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Running head:WORKING IN TEAMS
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Working in Teams
(Title) Typing Template for APA Papers: Sample of Proper
Formatting for the APA 6th Edition Name: Student A. Sample
Grand Canyon University: <Course>
<Date>
<Note: Even though APA does not require the
date on a title page, it is a requirement for GCU papers Insert
YOUR information here.>
Your introduction should be typed here. It should be at least
four sentences and include a thesis statement that introduces all
of the key topics you are going to present. Please note that you
should follow all APA writing rules within your essay. This
means avoid first and second person, do not use contractions,
and use citations throughout your paper!
Major Subsystem in Need of Change
After reviewing the case study choose the Major Subsystem that
you believe is in most need of change. Provide examples of why
you have chosen this subsystem and ensure you cite your

academic research. Keep in mind the case study is not an
academic source.
Comparison with Successful Example
After conducting your research present a successful example of
the subsystem that you chose. Provide examples and compare
and contrast the two. Make sure you cite the source of your
information.
Realignment of the Total Organization
Describe in detail how the proposed change to the major
subsystem would subsequently create positive changes to two
other subsystems within RSPS. Make a presentation of how
these changes would realign the organization for the better.
Make sure you conduct research to support your assertions and
cite throughout.
Satisfy Stakeholders
Identify three stakeholder groups. Discuss how your proposed
changes would increase satisfaction of each. Describe in detail
and cite your research.
Human Resources
Present how the Human Resources Department within RSPS
would attract, develop, and retain future employees. Describe
each stage in detail and cite your sources. Show how attracting,
developing, and retaining these employees would bring about
the changes you have presented. Again, make sure you cite
sources throughout.
Christian Worldview
This can be a separate paragraph as presented here or can be
incorporated throughout your paper.
Conclusion

The conclusion is the last paragraph. It should not introduce any
new information; it should simply be a summary of your
introduction, with a restatement of your thesis. See below for
how to format references. You must have two academic
references. One can be your text, but the other must be a GCU
library source. The video does not count as a research source,
although you should cite it. If you follow this template and the
rubric, you will do very well on your paper! (
**This paper requires a minimum of four academic sources (the
case study does not count). Also, I am looking for you to pull
past course concepts into this paper. This is a Benchmark
assignment so it is important to include leadership theories and
management principles from the past 8 weeks.**
References
American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication
manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.).
Washington, DC: Author.
Daresh, J. C. (2004). Beginning the assistant principalship: A
practical guide for new school administrators. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Corwin.
Herbst-Damm, K. L., & Kulik, J. A. (2005). Volunteer support,
marital status, and the survival times of terminally ill patients.
Health Psychology, 24, 225-229. doi:10.1037/0278-
6133.24.2.225
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National
Institutes of Health, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
(2003). Managing asthma: A guide for schools (NIH Publication
No. 02-2650). Retrieved from http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/
health/prof/asthma/asth_sch.pdf
How to achieve true

customer-led growth
Closing the delivery gap
By James Allen, Frederick F. Reichheld, Barney Hamilton and
Rob Markey
Copyright © 2005 Bain & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Editorial team: Katie Smith Milway, Cindy Varga, Susan
Donovan, Erik Serrano Berntsen, Louisa Thomason and Emily
Gray
Layout: Global design
James Allen is a partner at Bain & Company in London and co-
directs
the firm’s Global Strategy Practice. He is the co-author of
Profit from the Core.
Frederick F. Reichheld is a Boston-based director emeritus at
Bain and
the author of The Loyalty Effect, Loyalty Rules! and The
Ultimate Question.
Barney Hamilton is a Bain partner in London. Rob Markey is a
partner based
in New York and leader of Bain’s Customer Strategy Practice.
1
How to achieve true
customer!led growth
Most companies assume they’re consistently

giving customers what they want. Usually,
they’re kidding themselves. When we recently
surveyed 362 firms, we found that 80% believed
they delivered a “superior experience” to their
customers. But when we then asked customers
about their own perceptions, we heard a very
different story. They said that only 8% of
companies were really delivering. (See figure 1.)
Why does this “delivery gap” exist at so many
companies? It’s not because business leaders
fail to recognize the importance of their
customers. In fact, more than 95% of
management teams we’ve surveyed claim to
be customer focused. We’ve found that the
delivery gap exists for two fundamental reasons.
The first is a basic paradox in business:
Most growth initiatives damage the most
important source of sustainable growth—

a loyal, profitable customer franchise. When
a business tries to increase its revenue per
customer, it tends to do things, like raising
transaction fees, that end up alienating
its core group of buyers. It compounds
the problem when it tries to expand its
customer base, as pursuing new customers
distracts management from serving the
all-important core.
The financial software powerhouse Intuit
briefly succumbed to this paradox, despite
its long record of excellence in customer
service. In 2001, its TurboTax program held
an enviable 70% of the retail market for tax-
preparation software and 83% of the online
market. But then Intuit began doing little
things, such as boosting the price on tech-
support calls and limiting software licenses

to one computer, which annoyed its cus-
tomers. Retail growth flattened. As more
web-based tax-preparation sites sprang
up, online buyers started jumping ship.
Their loyalty had grown paper-thin. In
2003, TurboTax’s online market share
declined precipitously.
The second reason the delivery gap exists
is that good relationships are hard to build.
It’s extremely difficult to understand what
customers really want, keep the promises
you make to them and maintain the right
dialogue to ensure that you adjust your
propositions according to customers’ chang-
ing or increasing needs. And it’s only going
to get harder. (For further reading, see “The
Consumer of 2020,” by James Allen and
Darrell Rigby, Global Agenda, January 2005.)

