Category Archives: marketing

Top Ten Uses for a Customer Journey Map

Leave a reply

Top Ten Uses for a Customer Journey Map

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In the evolving landscape of customer-centric business, the customer journey map has emerged as a pivotal tool. It serves not only as a means to visualize the customer experience but also as a strategic asset to drive innovation and transformation. By mapping out the customer journey, organizations can gain deep insights into customer needs, pain points, and moments of truth, ultimately leading to enhanced experiences and increased loyalty. Here are the top ten uses for a customer journey map.

1. Understand Customer Experience

The primary function of a customer journey map is to visualize the entire customer experience. By laying out the journey, businesses can empathize with customers, gaining a comprehensive understanding of their experiences and emotions at each touchpoint.

2. Identify Pain Points

Journey maps are instrumental in identifying pain points and frictions along the customer journey. By highlighting these areas, businesses can prioritize improvements and tackle the most impactful issues to enhance customer satisfaction.

3. Enhance Product Development

Innovative product development can be fostered through insights gained from customer journey maps. By understanding customer needs and pain points, development teams can create solutions that are aligned with user expectations and desires.

4. Improve Customer Support

Journey maps can highlight common issues faced by customers, allowing companies to streamline and improve their customer support processes. By addressing these areas, organizations can enhance their support services, leading to better customer experiences.

5. Drive Alignment Across Teams

Customer journey maps create a shared vision and understanding of customer segments across all teams within an organization. This alignment fosters collaboration and ensures that all departments are working towards a common goal: improving the customer experience.

6. Inform Marketing Strategies

By understanding the customer journey, marketers can design targeted strategies that align with each stage of the customer lifecycle. This ensures more effective communication and engagement, ultimately improving conversion rates and customer retention.

7. Personalize Customer Interactions

Journey maps help businesses provide personalized experiences by identifying key moments where tailored interactions can significantly impact customer satisfaction and loyalty. Personalization fosters a deeper connection with customers, enhancing their overall experience.

8. Support Change Management Initiatives

During times of change, a customer journey map serves as a guiding framework to maintain focus on the customer as strategies and processes evolve. It ensures that change initiatives are designed with the customer in mind, thus reducing the risk of negative impacts.

9. Foster Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is driven by ongoing insights and feedback from customer journey maps. As businesses iterate on the customer experience, journey maps act as a feedback loop, helping organizations remain agile and responsive to changing customer needs.

10. Drive Innovation

Last but certainly not least, journey maps drive innovation by uncovering opportunities for creating breakthrough experiences and services. They challenge organizations to think creatively about how they can deliver unique value and set themselves apart in the market.

Conclusion

A customer journey map serves as an invaluable tool for organizations seeking to enhance customer experience and drive strategic growth. By visualizing the customer’s interactions with a brand, businesses can identify pain points and opportunities at every stage of the consumer lifecycle. From improving customer service and refining marketing strategies to informing product development and personalizing the purchasing process, the applications of a customer journey map are vast and impactful. Leveraging these insights allows companies to foster deeper engagement, build loyalty, and ultimately achieve a competitive edge in today’s dynamic market. As customer expectations continue to evolve, integrating journey mapping into your business strategy is not just beneficial but essential for sustained success.

Image credit: Pixabay

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Creating Long-Term Customer Loyalty

Leave a reply

Creating Long-Term Customer Loyalty

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Many years ago, I sold a home. My real estate agent made a value proposition for me. If I hired her to sell my home, I could walk out of the house and never come back. She would manage everything related to maintaining the home and keeping it “showroom ready.” That included lawn care, cleaning and much more. If anything broke, she would take care of. If a painter needed to touch up a wall, she would hire “her painter.” Other than showing up at the closing to sign papers, my only responsibility would be to reimburse her for any expenses she incurred.

She explained that she had a network of preferred vendors who gave her preferential pricing, and she would pass only the actual costs onto me. In addition to her stellar reputation, what she promised to do—make selling my house easy and hassle-free—was the reason I hired her.

At the time, I wondered, “Why don’t other real estate agents do this?” Another question was, “Why don’t more businesses, regardless of the industry they are in, do this?”

