I was meeting with the owners of one of the top Philippine retail giants and their e-commerce team. My team and I had just done a digital audit of their websites and apps because the owner had complained about low online sales. What we found was shocking: they looked more like a work in progress than the digital presence of one of the largest players in the region. When our experts finally tested their app to shop online, of course we were not surprised anymore. A software bug made it impossible to pay!
When we asked their e-commerce team some questions about their user interface and user experience the response was silence. The deeper we dug, the more shocking the results became. They had no knowledge of most of the fundamental principles on how to make e-commerce websites successful: The guidelines of the Stanford Web Credibility Project? No idea. Professor Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion? They had never heard of them.
Don’t get me wrong: if you are a business owner or CEO, you don’t have to know these things. But someone in your organization does.
In the case of the retail giant in our example, the root cause of the problem was that the owners did not prioritize the importance of e-commerce and digital for their business highly enough. The consequences? Their team was completely out of date. And the owners themselves never took the time to actually test their own products and services.
The result? They lost even more market share to their biggest competitor. And now they have to spend a lot more money, time and resources to catch up.
Business has changed forever
COVID-19 has created a new economic order with many new opportunities and challenges. The global pandemic has accelerated digital transformation and internet usage dramatically – and transformed business forever.
In just a few months after the outbreak of the global pandemic, the digitization of customer interactions, supply-chain models, and business operations already sped up by three to four years. And the contribution of digital products in companies’ portfolios advanced by seven years. And that was just a few months after the pandemic started. North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the global economy all showed the same trends. In some parts of Asia the acceleration was even more dramatic. And that was just a few months after the pandemic started – imagine what the numbers are like today!
To survive in the new economic order, it is no longer enough to prioritize digital. C-suite executives, CEOs and business owners have to fundamentally rethink how they operate and do business. They have to get the best experts and teams on board to be at the forefront and cutting-edge of any and all new trends and developments.
Become obsessed
Let us go back to the example of the Philippine retail giant. It would have been easy for their billionaire owners to test their own websites and apps out themselves – which is exactly what they never did.
I’ve had the fortune to work closely with many self-made millionaire and billionaire entrepreneurs, including some of the world’s most famous. And all of them have one thing in common: they obsess over their customers.
There is a reason why Richard Branson keeps a black notepad to write down whatever he observes that could make Virgin’s customers have a better experience.
When you sit down with Jeff Bezos, you understand in a minute how he made Amazon into what it is today: an obsession over the needs and wants of the consumers.
The president of eBay? Same.
What does that mean? It means that every single action you take, and every decision in your business should be about your customers. It means putting yourself into their shoes, mapping out their entire customer journey so you can experience it for yourself. It means trying out your own digital products.
And in digital that means: user interface and user experiences have to be intuitive, seamless, emotional. Think iPhone and Apple. You may say what you want about Steve Jobs’ leadership style but there is one thing that all who knew Steve could agree on: he was likewise obsessed with improving the customer experience and creating products that would revolutionize consumers’ lives.
Obsession. This may sound far-fetched or even impractical to some business owners or CEOs who would rather deal with the day to day and leave emotion and obsession to the artists. But the global pandemic has created the urgency to cultivate that obsession. Think of the global pandemic like a rocket booster for anything digital. It now moves at the speed of light. Chances are your team is way behind, or probably will be. You at the helm of your organization have to worry constantly about what they might be missing, and the best way to do that is to put yourself into your customers’ shoes. Day and night.
If you don’t put yourself into your customers’ shoes, soon there won’t be any left
In the late 80s the CEO of Sony made a sad joke that the video recorders they were producing (yes, there was once such a thing) had become so complicated that he himself could not operate them. Why did they make it so complicated then, you may ask? Because the CEO left the design and development of new products to the respective departments without ever getting involved. Why? Because they were the “experts”, and he was much too busy with his day-to-day operations. Unfortunately these experts were thinking more about all the new crazy features they could add than what the customers really wanted.
Today video recorders have long become a relic of the past. But the bad executive habit of not getting involved in the customers’ journey and experience still spreads like wildfire through boardrooms around the world.
Solutions and practical steps
Find out if your team is up to the challenge. Ask them if they know about the Stanford Web Credibility Project. Or about Professor Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion. If not, you are in serious trouble.
Invest in the best. If needed, get top-notch external experts to validate your team’s digital knowledge and expertise. Do not be surprised if you find out that they are years behind. If there is no other solution, outsource the development, creation, maintenance and constant improvements of your digital offerings, products, and services to high-quality third parties.
Try it out. Whatever digital product or service you are offering. Take the customer journey from A-Z, and don’t cut it short because you are “too busy”. Learn from Richard Branson: trust your own gut. Take notes of whatever needs changing or does not feel intuitive and seamless enough for you. You are the boss. Own it.
Obsess over your customers day and night. Try to predict the future of where their needs and wants will go. This is what sets visionary business leaders like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos apart: because they constantly obsess over their customers, they are so in tune with them that they can predict trends.
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Tom Oliver, “mentor of the giants” (Fortune), is the chairman of The Tom Oliver Group, the trusted advisor to many of the world’s most influential family businesses, high potential medium-sized enterprises, market leaders and global conglomerates.