Figure 1: Identifying the delivery gap
Companies that
believe they provide
a superior proposition
Companies whose
customers agree
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Percentage of companies
“Delivery gap”
8%
80%
Source: Bain Customer!Led Growth diagnostic questionnaire, n
= 362;
Satmetrix Net Promoter database, n = 375
“I am a broken
record when

it comes to say!
ing, ‘We have
to focus on the
consumer.’...
I don’t think the
answers are just
in the numbers.
You have to get
out and look.”
– A.G. Lafley,
CEO, Procter & Gamble
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In our research, we’ve found that

• only 50% of management teams tailor
their products and services to the needs
of customers;
• only 30% organize the functions of their
company to deliver superior customer
experiences;
• only 30% maintain effective customer
feedback loops.
Even initiatives to “better understand” cus-
tomers typically backfire. A company can get
so engrossed in collecting and sifting through
data on patterns of use, retention, purchases
and other transactions that buyers become
numbers rather than people, segments rather
than individuals. Companies become deaf to
the real voices of real customers. Procter &
Gamble’s CEO, A.G. Lafley, best captured the
importance of getting beyond spreadsheets
when he said: “I am a broken record when
it comes to saying, ‘We have to focus on the
consumer.’...I don’t think the answers are just
in the numbers. You have to get out and look.” 1
Closing the gap
So how can you close the delivery gap? The

best way to start is by taking a hard look at
those 8% of companies that customers say
really achieve a superior experience. What sets
the Achievers apart from the mere Believers?
We found, in analyzing the Achievers’ prac-
tices, that they share a simple but powerful
goal: They focus, above all else, on treating
their most profitable customers in ways that
ensure that they come back for more and
recommend the company’s products and
services to their friends. These companies
know exactly what their customer issues are
at all times. (See sidebar, “How to Pinpoint
Your Problem,” opposite page.) It’s by turning
profitable buyers into loyal advocates—and
then working unceasingly to keep those advocates
happy—that the Achievers not only avoid the
delivery gap but also achieve superior rev-

enue and profit growth over the long haul.
In pursuing their distinctive goal, the Achievers
take an unusually broad view of the delivery
of value to customers. Unlike most compa-
nies, which instinctively turn to product or
service design to improve customer satisfac-
tion, the Achievers pursue three imperatives
simultaneously. We call them the “Three
D’s”: They design the right propositions
for the right customers. They deliver those
propositions at the lowest possible system
cost. And they develop the institutional capa-
bilities required to do it again and again. Each
of these Three D’s draws on and reinforces
the others. Together, they transform the
company into one that is continually led
and informed by the voices of its customers.
(See figure 3, page 4.)

Designing the right propositions
Most large companies are adept at traditional
market research, segmentation and product
design. But many fail to connect the dots
between what they learn about customers and
what they offer to customers. They lack the
processes to ensure that customer research
includes real customer interaction—focus
groups, interviews and observation of purchas-
ing and other behaviors—that actually leads
to insight on the essential question “What
do our most important customers really want?”
They fail to convert the insights they glean
into truly differentiated propositions, which
take into account the product features, the
brand and a customer’s experience with the
company. Finally, they fail to make sure the
organization understands who each proposition

is for and how it will be delivered to them.
1 Luisa Krall, “A Fresh Face: A.G. Lafley Is Giving Procter &
Gamble a Radical Makeover,” Forbes, July 8, 2002.
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How to pinpoint your problem
Where are your most profitable customers and
how can you deepen your relationship with

them? Where are your problem customers? The
chart shows the level of customer advocacy as
measured by Net Promoter ScoreTM on the
horizontal axis, and the level of customer
profitability on the vertical. Let’s consider the
key boxes:
• Beginning in the upper right, this group
of customers is a company’s natural design
target, its core, the segment that should be
the prime focus of the Three D’s described
in this brief. You want to keep them, find
more like them and explore what additional
products or services they need. They are your
prime source of new innovation, so listen
to them.
• In the upper left box are the “false profits,”
customers who are “buying but mad”—
they are profitable right now but in fact
are sticking around only because they
have no good alternative. You must
address this group urgently, either by
moving them to the right set of products
or by fixing delivery issues. They are
turning the market against you.
• In the lower left are the “unhappy and
unprofitable”—the buyers who are not
a natural fit with the company and who
are not happy anyway. Helping them
migrate to other providers makes sense.
We have found companies routinely surprised
by which customers are high!profit promoters,
how much potential for cross!sell exists among

low!profit promoters and how many detractors
lurk in their portfolio.
Figure 2: Where are your customers on this relationship
matrix? What actions
should you take?
Low
High
Detractor
Buying
but mad
Unhappy
and
unprofitable
PromoterPassive
Target
customers
Opportunity to
delight
Cross!sell
Ambivalent
Happy but
thrifty