It turns out there are people, companies and brands that do. However, many struggle to put together a program like this and find out it’s harder than they thought. Furthermore, what if a company could profit from these recommendations and referrals? What if the referrer received a commission or finder’s fee for recommending the right vendor?

Meet Mikhail Naumov, the founder and CEO of Paylode, a company that helps his clients do exactly what my real estate agent did for me. Naumov says, “If you’re a car company, you’re selling cars. If you’re a pet adoption agency, you’re helping people adopt a new puppy. For the most part, that’s where your job begins and ends. However, the moment the customer buys a car or adopts a puppy, they suddenly have a dozen other problems or pain points they now must solve due to the purchase.”

Naumov’s version of my real estate agent story is that he moved from California to Miami, rented an apartment, and the moment he signed the lease, he thought, “I now need to find renter’s insurance, moving trucks, a storage unit, furniture, appliances, food and more.” His entrepreneurial mind kicked in and he realized there was an opportunity to help apartment rental companies (and now companies across many other industries, including travel, hospitality, and insurance) create a system to take care of their customers’ secondary and tertiary needs. His company, Paylode, was born.

Paylode helps its clients find companies and vendors that their customers need. Sometimes the clients get a referral fee. They typically negotiate discounts that get their customers better rates, and even with the referral fees, the customer still saves money.

While this offers Paylode’s clients an alternative revenue stream by monetizing the products and services they recommend, Naumov quickly realized that it was not the most important reason. The No. 1 reason is making the client’s life easier by helping them with what they need, related to but outside of what their actual business does. This ultimately creates a better customer experience, which in turn drives core business metrics (i.e., retention, engagement, LTV, repeat purchase, and more).

In a sense, the Paylode program is like offering a perk to the customer. Naumov says, “We live in an incentive economy.” Customers love to be rewarded with a perk for doing business with a company. That perk could be, as mentioned, a negotiated discount with a secondary business. But what if you took that further and offered other perks? For example, an apartment rental company could offer six months of free internet with popular streaming channels like MAX and AppleTV. A perk like that becomes an incentive behind a customer’s buying decision, which is why Naumov has named this feature of his platform “Paylode Boost,” focusing on a perk that incentivizes a customer to take a desired action, or choose one company over another.

Companies and brands spend most of their time focused on their own business. Naumov says they have tunnel vision and makes the case for companies from all industries—both B2C and B2B—to step outside of that tunnel and think about their customers’ needs beyond the core product or service they offer. It starts by asking the question, “What new problems show up in my customers’ lives as a consequence of buying from me?”

Sit down with your team and work out the answer, and consider Naumov’s suggestion to “Help customers solve those secondary and tertiary problems in a way that creates loyalty, engagement and gratitude from your customers for life.”

Image Credits: Unsplash

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

The Magic of Starting with Yes

Leave a reply

The Magic of Starting with Yes

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

It’s time to revisit the idea of avoiding the word “no,” but this time, I want to approach it from a different angle. First, let me tell you about my friend Dr. Nido Qubein, a devoted husband and father, motivational speaker, entrepreneur, president of High Point University, and mentor to many, who came to this country when he was 17 with little more than $50 to his name. Almost 50 years ago, he attended High Point University, never dreaming that one day he would be president of the institution, a position he accepted in 2005.

Since that time, there has been incredible growth at HPU. In his first year, the university had about 1,400 students enrolled on the 91-acre campus. Today, there are almost 6,000 students, including 623 graduate students. The campus has grown to more than 500 acres, includes 128 buildings, and is considered an elite university.

If you Google “Nido Qubein,” you will see a list of accomplishments that give insight into this man’s extraordinary career. As mentioned, he is a mentor to many, and even as a friend, I am among those who consider him a mentor. I’ve learned much from his willingness to share the lessons he learned from his successes, and today, I want to share a simple lesson we might all want to consider, which has to do with the word no.

If you’ve been following my work, you know I’ve written several articles about avoiding the word no. Christine Trippi and Cameron Mitchell have been featured in The Shepard Letter and in my videos discussing the topic. This time, I give you Nido’s perspective, and even though he’s not talking about customer service or CX, it ties in perfectly.

Nido recognizes that when someone new steps into a leadership role in any type of organization, authenticity and listening skills are of the utmost importance. People can be skeptical. He says, “I always start with a yes. It doesn’t always end that way after we’ve done the study, but a lot of people start with no.”

