The Inside-Out Outside-In Model
If you run a customer experience (CX) program, then you burn for customer centricity. You understand: your customers‘ CX depends on the products‘ effectiveness, the effort that comes with interacting with your company, as well as the emotions delivered along the customer journey. Aww — the three E!
And then, the BU leaders, country managers and other stakeholders keep telling you that first they need to cope with challenge A or wait for improvement B before they can play with you. That‘s because they deal with products, they are proud of, processes they are often limited by, and people who have to make CX happen while doing their daily work. Oh — the three P!
Be smart and don’t be too customer centric by only speaking about the Es. Instead, combine the Es and the Ps into the inside-out outside-in view of the world to kill several birds with one stone:
- Speak your internal stakeholders‘ language by acknowledging the world they have to deal with.
- Appreciate the heritage of your company and the things your colleagues are proud of. („Not everything we have done so far is bad!“ — do you ever get that?)
- Remove trees to hide behind. If a BU leader or country manager wants to fix A first or wait for the new B before joining the CX program, the inside-out outside-in model shows them that there are eight other areas left to improve while waiting for A or B.
- Create an intuitive reference frame for improvement ideas in your customer experience by mapping the resulting nine areas of effectiveness, effort and emotion in your products, processes and people.
Then, after all, you can‘t be too customer centric by just being a little bit more inside focused as well!
The Inside-Out Outside-In Model helps you to not become too customer centric.