Target more
Address
immediately
Level of customer advocacy
Current
customer
profitability
TM Net Promoter is a trademark of Satmetrix Systems. A Net
Promoter Score is calculated as the percentage of customers
who
would recommend your company (the promoters) minus the
percentage that would urge friends to stay away (the detractors).
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Vodafone offers a good example of a successful
approach to design. The UK-based mobile
phone company grew rapidly through acqui-
sitions in the 1990s, becoming one of the

leading mobile providers in the world. To
ensure that its offerings could be effectively
delivered to target customers in any country,
it stopped categorizing its customers simply
according to where they live, as most cellular
providers do. Instead, it divided its immense
marketplace into just a few, high-priority
global segments: international business trav-
elers; “young, active, fun” users; occasional
users; and a handful of others.
It then developed targeted, experience-
focused offerings. The “young, active, fun”
group, for instance, was offered Vodafone
Live!, a state-of-the-art service that delivers
everything from games and popular-song
ringtones to news, sports and information.
Occasional users were offered Vodafone
Simply, which provides, according to the

company’s annual report, an “uncomplicated
and straight-forward mobile experience.”
Such clearly delineated service platforms
allow everyone in the organization to
understand the strategic priorities and
focus on innovations that will better serve
the segments. All the platforms create
advocates, but they do so in very different
ways. Moreover, the whole company knows
who these customers are—ask anyone from
Vodafone who is a “young, active, fun” user
and he or she can describe that user’s needs
and how Vodafone can support them.
In designing propositions for specific seg-
ments, the Achievers focus on the entire
customer experience. They recognize that
customers interact with different parts of the
organization across a number of touchpoints,

including purchase, service and support,
upgrades, billing and so on. A company
can’t turn its customers into satisfied, loyal
advocates unless it takes their experiences
at all these touchpoints into account. Design
is thus closely tied to delivery from the very
beginning. Planning focuses not only on
the value propositions themselves but also
on all the steps that will be required to deliver
the propositions to the appropriate segments.
Figure 3: Six actions you can take to deliver the Three D’s
Design Deliver
Develop capabilities
1 Identify your most important customers
and understand their needs and value
2 Design a unique proposition to
meet their needs
3 Treat every customer interaction
as a precious resource

4 Create cross!functional teams to
deliver a compelling experience
5 Develop an institutional capability to identify your important
customers so that
you can deliver an experience tailored to their needs;
develop feedback loops
6 Align your goals, measures, systems and organizational
structure to become
a customer!led organization
D
ES
IG
N DELIVER
DEVELOP
CAPABILITIES
De
sig
n Deliver
Develop capabilities
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Delivering propositions
to the customer
When customers turn against companies, the
fault lies as often in the delivery of offerings
as in their design. Firms fail to realize that
propositions presented in the boardroom too
rarely are delivered to customers. They for-
get that the promises you keep, not the ones
you make, determine growth. Worse, while
organizations may understand that they are
accountable for the full customer experience,
they often fail to recognize that the frontline
employees who deliver it may be the least
respected and empowered group in the com-
pany. As one frustrated call center manager
reported to us: “As long as we are treated as
second-class citizens in charge of protecting
management from ‘pesky customers,’ our

company will fail to keep our promises.”
To ensure effective delivery, the Achievers
typically adopt two practices. The first is atti-
tudinal. The Achievers treat every customer
interaction as a precious resource. They
understand that while data mining and CRM
systems can help companies assess what
customers might be thinking, the ultimate
test of any company’s delivery lies in what
customers tell others. The best companies
find ways to listen to the real voices of
customers every day. The second practice is
organizational. They create cross-functional
teams—involving employees from market-
ing to supply chain management—and
motivate them to deliver the targeted value
propositions in a coordinated, flawless man-
ner across the entire customer experience.

They recognize that customers don’t really
care which function in a company responds
to their needs or how cost-effective it is—
they just want promises kept.
One company that’s particularly adept at
listening to its customers and delivering what
they want is Superquinn, the Irish grocery
chain. Founder Feargal Quinn walks each
of his stores’ aisles every month, talking to
shoppers. Twice monthly, he invites 12 cus-
tomers to join him for a two-hour roundtable.
He asks them about service levels, pricing,
cleanliness, product quality, the new pastry
line, reactions to displays, advertising promo-
tions and so on. He also probes to find out
what items they still buy from his competitors
and why. Distributing notes the next morning,
Quinn uses the learnings to evaluate store

