By Jeofrey Bean
Customer experience leadership: Failure is a regular part of the learning process for innovation
The culture of a customer experience leader undoubtedly includes failure as an option. It’s an intrinsic part of the learning process for innovation.
Interviewed on 60 Minutes in 2014, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, was not shy about his thoughts of failure. “Well, I didn’t really think Tesla would be successful. I thought we would most likely fail. But I thought that we at least could address the false perception that people have that an electric car had to be ugly and slow and boring like a golf cart.” Musk believes that if something is important enough, you should try. Even if the probable outcome is failure.
At his rocket company SpaceX, the first three rockets failed to reach orbit. Where does Musk put the limit? “A fourth failure would have been absolutely game over.” But flight four was faultless, recognized by NASA with a $1.5 billion contract to SpaceX.
Like Tesla and SpaceX, there is an energizing edginess about a company willing to walk the line between failure and using failure’s learning to reach success.
In summer 2011, Netflix shocked customers by announcing that they were splitting their DVD-by mail and streaming service. Suddenly, many customers were forced to pay sixty percent more for the service they had been receiving, and this included assigning DVD customers to a company, Qwikster, which had yet to exist. It was a self-destruction of a hard-earned customer experience and brand. Customers reacted strongly, and Netflix quickly retracted.
Less than two years later, CEO Reed Hastings and his team re-set the customer experience bar higher for video rental. Between 2013 and 2014, their original series House of Cards has earned Netflix four Emmy Awards and the experience maker has been recognized with twenty-two nominations including one for Orange Is the New Black.
Apple has become so phenomenally successful that people forget it has had its share of failures. Known examples include the precursor to the Mac, the Lisa, with its mouse-driven graphical user interface in 1983. Also, the palm-sized computer Newton MessagePad back in 1992.
Other companies known for creating extraordinary customer experiences have lost their way and found it again. Those companies have the ability to recover by defining their situation realistically, then regaining their relevance, value and customer experience advantage in a timely way. By embracing the possibility of failure, they are able to ultimately achieve greater success. Lucky us!
Companies that will lead The Fleet Customer Experience Revolution will be committed to surpassing great customer service, special pricing and customer satisfaction. They will do so with purpose-built customer experience and the desired user experience within it. The leaders will be the ones with that energizing edginess from testing the limits of innovation on the customer experience continuum. They are the ones to set expectations of what customer experience should be, regardless of industry.
Meet me back here at Fleet Management Weekly next month when we continue the discovery of what makes the best in customer experience leadership.
Reference Links
Jeof’s web site and e-mail address
http://www.delmarresearch.com/
Keynote speaker highlights (3 minute video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znpNuczexiA
Jeofrey Bean’s Amazon author page
http://www.amazon.com/Jeofrey-Bean/e/B006K2L0XI/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