I love this idea. When our customers ask us for something or they have an issue, starting on a positive note, such as finding a way to use the word yes from the start can help guide the conversation in the right direction. This is what it looks like:

  • “Yes, I understand.”
  • “Yes, that’s a great idea worth considering.”
  • “Yes, you do have a problem, so let’s see what we can do about it.”
  • “Yes, that is a possibility. Let’s look at the situation more closely.”

Nido’s simple leadership lesson is also a powerful customer service lesson. When a customer comes to you with a problem or issue, you are in a leadership position. You are empowered with authority to help the customer. Saying yes is not about giving in. It’s about using the right word at the right time to create a better customer experience.

Image Credits: Pexels

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

Creating More Digital Value for Customers

1 Reply

Creating more value for customers is how highly successful digital companies like Uber, Amazon, Netflix, and Apple got to where they are today.

Creating More Digital Value for Customers

GUEST POST from Howard Tiersky

So how do you improve your customer value? Think of customer value as an equation — how much do you give me in exchange for how much I give you? There’s the “cost” side of the equation for the customer, and there’s the “benefits” side. Great customer value engineering innovates on both sides of that equation.

Cost

An important part of the “cost” is the money the consumer spends, but it is also measured in time, convenience and level of effort. If the customer has to work harder to extract the value from your offering, this is a perceived increase in cost.

Let’s take the example of Netflix. They have always been aggressive about providing access to large volumes of content for an accessible monthly charge. Their current lowest price is $6.99 per month, less than the cost of a single movie ticket. Netflix also works hard to use personalization to lower the effort it takes to find and play content on any device.

Here are four key ways to reduce the “cost” side of your value proposition. Consider which of these might apply to your offering.

1. Charge less. This is the most obvious step. The danger is that competing on price alone can be a dangerous game and take both you and your competitors into a place where it can be difficult to make money or run a sustainable business. However, we see many of the most successful companies in the digital space not necessarily “discounting” their offer but finding ways to re-engineer their entire cost model via innovative approaches that leverage this new digital world in order to offer more for less. For example, Amazon is able to undercut the prices of many brick and mortar retailers because they don’t have the cost of retail stores and because of the large scale of their operation. Google is able to offer email for free because they have devised a way to make money via advertising rather than charging for the service.

2. Change your payment model. Blockbuster rented videos on a “per video” basis. Netflix’s first innovation was not streaming or House of Cards but rather the subscription model for video “rental.” Similarly, Amazon created a major innovation with Amazon Prime when they offered subscription 2-day shipping services. But subscription is not the only way to change the game. Disaggregation is another. Apple changed the music industry by focusing on selling individual tracks of music rather than entire albums. They then applied this same approach to episodic TV episodes which were previously only available to be purchased in “full season” DVD sets.

3. Reduce the customer’s effort. Uber takes the effort out of getting around. They extremely simplified the process of ordering a car service, paying, talking to the driver about where you are headed and managing your expense records. These may be small things, but they add up. Just like we are willing to pay more for milk at 7-11 to avoid the grocery store if your offering is less effort for the user it reduces the overall “cost.”

4. Reduce unexpected costs. Look for opportunities to save a user money that they would be paying to someone else. If a user can drive less or avoid shipping costs, you have saved them money, and they may not mind giving you a little more. An old-school example, AAA sells roadside assistance but included with this subscription are discounts to most hotels and some other travel-related services. These discounts cost AAA nothing and add value to the membership.

Benefits

Now that we’ve removed some of the “cost,” how can we augment the benefits? Here are five techniques to increase the benefits side of the equation.

1. Offer more stuff. HBO recently partnered with Sesame Workshop to add over 20 seasons of Sesame Street to their on-demand offering. Dropbox continues to increase the storage they will give you for your $9.99 monthly subscription. Consider cost-effective ways to simply give the user more of what they are coming to you for.

2. Add features. Google office massively increased the value of their “PowerPoint” competitor by enabling cloud-based real-time collaboration. Consider how to expand the features your product offers to add value.

3. Increase shareability. The more people that can utilize a single purchase, the more value it has. Apple created their family plan so that apps purchased from their App store can be used by anyone in the family. Amazon created a way to “lend” a Kindle book to a friend.