managers and to constantly fine-tune the
delivery of the company’s value propositions.
As an example, Quinn learned that an execu-
tive he had hired from a larger grocery chain
was inadvertently damaging customers’
shopping experience in his zeal to cut costs.
Stunned that Superquinn’s promise of “fresh
bread baked daily” meant the grocer gave to
charity tens of thousands of loaves of leftover
bread each evening, the executive ordered
that bread baked after 3 p.m. could be sold
until 3 p.m. the next day—technically within
a 24-hour day. Sales plummeted. “Customers
told us the smell of freshly baked bread was
one of the reasons they came to the store,”
said Quinn. Rescinding the efficiency policy,
Quinn had bakeries bake new bread every
four hours, which increased waste 30% but

lifted bakery sales 35% and profit 10%.
Superquinn’s experience shows that the most
well-intentioned operational improvements
can have unintended consequences for cus-
tomers. The people staffing the front lines
need to truly understand and stand up for
what customers value if a company is going
to deliver on its propositions. It also reveals
the importance of customer research—in
“As long as
we are treated
as second!
class citizens
in charge of
protecting
management
from ‘pesky
customers,’ our
company will
fail to keep
our promises.”
– Call center manager

at leading telco
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6
this case, interviews—in helping companies
ensure their delivery continues to meet the

needs of the target segments. But traditional
metrics, focused on the performance of indi-
vidual functions, aren’t enough; measures
have to be crafted to inspire and sustain
the cross-functional collaboration that
lies at the heart of effective delivery of the
customer experience. (For further reading,
see “Motivating Through Metrics,” by
Frederick F. Reichheld and Paul Rogers,
Harvard Business Review, September 2005.)
This is tricky. We know that the best measures
are simple and easily understood, but achiev-
ing a balance between pleasing customers
and running operations efficiently is complex.
In our work, we’ve identified a trend that we’ve
come to call the “1/3–1/3–1/3” rule. About a
third of company measures of operational
effectiveness have no negative consequences

for the customers and may even lead to
revenue opportunities. For example, a bank
whose retention measures find that new cus-
tomers are most likely to defect in the first
month might create a goal of phoning each
new customer within one week of opening
a checking account. Another third of metrics
at any company typically lead to actions that
harm the customer experience, and the decline
in revenues overwhelms any cost benefit. In
the UK, for example, a cable company at one
point rewarded its service technicians for calls
completed in a day. Because of this, when
service reps realized a customer had a problem
that would take hours to solve, they’d leave
without fixing it, leaving the customer frus-
trated and stranded. A final third of operating
measures require a lot of debate between

functions to understand whether they can be
applied without tipping the balance between
costs and customers.
Informal measures are also important—
customers, after all, don’t speak in numbers.
Superquinn awards shoppers “goof points”
for pointing out problems such as an out-of-
stock item, a dirty floor or a checkout line
longer than three people. The goof points,
which provide discounts off future purchas-
es, have proved a good way to get customers
talking about their experience.
Developing the capabilities
to do it again and again
Finally, Achievers recognize that understanding
what their customers really want and deliver-
ing it to them is not a discrete exercise—it’s
fundamental to the way they do business
each and every day. The leaders of these

companies recognize therefore that in addi-
tion to designing and delivering the right
propositions, they must also develop the
capabilities to do it again and again. To do
that, they invest heavily to build processes
to maintain a real dialogue with their most
important customers. That doesn’t mean
collecting mounds of data—which can
be blinding. Rather, it’s about gaining real
customer insight and timely feedback.
The Achievers have established a number
of capabilities that foster ongoing, systematic
improvement. They maintain formal feed-
back loops, for example, to stay ahead of
shifts in customer needs and attitudes. SAS
Institute, the North Carolina–based software
company, creates a “SASware Ballot” every
year, giving customers a chance to vote on

a list of potential software improvements.
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At eBay employees known as “pinks” monitor
the company’s message boards, quickly learn-
ing which issues, complaints and concerns
may need attention. American Express calls all
customers who don’t quickly activate their new
cards to find out if they’re having problems.
Having decided what and how to deliver
to their most important customers, these
companies realign their goals and measures,

systems and organizational structures to this
mission. One of the best ways to measure
whether they have succeeded is by tracking
a company’s Net Promoter Score, calculated
as the percentage of customers who would
recommend your company (the promoters)
minus the percentage that would urge friends
to stay away (the detractors). Because such a
simple measure will be understandable to all
parts of your business, it can serve to rally and
coordinate the entire organization—to focus
everyone on designing the right customer
experiences and delivering them flawlessly.
Creating repeatable processes is not easy
and often requires major investments in IT,
training and change management programs,
and a tough examination of the mission, vision
and values of the company. Above all it

requires committed leadership, devoted
to keeping the promises a company makes.
Intuit turned around TurboTax’s online mar-
ket-share slide by, in part, institutionalizing
its ability to constantly improve its offerings.
The Consumer Tax Group, which had seen
the biggest share decline, created a 6,000
member “Inner Circle” of customers who
agreed to serve as a kind of ongoing, web-
based focus group. They supplied basic
demographic information, along with their
response to the all-important question “How
likely are you to recommend TurboTax to
friends or colleagues?” They were then asked
to explain in their own words their number-
one priority for enhancing service in any
aspect of the customer experience, including

