One of the richest sources of innovation is people at the sharp end of your organization – where your organization meets its market, touches its customers. Great customer-focussed or market-focussed (same thing) leaders are brilliant at listening to front line people’s ideas and acting on them. Here’s an example:
The Managing Director of the UK optician chain, Dollond & Aitchison, saw a great opportunity and a great problem. The average person in the UK who needs glasses has just two pairs. In Italy, the average woman who wears glasses owns sixteen pairs. In Germany, the average man who wears glasses owns eight pairs.
Russell Hardy, the MD, spends fifty per cent of his time in his branches, working with frontline people, talking with and listening to them. The manager of a branch in Essex told him she was noticing a trend; an increasing number of customers were coming in with image consultants, who were charging the customer to advise them on which glasses to buy.
The optician experience for a customer choosing glasses is to be presented with shelf after shelf of glasses, have the price categories pointed out to them and then be told “Let me know when you’ve found a pair you like.” Research such as Barry Schwartz’s book The Paradox of Choice tells us that we are now overwhelmed with choice, and offering customer too much choice is counter-productive. It does not create a happy customer experience. The branch manager had noticed that customers were willing to pay an ‘expert’ to narrow the choices down for them and help them create their own image.
Her suggestion was that Dollond & Aitchison take on this role themselves, helping customers choose glasses to make different impressions in different situations.
The MD sold the idea to the Board. The company created profiling tests for customers to take – based on the shape of their face, complexion, the image they want to present and so on. The experience of choosing glasses was then changed from presenting the customer with a forest of glasses to choose from, arranged in racks, to the profiling system and customer assistant presenting the customer with 30 frames that suit the customer’s personal characteristics and the way they want to present themselves; the impact they want to make.
So, the company re-created the customer experience, based on local observation of emerging trends on the edge of the mainstream market and seeing them as an opportunity for growth and for improving the mainstream customer experience.
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