4. Increase durability or longevity. Extending the realistic lifespan of your product extends the value. For example demonstrating the “future-proofing” you have included in your solution so that it will be forward-compatible with the “next generation” of technology adds value to your offer.

5. Add flexibility. If customers can use your product in different ways, apply it to more “needs” in their life, this increases the value. You may have subscribed to Dropbox to share files with clients, but Dropbox has added and promotes features also to make it a great place to sync and store your personal photos and act as a “backup” in case of hard drive failure. Apple constantly markets the diverse ways their products can be used. iPhones are also cameras, calculators, GPS devices, musical instruments, word processors, currency converters and presentation tools. Every additional way your iPhone can be used potentially replaces another product you would have to buy and adds value.

Which of these opportunities to enhance the value equation for your customer best fit your business? For those that don’t seem to “fit,” try a thought experiment for each and consider if it did fit, how would you apply it? You might discover a breakthrough that would transform your whole value proposition.

This article originally appeared on the Howard Tiersky blog

Image Credits: Howard Tiersky, FROM

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

The Cost of Surprising Customers

Leave a reply

The Cost of Surprising Customers

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Surprising customers with something they weren’t expecting doesn’t have to be expensive. In many cases, it can be very inexpensive or even free.

For example, surprising a couple with a cake and candle when they are celebrating at a restaurant costs a tiny fraction of the meal but greatly impacts the evening.

For years, I’ve shared the story of a cab driver who surprised his customers with a newspaper, a bottle of water and a side trip to see a famous local landmark. That side trip cost the driver nothing but a few minutes of time. And the newspaper and water cost him far less than the extra tip he received for adding these surprises to the experience.

Even though I have covered this concept before, it’s worth resurrecting. What inspired me to do so was an article by Chip Bell, my friend and fellow customer service expert, who recently wrote a Forbes article titled The Magic of Serving with Radical Generosity. His main example of this happened at the Marriott Long Wharf Hotel in Boston. He checked in late for a one-night stay. The front desk clerk upgraded him to one of the grandest rooms in the hotel.

The front desk clerk recognized Chip as a loyal Marriott Bonvoy member and knew the surprise of upgrading him to the nicer room wouldn’t cost the hotel any more than the regular room he was booked in. The result was a deepened sense of loyalty and sharing the story with others—in this case, thousands of readers of Chip’s Forbes article. The goodwill and word-of-mouth marketing the hotel received was far more than the upgrade cost, which was virtually nothing.

Surprising Customers Cartoon by Shep Hyken

But the surprise is nothing if there isn’t a supporting cast, as in the employees who make what Chip calls Radical Generosity come to life. The cast member’s role is to do more than just surprise the customer—it is to create a positive experience that transcends the surprise.

In my restaurant example, if all the server did was set a slice of cake in front of the guests and begrudgingly say, “Happy anniversary,” the experience would be tainted by the lack of enthusiasm for the moment. The guest might say, “That was nice, but …” It takes more than one positive moment to make the experience.

If you like the idea of surprising a customer, share these examples at your next team meeting. Then, kick off a discussion that starts with this question: What’s our version of a hotel’s room upgrade or a surprise slice of cake?

Image Credits: Pexels

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

Coping with the Chasm

1 Reply

Coping with the Chasm

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

I’ve been talking about crossing the chasm incessantly for over thirty years, and I’m not likely to stop, but it does beg the question, how should you operate when you are in the chasm? What is the chasm itself about, and what actions is it likely to reward or punish?

The chasm is a lull in the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, one that comes after the enthusiasts and visionaries have made their splash and before the pragmatists are willing to commit. At this time the new category is on the map, people are talking about it, often quite enthusiastically, but no one has budgeted for it as yet. That means that conventional go-to-market efforts, based on generating and pursuing qualified leads with prospects who have both budget and intent to purchase, cannot get traction. It does not mean, however, that they won’t entertain sales meetings and demos. They actually want to learn more about this amazing new thing, and so they can keep your go-to-market engine humming with activity. They just won’t buy anything.