shopping, buying, installing, using and tech
support. A follow-up question let them priori-
tize a list of 10 suggestions made by others.
The Internet software that collects these ideas
allowed Intuit to better segment customers,
and the company found that each group
had different priorities and issues. Some
wanted a new approach to tech support and
customer service. Another segment ranked
rebate programs as their top priority for
improvement. The company probed further
for details: where rebates were concerned,
was it awkward proof-of-purchase require-
ments, slow turnaround times or the amount
of the rebate that most needed attention?
Thanks to these moves, Intuit was able to
redesign its core TurboTax product, deliver it
to the customer more effectively than ever

and maintain a mechanism for continuously
developing its related capabilities. Customer
advocacy among both first-time users and
veterans rose dramatically, and the company
regained market share in web-based chan-
nels. By systematically attacking the Three
D’s, it had closed the delivery gap—and
regained its competitive edge.
How to begin achieving
true customer!led growth?
See sidebar, “Getting
Started,” page 8.
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8
Getting started
Achieving true customer!led growth typically requires a
sustained multiyear initiative. To trigger
such an initiative, CEOs need to create a sense of urgency.
Companies may have burning
platforms simply because they have lost sight of the key
elements of focusing on their customer.
The process begins with three simple actions:
First, ask yourself the following questions.
1. What are my customers saying about me? Am I successfully
delivering a consistent customer
experience to my most profitable customers?
2. What is my customer issue? Do I need to fix issues with my
current customer base?
Or do I need to attract more of my “target customers”? (See
sidebar, “How to Pinpoint
Your Problem,” page 3.)
Second, run a simple diagnostic with your management team.
1. What are the key customer issues my company is facing? Is
my team aligned on these issues?
2. How is the company doing on product/service design?
Delivery? Capability development?
Third, mobilize the team to act.

1. Begin by identifying your core business, that is, the
customers and propositions where you are
most differentiated and make the most money.
2. Fix any major issues relating to the customer experience
within this core.
3. Once you’ve bolstered the core, then expand outward from it
into new segments and
new offerings.
One of the most effective ways to begin answering these
questions is to benchmark your
performance against others. For more information on the Bain
Management Diagnostic,
email [email protected]
Bain’s business is helping to make companies more valuable.
Founded in 1973 on the principle that consultants must measure
their success in terms of
their clients’ financial results, Bain works with top management
teams to beat their competitors
and generate substantial, lasting financial impact. Our clients
have historically outperformed
the stock market by 4:1.
Who we work with
Our clients are typically bold, ambitious business leaders. They
have the talent, the will
and the open-mindedness required to succeed. They are not
satisfied with the status quo.

What we do
We help companies find where to make their money, make more
of it faster and sustain
their growth longer. We help management make the big
decisions: on strategy, operations,
technology, mergers and acquisitions, and organization. Where
appropriate, we work with
them to make it happen.
How we do it
We realize that helping an organization change requires more
than just a recommendation.
So we try to put ourselves in our clients’ shoes and focus on
practical actions.
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For more information, please visit www.bain.com
© The New Yorker Collection 1990 Mischa Richter from
cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved.

The fi ve disciplines of customer
experience leaders
A compelling experience is the surest means to delight cus-
tomers, engage employees and stand out from competitors.
By Frédéric Debruyne and Andreas Dullweber
Frédéric Debruyne is a partner in Bain & Company’s Customer
Strategy &
Marketing practice and leads the Customer Experience
Transformation product
globally. He is based in Brussels. Andreas Dullweber leads the
Customer Strategy &
Marketing practice in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and is
based in Munich.
Net Promoter® and NPS® are registered trademarks of Bain &
Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix
Systems, Inc.
Net Promoter SystemSM and Net Promoter ScoreSM are
trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld
and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.
Results Delivery® is a registered trademark of Bain &
Company, Inc.
Copyright © 2015 Bain & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

The fi ve disciplines of customer experience leaders
1
Providing a great experience for customers has become
a credo for many companies today. They realize that
a great end-to-end experience will attract and retain
customers, as well as engage the enthusiasm and
creativity of employees. Customers still want a wire-
less plan, auto insurance policy or a mortgage with
the right features at the right price, but increasingly
they also expect at least a convenient, and possibly
special, experience surrounding the product or service.
And they want interactions to be seamless across physical
and digital channels.
Bain & Company analysis shows that companies that
excel in the customer experience grow revenues 4%–
8% above their market. That’s because a superior experi-
ence helps to earn stronger loyalty among customers,

turning them into promoters who tend to buy more,
stay longer and make recommendations to their friends.
As a result, promoters have a lifetime value that can
reach 6 to 14 times that of detractors, depending on
the industry.
Providing a great experience for customers
has become a credo for many com-
panies today. Yet creating experiences
that consistently impress and stand out
from the crowd remains a difficult en-
deavor, and companies often falter after
an initial burst of energy.
Consider how revenue growth at Trader Joe’s, the US
grocery chain, has outpaced most other large competitors
in recent years. Trader Joe’s has built a devoted base of
highly educated, often middle-income customers not
only by providing an innovative product mix at low
prices, but also through a carefully conceived experience.
Its stores have an intimate, slightly exotic atmosphere,
with helpful staff to provide advice. Online product guides
complement the stores. And Trader Joe’s equips employees

