Nicholas J. Webb's Blog, page 7

Do you know what your customers crave?

The concept is so simple that it pains me to even asked such an obvious question? Unfortunately, however according to Forrester’s research 65% of companies have no bloody idea about what their customers really want. This started me on a three-year journey. I I began researching the best and the worst companies to see if I could aggregate and to learn why some organizations continue to grow sales, attract and keep the best talent and consistently deliver exceptional human experiences. And I discovered three things: Everything you need to know about delivering exceptional customer experiences Know you customer types – for years organizations have attempted to deliver customer experiences to a single bucket of customers. Even worse they targeted their customer experiences to simply the most profitable customers using outdated customer relationship management approaches. In order to win in today’s hyper-competitive market organizations need to go beyond a single bucket or market segmentation approach and learn their various customer types by understanding what they love and what they hate. Once you identify these customer types you will have the insights you need to deliver exceptional experiences far beyond the customer’s baseline level of expectation. Go beyond journey mapping – in the old Read More

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What customers crave a new book on customer experience design

Innovation Meets Customer Experience Design I spend over 18 months researching and writing “What Customers Crave” and now it’s on its way to final development and printing. The book will be available in bookstores worldwide this October. The best way to look at this body of work is that it is essentially “innovation meets customer experience design.” When you think about it, for the last several decades, when we think about innovation we think about bright shiny objects. The truth of the matter is bright shiny objects are nothing more than things that deliver customer value. Ironically these product and technology innovations are being disrupted by CX innovators that are creating new human experiences across the five key touch points, in both digital and nondigital channels across a range of what I call customer node types. Customer Experience (CX) as a design process In the book I share with my readers how the best organizations in the world go beyond old-fashioned customer relationship management, net promoter score and voice of the customer processes to dig deeper into identifying their customers as notes. Once we identify our customer types we can then create incredibly relevant and therefore superior human experiences across the Read More

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Innovation the New Corporate Crack

Innovation for Sale! I have been involved in the area of innovation Lassen Innovation for more than 25 years, both as an innovation strategist and as an inventor. About a decade ago, “innovation” became the new buzzword, like “synergy” or “solutions” or “value added.” Major consulting firms took advantage by using a smart policy of offering what customers wanted to hear. They’ve created a range of reversed-engineered innovation systems to sell to their clients. The systems are reversed engineered in the sense that the innovation is created from the risks that these companies have to manage. They were designed to be extremely attractive to large risk-centric companies. Today, there are as many as 800 different forms of innovation best practice. Do I have to point out the irony in that number? So what do these consulting firms do? It’s simple. They create a risk-management system, but call it an innovation-management system. Their clients get to tell their bosses that they’re innovating, while at the same time, they don’t need to take any risks. This can only be described as “corporate crack.” This is the perfect combination of a brand initiative that has the no risk benefits of a risk management system. Read More

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The innovation power of being stupid

A few years ago I came up with the stupid idea of selling construction sets for kids that boldly includes a label that says “instructions not included” in fact the idea was so stupid that many retailers thought the label was a misprint. But actually it wasn’t a misprint. I was operating under the impression that kids were innately genius and the last thing they needed was a step-by-step instruction manual.  I love it when a plan comes together (the A-Team) Now that I’m through the aftermath of the Christmas toy sales season I’m able to enjoy a little bit of vindication. The Hanz Toys products sold so quickly that I literally couldn’t keep them in stock. If that wasn’t good enough I also just received the Best Creative Fun Award. This is the product review Put a HanzBlok set in a child’s hands and watch the ideas fly. The set’s versatile functionality is such that building a huge variety of vehicles and structures, the likes of which have often never been seen before, seems both easy and natural. Those so inclined can, of course, think things through and plan their designs out up front, to great effect. But part of the beauty Read More

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New series of business, technology and healthcare podcasts

Beginning February 15, 2016 I will launch my range of podcasts that will address the future of business, leadership, technology, customer engagement, healthcare and education. If you’re like me you’re probably too busy to try to read through hundreds of blogs each day to understand the trajectory of change in business and technology. That’s where my podcasts come in. I will do the heavy lifting of finding by interviewing the top thought leaders on a range of topics to help keep my audience up to speed on what they need to know as they build and maintain future ready organizations. Here’s a list of the various channels within my podcast program make sure and check back in mid February so you can subscribe and listen at home, the office or on the road. The Nicholas Webb Show – the Nicholas Webb show is a business and technology show that speaks to emerging trends that every CEO needs to know about. These trends will include how organizations are leading their markets by leveraging technologies, customer engagement, new business practices and disruptive innovation. The WAVE THREE SHOW – this show is all about the future of healthcare and wellness. I will bring in world-renowned Read More

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Are you a born public speaker?

The short answer is absolutely NOT! I speak at over 50 events each year around the world and I have a great honor of meeting and working with some of the top speakers in the world. What I’ve learned from my colleagues that in the speaking profession and from my own personal experience is that speaking requires three basic ingredients 1.) Passionate message connected to your own experience or expertise, 2.) Professional training 3.) Practice Two days ago I received this email from my daughter’s teacher Nick, I wanted to tell you what a fabulous job Paige did on her last book report presentation in December.  I was going to email you sooner but I got swamped with the holidays and here we are in mid January.  Every now and then I see a performance that jumps out.  A student who does something way beyond what the peers do.  This was Paige with public speaking.  She is a very natural and talented speaker.  She reminded me of Nick when he did the presentation for Mrs. William’s class back in the days when Taylor was at Grant.  I know that Paige will do well in life but I would encourage her to continue Read More

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Is Creativity a Joke? – The Power of the SIX ROCK

I think it’s time to ask ourselves the adult question is creativity a joke? For years, people have been trying to learn how to be more creative. They assume if they can learn how to master creativity, they can become a great innovator. But the reality is the creativity in all of us is limitless. The real success to inventing stuff is using our natural creative power and applying it to the needs, problems, and opportunities of others. Look dad, a six rock! Contrary to popular belief, we do not have radiance of creative power. We are truly created equal when it comes to our creative powers. The difference between successful inventors and the average Joe is that inventors have learned how to be active observers. Active observation requires an ignition point. For example, the other day I was sitting by the pool with my young daughter and she handed me a rock and said, look dad, a six rock. I looked at the rock and I was puzzled because it looked just like a rock. But after detailed study I found an extremely subtle but perfectly formed number 6 in the rock. I could have walked by the rock a Read More

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Inventing one of the first wearable medical technologies

Wearable medical technologies are all the buzz today. But I began working on wearable technologies back in 1995 leveraging the technologies of the day see, US patent 5.902,234 and 6,728,341. Remember this was way before the common use of cell phones and certainly before smart phones and enabling technology stacks. As I continue my work in this space one thing is certainly clear and that is wearable technologies will have a principal impact on both disease management and prevention. The overwhelming majority of the cost of healthcare are driven by patient behavior this includes both wellness behaviors and disease management behaviors. Leveraging connection architecture, game mechanics and social engagement we will be able to do a far better job in anticipating conditions before they become expensive and acute. My early patents describe the use of two-way digital pagers that would send out messages to patients to remind them to take medications, check blood pressures or other disease management behaviors. The patient would press the yes no button that would go back to the caregiver or central monitoring station to verify that the patient is complying with hospital discharge our home healthcare regiments. There is of course a lot more to these Read More

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