Crossing the Chasm says it is time for you to select a beachhead market segment with a compelling reason to buy and approach them with a whole product that addresses an urgent unsolved problem. All well and good, but what if you don’t know enough about the market (or your own product for that matter) to make a sound choice? What if you are stuck in the chasm and have to stay there for a while? What can you do?

First of all, take good care of the early adopter customers you do have. Give them more service than you normally would, in part because you want them to succeed and be good references, but also because in delivering that service, you can get a closer look at their use cases and learn more about the ones that might pull you out of the chasm.

Second, keep your go-to-market organization lean and mean. You cannot sell your way out of the chasm. You cannot market your way out either. The only way out is to find that targetable beachhead segment with the compelling use case that they cannot address through any conventional means. This is an exercise in discovery, so your go-to-market efforts need to be provocative enough to get the meeting (this is where thought leadership marketing is so valuable) and your sales calls need to be intellectually curious about the prospect’s current business challenges (and not presentations about how amazing your company is or flashy demos to show off your product). In short, in the chasm, you are a solution looking for a problem.

Third, get your R&D team directly in contact with the customer, blending engineering, professional services, and customer success all into one flexible organization, all in search of the beachhead use case and the means for mastering its challenges. You made it to the chasm based on breakthrough technology that won the hearts of enthusiasts and visionaries, but that won’t get you across. You have to get pulled out of the chasm by prospective customers who will make a bet on you because they are desperate for a new approach to an increasingly vexing problem, and you have made a convincing case that your technology, product, talent, and commitment can fill the bill.

Finally, let’s talk about what you should not do. You cannot perform your way out of the chasm. You have no power. So, this is not a time to focus on execution. Instead, you have to find a way to increase your power. In the short term, you can do this through consulting projects—you have unique technology power that people want to consume; they just don’t want to consume through a product model at this time. They are happy to pay for bespoke projects, however, and that is really what the Early Market playbook is all about. Of course, projects don’t scale, so they are not a long-term answer, but they do generate income, and they do keep you in contact with the market. What you are looking for is solution power, tying your technology power to a specific use case in a specific segment, one that you could deliver on a repeatable basis and get you out of the chasm. Often these use cases are embedded in bespoke projects, just a part of the visionary’s big picture, but with more than enough meat on the bone to warrant a pragmatist’s attention.

Sooner or later you have to make a bet. You can recognize a good opportunity by the following traits:

  • There is budget to address the problem, and it is being spent now.
  • The results the prospect is getting are not promising and, if anything, the situation is deteriorating.
  • You know from at least one of your projects that you can do a lot better.

That’s about all the data you are going to get. That’s why we call crossing the chasm a high-risk, low-data decision. But it beats staying in the chasm by a long shot.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

Errors You May Be Making in Your Customer Experience

Leave a reply

Errors You May Be Making in Your Customer Experience

GUEST POST from Howard Tiersky

Maintaining a website or mobile experience with a high degree of usability is essential to maximize business outcomes, and people who are frustrated often take for granted how easy it is in the digital world to simply click over to a competitor. Even worse are cases where determined customers simply cannot figure out how to proceed to complete a transaction, or otherwise achieve their goals.

At FROM, we regularly conduct both in person and online usability tests for our clients to observe “real” users engaging with their digital experience. This gives us enormous insight into where users are encountering frustration, confusion, or other difficulties, and while we are huge believers in robust usability testing as a tool to identify and prioritize which aspects of a digital touch point should be optimized (and really, it’s not terribly time-consuming or expensive), there is a little-known trick that can start to identify many problems. While not as comprehensive as user testing, it’s generally much faster, and therefore, a great place to start!

What is that place? The server’s error logs.

While it may not sound super sexy, your error logs contain a treasure trove of data.

First, the server will typically log if a page doesn’t load properly, errors occur, or if transactions fail to complete. Naturally, usability is hampered if your customers are receiving errors because the system not functioning properly, and yet it’s amazing how often server logs don’t get looked at. And since error logs can generally be viewed by browser and device, it’s not uncommon to find that a new version of Chrome or Edge is causing errors that previously didn’t exist, so this is something that need regular attention. In addition, many systems rely on external cloud services, increasing the points of failure. By monitoring server errors, you can make sure you are aware if your site is “breaking,” a simple but often overlooked part of managing an effective digital experience.