to deliver on the brand promise through comprehensive
frontline training and ample autonomy to make in-
store decisions.
Delivering a great experience becomes especially valu-
able at a time when loyalty has diminished in many
industries; two-thirds of the 1,208 senior executives
recently surveyed by Bain reported that their customers’
loyalty has diminished. In most markets, the rise of
digital channels makes it easier for customers to research
and switch to a competitor’s offering.
Yet creating experiences that consistently impress and
stand out from the crowd remains a diffi cult endeavor,
and companies often falter after an initial burst of energy.
When Bain analyzed 140 US companies’ financial,
brand and loyalty data (using the Net Promoter ScoreSM,
or NPS®, metric) from 2005 through 2009, only one
in nine excelled in all categories. But this highlights
the opportunity to create a lasting competitive advan-

tage. How, then, can companies deliver an outstand-
ing experience?
To create an experience that can truly delight customers
and then sustain the effort by making steady improve-
ments requires senior executives to commit to a mara-
thon, not a sprint. The senior team has to take an un-
fl inching look in the mirror: How do they spend their
time? How often do they talk with and about customers?
Do they even use the company’s products and services?
Executives serious about building a compelling customer
experience need to develop thorough, nuanced answers
to fi ve questions (see Figure 1).
1. What do we want to stand for in the eyes of our
customers?
The fi rst task is to articulate the distinctive value prop-
osition that the company will offer to customers—and
2

company will achieve those goals. It also determines
how those proof points will translate into operational
metrics to help consistent delivery across all channels.
One European telecommunications provider distilled
its vision to being “simple and friendly”: simple through
such features as clear pricing and easily installed and
used Internet service; friendly through greater acces-
sibility to service agents and follow-up on a problem
until it gets resolved. The company translated that vision
into specifi c performance indicators such as the clarity
of sales pitches and the share of customers that fi nd it
easy to register online. It distributed a card to employees
listing the behavior principles guiding the effort, and
it charged two senior executives as Mr. Simple and Mr.
Friendly to lead the efforts.
2. Which handful of actions will generate the most
impact with our target customers?

then to mobilize people throughout the organization
around that proposition. Senior leaders might under-
stand the size and contours of the opportunity to improve
the customer experience, but they often fail to mobilize
people at the front line. When Bain surveyed marketing
and sales executives on how their companies performed
in 60 areas, the largest gap between high and low per-
formers (as measured by NPS and market share growth)
occurred in “a front line that understands and passion-
ately executes the strategy.”
Beyond a slogan or slide deck, then, leaders need to
paint a compelling picture of the destination—what
the company should and should not stand for—so that
employees know what the initiative means for them and
how their behavior and approach should change.
A compelling vision defi nes specifi c proof points for
meeting customers’ needs and priorities, and how the
Figure 1: Customer experience leaders excel in fi ve dimensions

Delivery engine
Change backbone
Customer-centric
culture
1
3
5
2
4
Strategic choices
Compelling vision linked to the brand promise:
What do we want to stand for in the eyes
of our customers?
Net Promoter SystemSM for continuous
improvement:
How can we use customer feedback to promote
employees’ learning and behavior changes?
Must-win battles defined from the outside:
Which handful of actions will generate the
most impact with our target customers?
Customer experience redesign:
When we put ourselves in the customer’s

shoes, what aspects of the experience need
to change?
Results Delivery® to embed desired change:
How can we anticipate and mitigate the risks in order to sustain
the changes?
Source: Bain & Company
1 What do we want to stand for in the eyes of our customers?
2 Which actions will have the greatest effect on our target
customers?
3 How can customer feedback promote learning and behavior
change?
4 What aspects of their experience would our customers want to
change?
5 How can we anticipate and mitigate risks in order to sustain
the changes?
TO CREATE A CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE THAT TRULY
DELIGHTS, ANSWER THESE FIVE QUESTIONS:
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE LEADERS:
Have a category-leading brand
Grow faster than their leading competitor
Are sustainably profitable
Are loyalty leaders in their market
Yet from 2005 through
2009, only 1 in 9

companies excelled in
all categories.
Customers increasingly expect a convenient, easy and possibly
special experience surrounding products and services.
Companies that excel
at the customer
experience grow
revenues 4%–8%
above their market.
That’s because a superior
experience earns stronger loyalty,
turning customers into promoters
with a lifetime value 6 to 14
times that of detractors.
ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?
4
experience for key customer segments helped the carrier
to regain its lost market share.
With a clear vision of the value proposition and the
must-win battles, the next steps are to put in place the

