The politics of experience: burn this quote into your heart/mind
“We cannot be deceived. Men can and do destroy the humanity of other men, and the condition of this possibility is that we are interdependent. We are not self contained monads producing no effects on each other except our reflections. We are both acted upon, changed for good or ill, by other men; and we are agents who act upon others to affect them in different ways. Each of us is the other to the other. Man is a patient-agent, agent-patient, interexperiencing and interacting with his fellows.” RD Laing, The Politics of Experience
I will come back to this quote later in this post, right now just burn it into your heart/mind.
What is the most important decision you make?
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh is a great read. It is littered with nuggets of gold if you have the ears to listen to what Tony writes. One of the most valuable nuggets of gold is that it really matters what table you sit at. If you study the work of Michael Porter you will find the same. They are both talking about the same thing just using different languages.
What do I mean when I say that it really matters what table you sit it. I am pointing out that one of the most important, if not the most important decisions, is what table to sit at. This is of no importance if your interest is operational effectiveness. If, on the other hand, you see yourself as a strategist (which is what I declare myself to be) then it is essential that you get to grips with this. Let’s explore this through the eyes of Tony Hsieh and Michael Porter.
In Delivering Happiness, Tony Hsieh writes:
“In a poker room in a casino, there are usually many different choices of tables. Each table has different stakes, different players, and different dynamics that change as the players come and go, and as players get excited, upset or tired.
I learned that the most important decision I could make was which table to sit at. This included knowing when to change tables……. an experienced player can make ten times as much money sitting at a table with nine mediocre players who are tired and have a lot of chips compared with sitting at a table with nine really good players who are focussed and don’t have that many chips …..
In business, one of the most important decisions….. is what business to be in. It doesn’t matter how flawlessly a business is executed if it is the wrong business.…..”
What does Michael Porter – the man who invented the field of strategy – have to say? He says that the source of superior performance can be attributed to the following two factors:
- the structure of the industry in which which the game of business is being played and competition taking place; and
- the company’s relative position within its industry.
If you look at financial returns then you will find that the returns of players (as a whole) in the technology industry have been consistently at the top. If however you look at players as a whole in the US airline industry then the financial returns have consistently towards the bottom of the league. That is due to the structure of these industries. Yet, even in the airline industry, Southwest Airlines has made super returns because of its relative position – which has come about because of its consistent and prolonged commitment to its strategy.
Customer Experience: which table to sit at?
So what are the tables (to sit at) in the fashionable restaurant called “Chez Customer Experience”? Lets take a look:
- Social media – being pushed hard by the ‘social gurus’;
- Mobile (smartphones and tablets) – becoming increasingly prominent and sexy;
- Big data & analytics – being pushed hard by vendors who have spent a fortune on developing / buying the software;
- Ecommerce and multi-channel integration – especially for offline retailers who face a blood bath;
- Marketing automation – integrating marketing resource management (assets), analytics and campaign management;
- Customer Services – cost reduction through automation, self-service, six sigma and outsourcing’; and
- Content marketing – recognition that we live in a world that you have to earn attention by being useful.
Now if we go back to where we started, the question is this: which table/s should you sit at? More specifically: if you want to lead / differentiate yourself / build that personal connection with your target customers then what table/s should you sit at? Have you chosen your favourite/s? OK, let’s move on and discuss a table that for the most part is empty – there are plenty of chairs available at this table.
The table of humanity: it is vacant and represents a great opportunity
When I look at and play in the domain of Customer Experience I am present to a cosmic joke being played out. What am I saying? I am saying that it strikes me that most of the players involved in the game of Customer Experience have little or no understanding of human beings as human beings. They have little understanding of experience as experience and the role it plays in human living. Please notice that I am not saying experience as theory, as talk, as writing about it! I am being specific: experience as experience and the experience of interexperiencing which is the ground of human existence.
I grant that many Customer Experience (Gurus, Practitioners, Students) might be great at process design, six sigma, implementing technology, mining data, capturing the VoC, customer journey mapping etc. I do not grant that most of these people naturally like being with people, learning from/about people, being of service to people. Furthermore, I assert that most business folks are blind to people as social beings who are always immersed in relationship and thus interexperiencing. Which is why they do not see the table that matters the most when it comes to crafting a great experience and cultivating a person emotional connection with customers that shows up as customer loyalty.
To be 100% clear I am advocating that if you are serious about Customer Service / Customer Experience / Customer Loyalty / Customer-Centricity then you (and your entire organisation) play full out at the table called HUMANITY. Why? It is the most powerful differentiator there is. I am going to share a profound quote with you from someone who spent a lifetime in intimate contact / conversation with people and as such gets human beings as human beings. My question is do you have the ‘ears’ to listen/get what he is saying? Back to the quote I started this post with:
“We cannot be deceived. Men can and do destroy the humanity of other men, and the condition of this possibility is that we are interdependent. We are not self contained monads producing no effects on each other except our reflections. We are both acted upon, changed for good or ill, by other men; and we are agents who act upon others to affect them in different ways. Each of us is the other to the other. Man is a patient-agent, agent-patient, interexperiencing and interacting with his fellows.” RD Laing, The Politics of Experience
We live in an age where we have and continue to destroy the humanity of other men – our customers, our colleagues, our suppliers, our partners? How do we do that? Simple, in the game of business we treat people as objects that exist to create dollars; Martin Buber described this as the “I-it” orientation as opposed to the “I-Thou” orientation.
What is the key takeaway of this post?
We live in an age where customers rave appreciate employees who appreciate customers – customers are fellow flesh and blood human beings. That should tell you all that you need to know. Just in case you don’t get it then let me spell it out as I see it. We experience ourselves living in an age of inhumanity. Many people working in the Customer Experience field are increasing that inhumanity whether they realise it or not. That means that more and more organisation show up in our worlds as being inhuman. Which in turn means that the field is wide open to play at the table that matters and which is practically empty: the table called Humanity. Don’t believe this then just take a look at Zappos – they are not simply selling, they are delivering happiness! Or think of USAA, SouthWest Airlines or Rackspace.
If you are still not with me then I leave you with the following statement:
“Service had become “a backoffice cost center, focused on reducing expenses and executing transactions. We were effective and efficient… but we were missing an opportunity to establish bonds with [our customers] and build more meaningful relationships.” Jim Bush, Executive, American Express
What he is saying is that American Express decided to put Humanity back into the game of service after the engineers drove it out with their relentless focus on effectiveness and efficiency. Put differently, as a customer, as a fellow human being, effectiveness and efficiency only matter if you turn up in my world as caring – as humane.
Disagree with me? Please share your views I am happy to listen and learn.