Second, we have errors of user validation, i.e., a user enters an invalid email or phone number, tries to complete a transaction without checking the “terms and conditions” acceptance box, etc. Now, on the one hand, you might say “That’s not my fault, my site worked. It was the user made a mistake!” Bzzzzt. Wrong answer. Especially if there are a lot of these types of errors, or if the number suddenly spikes.

It’s our job to design a solution that makes it unlikely that users will make errors. If they’re frequently overlooking something, or misunderstanding what they are meant to do, it’s a sign we need to look at that screen or field and consider how to redesign it to reduce confusion. It might be as simple as rewriting the instructions or moving a button.

One nuance we like to look for is circular errors. What’s a circular error? It’s when, during a single session, a user sends the same input multiple times and receives the same error. For example, a user submits a page, and the email is determined to be invalid (a logged error.) Then the user submits again, with the same email (and maybe then a third time, again with the same email.) These types of circular errors usually mean the error messaging system in your application is flawed. Perhaps the error text appears at the top of the screen, and the field itself is below the fold, so the user may not even be seeing the error text.

The third type of error is failed search or out of stock messages. The user wants to rent a car with a pickup at 2 am but that location is closed, or the user wants the pants in a 42 waist, but you don’t have any in stock. Or, the user is searching your site for information on bed wetting, but no articles match that term. These types of errors indicate a missed opportunity to meet a customer need, and you should scour these types of messages to consider what steps can be taken to meet commonly requested unmet needs.

All of this is based on the assumption that your site’s back-end code is logging errors properly. This is a standard coding practice, but just because it’s standard doesn’t mean it can’t get omitted, or that certain errors might not have code that logs them. It’s important to check with your technical team; if your site is not logging most errors, or not logging them with sufficient detail, this code can generally be added.

Additionally, you may include logging at different levels of your system, and therefore have multiple log files. For example, the web server may have one log file, the commerce layer may have a separate log file, and your security/authentication layer may have its own log files, and that’s fine. There are great tools that can combine them together and make them easy to analyze, filter, sort, etc.

The logging I’ve been referring to is generally done on the server. However, with each new generation of digital experiences, we push more and more code (including more and more error checking) to the client. Whether it’s javascript (in the case of web pages), or Java code (in the case of mobile apps.) These types of error events can be logged as well, it just requires a separate effort or technology (but it’s well worth it!) You can use analytics packages like Google Analytics to record “events” when certain things (like error messages) happen in the interface.

A one or two-day analysis of error logs can help you focus in on specific, frequently occurring error states that were previously off your radar. Sometimes, it’s still necessary to do user testing to figure out what the deeper reason for the confusion is, but even still, it’s helpful to know where the errors are occurring, so you can focus your testing there. In other cases, it’s easy to guess what’s tripping your users up, once the errors are there to act as signposts.

This article originally appeared on the Howard Tiersky blog

Image Credits: Pixabay

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Innovation or Not – Oklahoma State Football Helmets Seek to Revolutionize NIL

Leave a reply

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In the rapidly changing landscape of collegiate athletics, the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) revolution is creating both challenges and opportunities. Oklahoma State University (OSU) is taking a bold step to embrace this shift by introducing a unique, possibly groundbreaking concept – integrating NIL into their football helmets.

The Concept

OSU’s idea is straightforward yet revolutionary: use the football helmet as a platform for NIL branding. Instead of traditional school logos or player numbers, the helmets will display personal brand logos and endorsements. This turns every game into a live advertisement for players, directly tying their on-field performance to their marketability.

Key Elements of the Concept

  • Player-Centric Branding: Helmets will feature personalized logos or endorsements chosen by players, subject to NIL agreements.
  • Dynamic Advertising: The design can change weekly or according to the duration of individual endorsement deals.
  • Visibility and Impact: Enhances the visibility of players’ personal brands during high-visibility game broadcasts.

Potential Benefits

This innovative approach could have several major advantages:

For Players

  • Increased earning potential through personalized brand endorsements.
  • Enhanced marketability by combining athletic performance with brand visibility.
  • Empowerment in controlling their personal brand narrative.

