Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business Hardcover – Illustrated, August 28, 2012

In the late 80's I worked for a large, well-known multiline insurance conglomerate. They--like many of their competitors--had standard operating procedures to which the whole industry subscribed, like the way insurance was sold and serviced through agents, how claims were handled, etc. In the early 90's, I went to work for Progressive Insurance. It was hard for me to recognize Progressive's procedures as being even in the same industry because they did everything entirely differently and were proud of it, thank you! And that attitude was infectious across the whole organization, as--* Claims reps could print checks in the back of their Immediate Response vehicles at the scene of an accident* Consumers could call in and answer one set of underwriting questions and get the Progressive quote AND 3 additional competitive quotes at the same time* The beginnings of the Snapshot program that tracked vehicle-driving data emerged first in the late 90'sThese innovations at the time were called 're-engineering' and they were upsetting to the rest of the industry. It was like Progressive was breaking the code and giving customers something that maybe everyone else would be forced to offer down the road as a result. And now they even poke fun at those hapless competitors in their commercials with the two bumbling idiots who come to Flo's store and wish their companies did what Progressive does."Outside In" chronicles the fact that those kinds of innovations are now, in fact, forcing organizations to finally respond with new breeds of customer experiences. According to authors Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine, we have only recently ... finally ... entered what they call The Age of the Customer in 2010. In each transition up to now, new companies with very different strategies had led the way into new business practices and perceptions. This book is quite effective in showing how this desire to really engage the customer is now happening ... it's just a little surprising that it has taken so long to happen.The book reminded me a lot of the book "The Social Organization" written in 2011 by two Gartner employees. That book showcased many of their clients and how they were gradually embracing social media. It was somewhat general and presented many case studies about how and why those companies were helping employees, partners and clients to address their respective needs by using social software. The message was that -- while technology was the enabler -- business needs and people working together was what made it really work and made it important. "Outside In" uses a similar approach in defining a parallel need to focus on customers. This book takes advantage of the many clients Gartner has worked with to show patterns in the way they're making the customer experience paramount. They use many, many short customer stories, punctuated by insights and observations to drive home the fact that more and more companies are seeing the benefit of embracing the customer. It's like our research consultancies are telling us with books like these -- these changes are no longer one-off's. If you haven't started to think this way, you'd better because many of your competitors are.It felt a little manipulative in the way they shifted the complexity and levels of engagement needed in the three parts of the book. In Part I (The Value of the Customer Experience) they showed at a high level how executives took on the role of improving the customer experience and seemingly almost single-handedly made huge changes in their organizations. At points, I found myself asking 'Is that all there is to it?' Then in Part II (The Six Disciplines of Customer Experience) the strategies, planning, analysis, change management, etc. became a bit more detailed and realistic. 'No, the answer is. It's not as easy as that.' The cases here show that companies often need to bring in outside help to set the right strategies, really understand the customer, evaluate social media data, etc. Finally, Part III (How Customer Experience Transforms Companies) shifts back to a more general, macro perspective to see where we are heading with some interesting predictions of why some industries (like health care now motivated to please customers with Obamacare) will move quickly to improve their customer experiences while others (like big banks) will try to hide behind regulatory requirements to protect their fees and business models.It was interesting for me personally to read the authors' assessment of Progressive at the end of the book. They termed them a potential winner but with still some important steps to complete. Even with many of those insights 15 years ago, they still have a lot to do. This book makes the important point that designing and really adopting a customer experience mentality is hard work and takes a long time to accomplish.

Customer experience - not customer service - is an important need in many corporations. I see customer experience as part of the conscious capitalism movement, where companies empower employees to be "owners" and ambassadors and are treated with respect by the company. This book helps with that need of seeing yourself (e.g., business) from the "outside in".Some of the middle part is a bit dry (implementation) and I think it would be more proactive to add the theme of conscious capitalism.

For the price, the quality surpassed my wife’s expectations. She loved the book itself as she is working to learn more about improving customer experience.

Right? Wrong. You are just one customer out of many your company has, hence thinking that you know what your customer wants is an inside - out approach. And knowing what your customer wants - is the preferred - outside in approach. It's not one practice, it's six as suggested by the authors.The book explores many examples, bjt also gives very simple guidelines to follow, step by step, to implement outside in approach to customer centricity.It's a brilliant book.So, what did I take from this book to myself?You have to be able to very clearly answer a simple question: how do you know if your customer is happy and satsified with what you do.If can't answer that - whatever you do, most probably does not bring the best possible value.

Un libro para entender el valor que genera, centrarse en el usuario y la experiencia que tiene con nuestra empresa para desbloquear más valor y ser más sostenibles en el tiempo, al tiempo que los hacemos mas felices.

This book will help you to understand why CX not being taken seriously by many companies, it will help you as well to establish a proper framework to build a strong Cx practice/maturity within any organization ... While I am reading I was able to justify many of challenges which faced me while working under this important function ...The book is a must-to-read for any CX professionals.

I am new to the subject so it was very illustrative. Nevertheless I would have expected to gain a deeper insight of the cases showcased in the book, maybe wothput the names of the companies. But overall, it gives you a good overview on how to tackle CX issues if you are kind of a rookie.