It’s been a month in a half since my last post. Yikes. I’m hoping you (haven’t) noticed. 🙂
I’m back.

One of the reasons for the absence has been a lot of traveling, including a trip to London. See my picture here in downtown York. U.S. history is nothing compared to a place like this!

I also spent one day in the UK with David Rance, CEO of Round. I worked with David to bring a customer centricity framework into Dell several years ago.

There are two powerful parts of the Round system. First is the simplicity of a baseball metaphor and measurement system. As you analyze the customer centricity of your company, you move along the bases, closer to a home run. The bases even bring a language that your people can use to explain why things don’t line up.

Second is the sophisticated part of the system: the “Strands”. The Strands represent key areas in your organization, each of which can be measured towards customer centricity based on feedback within the organization…like looking in a mirror. Strands are things such as leadership style, employee engagement, customer data, marketing metrics, etc.

On a jet-lagged bank holiday at David’s 400-year-old house in northern England, I shared my opinions of what it took for a company to have word of mouth. David opened up his laptop, opened his software, and over the next hour we identified the key strands that are critical for a company to earn word of mouth.

1. Brand Values
2. Collection & Debt Recovery Processes
3. Communication of Company Vision
4. Company Goals
5. Company Leadership style
6. Company Organisation Structure
7. Company Planning Process
8. Company vision
9. Competitive Differentiation
10. Contact Center Platform
11. Customer  Complaints & Compliments
12. Customer Acquisition Process
13. Customer Base Development Plan
14. Customer Contact Routing & IVR
15. Customer Data Accessibility & Analysis
16. Customer Email Platform
17. Customer Fault Management (Tech Support) Processes
18. Customer Information & Insight
19. Customer Process Adherence
20. Customer Process Design
21. Customer Process Governance
22. Customer Propensity & Contact Plan
23. Customer Service Metrics
24. Customer Service Organisation Structure
25. Customer Servicing Processes
26. Debt Management KPIs
27. Decision-making Authority
28. Employee Culture
29. Employee Engagement
30. Fault Management Metrics
31. Frontline Skills
32. Knowledge Management Culture
33. Knowledge Management Systems
34. Management Information Systems
35. Marketing Metrics
36. Marketing Organisation Structure
37. Operational Alerts
38. Organization Metrics
39. People Development
40. Performance Review
41. Personalisation & Customer Decisioning Systems
42. Pricing
43. Process Workflow & Automation
44. Product Development Cycle
45. Quality Management
46. Recruitment
47. Reward & recognition
48. Tailoring The Customer Offering
49. Team Management Style
50. Web Customer Platform

These Strands represent about half of the strands that are part of an organization. The measurement of each strand is based on the answers to questions that is Round’s secret sauce.

For example:

Customer Service Metrics            

• How do you use high level performance measurements to effectively manage customer service activity?
• What overall measures are reviewed by the director responsible for marketing?
• What customer group measures are reviewed by the director responsible for marketing?
• What measures from other functions are reviewed by the director responsible for marketing?

What’s the takeaway?

Word of mouth comes BEFORE word of mouth marketing. Advocates should talk about you before you amplify their voices. To garner word of mouth requires building a customer-centric business, from the top down, inside to out. Each of the strands above can have a positive or negative impact on your customer experience and therefore word of mouth. Consider, each of them and look at your company in the mirror regarding each of them.

And if you want the secret sauce for the questions to ask, and to measure this for your organization drop David an email. (That’s word of mouth for his company!).