For Schools

  • Attracting top talent by offering a unique platform for NIL opportunities.
  • Strengthening alumni and fan base connection through support of player-driven initiatives.
  • Potential new revenue streams through partnerships with brands aligned with athletes.

Challenges and Considerations

However, this initiative is not without its challenges. Key concerns include:

  • Ensuring fair and equitable opportunities for all players, regardless of their profile or position on the team.
  • Navigating NCAA regulations and maintaining compliance with NIL guidelines.
  • Managing potential conflicts between school sponsorship agreements and individual player deals.
  • Addressing potential aesthetic criticisms from traditionalists who prefer team-centric designs.

Integrating QR Codes for Enhanced Engagement

OSU is not stopping at logo-based branding; they are keen on leveraging technology to amplify the impact of their NIL initiative. The next phase of this bold experiment involves integrating QR codes onto the helmets and distributing them at local bars and restaurants.

Details of the QR Code Initiative

  • Helmet QR Codes: Each player’s helmet will sport a unique QR code that fans can scan with their smartphones. This will redirect them to the player’s personalized NIL content, including social media profiles, merchandise, and sponsorship deals.
  • Local Business Partnerships: QR codes will also be placed on tables at bars and restaurants around Stillwater, Oklahoma. This aims to create a seamless connection between the local business community and the athletic program.

Benefits of QR Code Integration

  • Increased Fan Interaction: Fans can engage more deeply with their favorite players by easily accessing content and offers through QR scans.
  • Boosting Local Economy: Encouraging local fans and visitors to frequent businesses supporting OSU athletics helps keep revenue within the community.
  • Augmented Revenue Streams: Creates additional opportunities for NIL deals, as businesses directly benefit from increased foot traffic and fan engagement.

Conclusion

OSU’s innovative approach to integrating NIL into football helmets represents a bold step into the future of collegiate athletics. It exemplifies the evolving dynamics of sports marketing, where athletes are increasingly seen as individual brands. While there are challenges to address, this initiative underscores the importance of embracing change and fostering creativity in an ever-competitive landscape.

Whether this will be a fleeting experiment or a long-lasting transformation remains to be seen. For now, OSU is at the forefront of redefining how college athletes can capitalize on their fame and pave the way for a more equitable sharing of revenues generated by their incredible talents and efforts.

Innovation or not, the journey of NIL in sports has only just begun, and Oklahoma State’s helmets might just be the catalyst for the revolution we’ve been waiting for.

Innovation or not?

Image credit: Oklahoma State University Athletics via ArizonaSports.com

This photo provided by Oklahoma State Athletics shows a QR code on an Oklahoma State NCAA college football helmet, Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024, at Boone Pickens Stadium in Stillwater, Okla. (Bruce Waterfield/OSU Athletics via AP)

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Delivering Customer Value is the Key to Success

Leave a reply

Delivering Customer Value is the Key to Success

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

Whatever your initiative, start with customer value. Whatever your project, base it on customer value. And whatever your new technology, you guessed it, customer value should be front and center.

Whenever the discussion turns to customer value, expect confusion, disagreement, and, likely, anger. To help things move forward, here’s an operational definition I’ve found helpful:

When they buy it for more than your cost to make it, you have customer value.

And when there’s no way to pull out of the death spiral of disagreement, use this operational definition to avoid (or stop) bad projects:

When no one will buy it, you don’t have customer value and it’s a bad project.

As two words, customer and value don’t seem all that special. But, when you put them together, they become words to live by. But, also, when you do put them together, things get complicated. Here’s why.

To provide customer value, you’ve got to know (and name) the customer. When you asked “Who is the customer?” the wheels fall off. Here are some wrong answers to that tricky question. The Board of Directors is the customer. The shareholders are the customers. The distributor is the customer. The OEM that integrates your product is the customer. And the people that use the product are the customer. Here’s an operational definition that will set you free:

When someone buys it, they are the customer.

When the discussions get sticky, hold onto that definition. Others will try to bait you into thinking differently, but don’t bite. It will be difficult to stand your ground. And if you feel the group is headed in the wrong direction, try to set things right with this operational definition:

When you’ve found the person who opens their wallet, you’ve found the customer.

Now, let’s talk about value. Isn’t value subjective? Yes, it is. And the only opinion that matters is the customer’s. And here’s an operational definition to help you create customer value:

When you solve an important customer problem, they find it valuable.