engines for improving an existing experience or, when
needed, for redesigning the experience.
3. How can we use customer feedback to promote
learning and behavior change among employees?
People with clarity about their mission—and who receive
positive and helpful reinforcement for doing the right
thing—go the extra mile to deliver. Mobilizing and
harnessing employees’ energy requires two types of
feedback loops deployed continuously (see Figure 2).
Experience leaders sift through early
initiatives to identify those that work
well, reinforce the vision and deserve
more resources, while avoiding or quickly
ending initiatives that don’t matter to most
target customers.
An inner loop collects customer feedback through one
or two simple NPS questions—Would you recommend
company X? Why?—following key episodes or touch-
points. This feedback routes quickly to the relevant
employees and supervisors so that they can learn what
does and does not work, change behaviors accordingly

and follow up with customers. Continuous improve-
ments work like a tennis player hitting thousands of
balls in order to make adjustments to certain strokes
and thereby improve her overall game. At regular hud-
dles, teams can discuss customers’ perceptions and
feedback, share learnings, escalate issues that cannot
Customer experience improvement plans often comprise
hundreds of uncoordinated initiatives that emerged
with good intent from different parts of the organization,
with little clarity about which will add the most value for
customers. A glut of initiatives rarely adds up to a power-
ful whole because each one receives too little attention
or funding.
Experience leaders sift through early initiatives to iden-
tify those that work well, reinforce the vision and deserve
more resources, while avoiding or quickly ending ini-
tiatives that don’t matter to most target customers. Some
leaders select the critical customer episodes by arraying

them on two dimensions: frequency of use and emo-
tional importance. They form these insights by ana-
lyzing customer feedback combined with data from
other market research, financial data, press reports
and social media listening posts.
In the telecom industry, for instance, major causes of
detraction include poor network quality and limited
access to staff. On the upside, the variables that turn
customers into promoters include knowledge of store
staff and a technician’s behaviors in the home. Must-win
battles in telecom thus often include fi xing basic activities
such as first-time-right problem resolution, retail or
contact center accessibility and simplifi ed plan struc-
tures, as well as efforts to create promoters during key
episodes involving the front line.
But each company faces unique challenges and should
identify its own important battlefi elds where it must
make relevant choices and trade-offs. That’s what one

air carrier did to regain its standing among highly prof-
itable segments of premium business customers who
had given the airline weak NPS scores. Root-cause
analysis identifi ed a handful of initiatives under way,
grouped them into themes and identifi ed the handful
that deserved more investment or that could serve as
quick wins. For the theme “make it speedy,” for instance,
the carrier moved gate locations to shorten the walk and
accelerated VIP security lines. Improving the overall
5
hard to do the wrong thing. Methods to do so include
carefully chosen performance metrics and after-the-fact
consequences. When metrics are simply stated, few in
number, linked to the customer experience and trans-
parent to everyone in the organization, they motivate
employees to apply discretionary effort. Consequences

should balance at roughly 80% positive and 20% negative,
because positive consequences reinforce desired behaviors.
4. When we put ourselves in the customer’s shoes,
what aspects of the experience need to change?
With technology and competitive dynamics moving so
quickly these days, leading companies don’t hesitate
to completely rethink customer experiences by, for ex-
ample, incorporating new digital channels and features.
Effective experience design works outside in from the
customer’s perspective, not inside out from an engi-
neering standpoint. Experience leaders display deep
be resolved locally and follow up with select customers.
In this system, supervisors take a more active role in
coaching for the right customer-centered behaviors.
The inner loop taps into the innate human desires to
learn, innovate and receive encouragement and support
in those pursuits.
The richness of customer feedback, distilled the right

way, will also fuel an outer loop of improvement. This
outer loop aims to identify major issues and root causes
of problems and strengths, which typically involve mul-
tiple functions and departments. Management can deploy
resources to address these systemic issues and make
structural improvements that benefi t the overall customer
experience. These changes should be closely commu-
nicated back to employees.
A key principle behind any adjustments: Make it easy
and fulfi lling for employees to do the right thing and
Figure 2:Two feedback loops promote both individual learning
and structural improvements
Individual behavior
and learning
Engaged customers
and employeesCustomer engages
with us
Assess
the
experience

Indentify actions
and coach
behaviors
Follow
up with
customers
Structural
improvements
Communicate improve-
ments to employees and
customers
Implement
structural
improvements
Define
actions and
prioritize
Identify key issues
and root causes
Inner loop Outer loop
Source: Bain & Company
6

contacted. So speed, process and service became the corner-
stone of the redesign of the fraud resolution experience.
5. How can we anticipate and mitigate the risks, in
order to sustain the changes?
Senior leaders committed to building a superior cus-
tomer experience will need an achievable plan that can
be delivered while carrying on with day-to-day business.
Companies that fall short of expectations they’ve set
usually fail to bring their people through the change,
largely due to two blind spots. First, they push initiatives
without understanding the many other tasks people are
juggling. Second, the mere prospect of change can be quite
unsettling; employees justifi ably worry about their own
role, resist the change and get distracted from their work.
Just as devising a winning experience starts with the
customer’s priorities, an achievable plan shows empathy
for employees—senior leaders put themselves in the

