ready to have those conversations?

10. Thank you!
@QUARRY @GDRUMMOND #CX