And there you have it. Putting it all together, here’s the recipe for customer value:

  • Understand who will buy it.
  • Understand their work and identify their biggest problem.
  • Solve their problem and embed it in your offering.
  • Sell it for more than it costs you to make it.

Image credit: Unsplash

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

Five Keys to Personalizing the Customer Experience

Leave a reply

Five Keys to Personalizing the Customer Experience

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Earlier this year, we surveyed more than 1,000 consumers in the U.S. for our 2024 State of Customer Service and Customer Experience (CX) Study. We asked about the importance of a personalized experience. We found that 81% of customers prefer companies that offer a personalized experience, and 70% say a personalized experience in which the employee knows who they are and their history with the company (past purchases, buying patterns, support calls and more) is important. They also want the experience to go beyond people and include the platforms where they prefer to do business.

For a recent episode of Amazing Business Radio, I talked with Elizabeth Tobey, head of Marketing, Digital & AI of NICE, which helps companies apply AI to manage customer experience. The focus of the discussion was personalization. Here are some of the highlights from the interview:

1. Channel of Choice: This is where the modern-day concept of personalization begins. Tobey said, “In a world where people carry computers in their pockets (also known as mobile phones), it’s important to meet your customers when and where they want to be met.” Customers used to have two main choices when communicating with a brand. They could either walk into a store or call on the phone. Today, there are multiple channels and platforms. They can still visit in person or call, but they can also go to a website with self-service options, visit a social channel like Facebook, conduct business using an app, communicate with a brand’s chatbot and more. Customers want convenience, and part of that is being able to connect with a brand the way they want to connect. Some companies and brands do that better than others. The ones that get it right have educated customers on what they should expect, in effect raising the bar for all others who haven’t yet recognized the importance of communication.

2. Communicate on the Customer’s Terms: Tobey shared a frustrating personal experience that illustrated how some customers like to communicate but a brand falls short. Tobey was getting home late from an event. She contacted a company through its support channel on its website and was communicating with a customer support agent via chat. It was late, and she said, “I have to go to sleep,” expecting she could continue the chat the next morning with another agent. But, when she went to resume the conversation, she was forced to restart the process. She logged back into the website and repeated the authentication process, which was expected, but what she didn’t expect was having to start over with a new agent, repeating her conversation from the beginning as if she had never called before. Tobey made a case for technology that allows for asynchronous conversations on the customer’s timeline, eliminating the need for “over-authentication” and forcing the customer to start over, wasting time and creating an experience marred with friction.

3. Eliminate Friction: How could an interview with an executive at a technology company like NICE not bring up the topic of AI? In the story Tobey told about having to start over with a new agent, going through the authentication process again and repeating her issue, there is a clear message, which is to eliminate unnecessary steps. I shared an experience about visiting a doctor’s office where I had to fill out numerous forms with repeat information: name, address, date of birth, etc. Why should any patient have to fill in the same information more than once? The answer to the question, according to Tobey, is AI. She says, “Take all data that’s coming in from a customer journey and feed it into our AI so that the engine is continuously learning, growing and getting smarter. That means for every customer interaction, the automation and self-service can evolve.” In other words, once AI has the customer’s information, it should be used appropriately to eliminate needless steps (also known as friction) to give the customer the easiest and most convenient experience.

4. It’s Not Just About the Customer: In addition to AI supporting the customer’s self-service and automated experience, any data that is picked up in the customer’s journey can be fed to customer support agents, supervisors and CX leaders, changing how they work and making them more agile with the ability to make decisions faster. Agents get information about the customer, enabling them to provide the personalized experience customers desire. Tobey says, “Agents get a co-pilot or collaborator who listens to every interaction, offers them the best information they need and gives them suggestions.” For supervisors and CX leaders, they get information that makes them more agile and helps them make decisions faster.

5. Knowledge Management: To wrap up our interview, Tobey said, “AI management is knowledge management. Your AI is only as good as your data and knowledge. If you put garbage in, you might get garbage out.” AI should constantly learn and communicate the best information and data, allowing customers, agents and CX leaders to access the right information quickly and create a better and more efficient experience for all.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

Image Credits: Unsplash

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.