performer’s shoes—and assesses the organization’s state
of readiness by answering three practical questions:
Which groups are the most critical in order to carry out
the required changes? It’s useful to map a matrix showing
the importance of the change to each group and the
expected effect of the change on them.
How can we equip each group for success? Improve-
ments will come slowly if people have to battle outdated
practices and policies. So companies may have to invest
in process changes or technologies that will to help their
people succeed, as well as hire people with new skills in,
say, digital design.
Who can best support and infl uence the groups? Given
that a customer’s experience touches multiple parts of
a company—which in turn depends on support from
other departments behind the scenes—success hinges
on having sponsors of the plan at all levels. This “spon-
sorship spine” sometimes tracks direct reporting relation-

ships, like a call-center agent, his supervisor, her manager
empathy toward customers’ core needs. They generally
start with a clean sheet and redesign certain important
episodes, or even the entire experience, to repair breaks
and seize opportunities for “wow” moments.
A retail bank, for instance, would consider its customers’
main priorities—buy a home, provide for a daughter’s
college education, manage cash and so on. Some leading
banks have found it useful to select the critical customer
episodes by ranking them according to frequency of
use and emotional importance. Then they reimagine
each episode from the customer’s perspective.
Companies that fall short of expectations
they’ve set usually fail to bring their peo-
ple through the change, largely due to
two blind spots. First, they push initiatives
without understanding the many other
tasks people are juggling. Second, the
mere prospect of change can be quite
unsettling; employees justifi ably worry
about their own role, resist the change
and get distracted from their work.

One UK-based bank identifi ed detecting and deterring
fraud as a moment of truth that could strongly infl uence
customers’ advocacy or detraction of the bank (see Figure
3). It described four episodes of suspected fraud, and
then mapped all of the people and processes required
in each episode to resolve the fraud effectively. By sur-
veying customers after their fraud resolution experi-
ences, the bank found that for all four journeys, higher
NPS scores correlated with fast resolution of the prob-
lem and resolution in one phone call by the fi rst agent
7
• Mastering the discipline of repeatability. In fast-
moving markets, the half-life of any customer ex-
perience has grown shorter. Successful compa-
nies thus develop capabilities to make the experience
design process repeatable, either to apply to new
products and markets or to adapt to the inevitable

shifts in the marketplace. Building a repeatable
model allows companies to rapidly adapt to change
without succumbing to complexity. The outcome
is a customer-centric culture that delivers excep-
tional experiences, time after time, to create lasting
competitive differentiation.
and so on. But it often also includes respected advo-
cates in other units, people who have infl uence by virtue
of their earned authority and reputation.
In many cases, a complete transformation of a cus-
tomer experience takes place over 18 to 24 months and
comprises several phases:
• Installation of the Net Promoter System, including
working out the economics of greater loyalty as part
of making a strong case for change, combined with
a compelling customer vision.
• Realization of the intended outcome by using the
inner and outer loops and the advocacy of sponsors

throughout the organization, while concentrating
on the must-win battles.
Figure 3: Focus on the small number of episodes that matter
most to customers, such as dealing with fraud
Transfer
money
Make a purchase Make a
deposit
Amend
a direct
deposit
Set up
a direct
deposit
Deal with
fraud
Change
your
address
Close an
account

Open an
accountApply for
a credit
card
Ask for
help about
products
Make a
complaint
Apply for a
mortgage
Apply for
a loan
Replace a
lost/stolen/
damaged card
Deal with a
bereavement

Help with
financial
difficulties
Apply for
‘payment
holiday’
Draw down
on mortgage
HighLow
Low High
Potential to anger
Episode frequency Bank’s gap vs. market leader
H
ig
h
Lo
w
Po
te
nt
ia
l t

o
de
lig
ht
Medium (25-50 ppts) Large (>50 ppts)
Source: Bain & Company disguised banking case
Use an
un-planned
overdraft
8
Shared Ambit ion, True Re sults
Bain & Company is the management consulting fi rm that the
world’s business leaders come
to when they want results.
Bain advises clients on strategy, operations, technology,
organization, private equity and mergers and acquisitions.
We develop practical, customized insights that clients act on
and transfer skills that make change stick. Founded
in 1973, Bain has 51 offi ces in 33 countries, and our deep

expertise and client roster cross every industry and
economic sector. Our clients have outperformed the stock
market 4 to 1.
What sets us apart
We believe a consulting fi rm should be more than an adviser.
So we put ourselves in our clients’ shoes, selling
outcomes, not projects. We align our incentives with our
clients’ by linking our fees to their results and collaborate
to unlock the full potential of their business. Our Results
Delivery® process builds our clients’ capabilities, and
our True North values mean we do the right thing for our
clients, people and communities—always.
For more information, visit www.bain.com
Key contacts
Americas: Maureen Burns in Boston
([email protected])
Aaron Cheris in San Francisco
([email protected])
Asia-Pacifi c: Richard Hatherall in Sydney
([email protected])
Jeff Melton in Melbourne
([email protected])
Europe, Frédéric Debruyne in Brussels

([email protected])
Middle East Andreas Dullweber in Munich
([email protected])
and Africa:

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