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Lean CX Score – Someone Can Always Make A Better Burger

Lean CX ScoreThis is an excerpt from "The Lean CX Score."  Get your copy now and start creating disruptors that completely annihilate your competition.

Oh and good news!  You'll be improving the speed, morale and engagement of your teams at the same time.  Get the Lean CX Score now.

Someone Can Always Make a Better Burger

Let me ask you a question.  Can you make a better hamburger than McDonalds?

If you’re anything like me, I’m hearing a resounding “Yes!”  You might be a master of the barbeque, or a culinary queen.  You know all the pieces – choice of patty, lettuce, tomato, maybe onions, sundried tomatoes or vintage cheese – and you can put them all together and create a masterpiece to outdo the creations of even the best teenagers working under the golden arches.

You see, most people can make a better burger than McDonalds.  But here’s the kicker.  Can you SELL a burger, better than McDonalds?

For most people when I tell this story, the penny starts to drop.  And it doesn’t hit the floor completely until they finish the last step of the Lean CX Score, when they have an exact formula for “selling a burger better”, and continuing to give a better experience every time they interact with a customer.  But by that time they are out the door in a rush to put it to use, with barely even a goodbye.

It is all those parts that go into “selling the burger” that make the difference between success and failure.  After all, iPhones and Apple products make up 43% of the mobile market in the U.S *4.  Yet a factory in China could easily make a phone that looks very similar to an Apple iPhone, for a fraction of the cost.  So why don’t they, and what’s the real difference?  Hmmm… it might have something to do with our burger example above.  Their patented software, their app store, their Genius Bars and ease of use all contribute to the Customer Experience, and you will see exactly why they work by the time you reach the end of this book.

Could you drive a car, better than some Uber drivers out there?  Considering 85% of American drivers on the road today believe they are a better driver than others *5 (we’ve all thought this at some point, haven’t we?) I’m again imagining that the answer is yes.

You, or someone like you, could do all these things.  Of course you can.  But can you scale a business and sell a car ride better?  Can you deliver the same complete customer experience that keeps people coming back?  Not without the right framework, and that’s where the Lean CX Score comes in.

Simply being able to do something isn’t enough to bring you success, because the world is on the verge of the greatest time in history.  Global trade has opened up like never before, and someone in England or any other country can sell someone in America exactly what they want and have it shipped there in record time.  Many of the old-world businesses are becoming crowded as new people enter the market, and it seems that no one is safe.

Yet there are always a small few businesses, teams and individuals that make it – the ones that buck the trend and not only survive, but thrive in the face of competition.  The unique pastry shop with lines around the block.  The outstanding painters with a high demand for their work.  The latest phone or gadget people have to have, the ice cream store, the energy provider, the bank.  All of them fit the Lean CX model and are examples we will see.

What is it that makes them succeed where others fail?

Let’s start with a simple view of it.  In many cases you have two choices:

  1. Compete on Price (and put yourself out of business)

– Or –

  1. Compete on Customer Experience (and stand out and become world-class)

What happens when you compete on Price?

Well, this is where most people start.  And it’s most often the easiest thing to do – after all, if you drop your price, maybe more people will buy your product.  The only problem is, your competition can drop their price too, and so the outcome of this scenario usually looks like this:

Lean CX Score Competing on price

Competing on price is often done because a business doesn’t have the imagination or the know-how to create a remarkable Customer Experience.  Luckily with the Lean CX Score, that’s simple to remedy, but it can also just be a mistake made by people who would usually know better.

Driving service Uber did a lot of things right when creating its business – so much so that it was able to scale and grow with lightning speed around the world.  When it entered the Chinese market, it was able to do so with hundreds of millions of dollars behind it, and it went into China in a large way competing on price where ride subsidies, cheap promotions and more the order of the day.

Uber lasted three years before having to retreat completely after losing close to one billion dollars a year, selling their market share to local driving app Didi Chuxing *6.  Understanding the customers you serve, whether it’s an individual, a society, government or country, matters.  When you compete on price, no-one wins.  The customer may get a better price, but at what cost?  A sub-par product, an average customer experience and a company that won’t be around long enough to make a difference.

If products can be copied, price wars aren’t the answer and the world of trade is coming closer together, where does that leave us?  It leaves us with a future where the only thing separating the bad from the good, the good from the great and the great from the remarkable is Customer Experience, otherwise known as CX.  CX is the next and last great frontier, where the real battles will be fought and won.  This is great news, as creating an amazing Customer Experience can be comparatively cheap to do (as opposed to developing a new smart phone from scratch, for example).  And the steps in this book will show you how to keep it simple, and how to know when you’re winning.  They lead the way to taking an ordinary product and creating an industry disruptor – something that is truly world-class.

More chapters from The Lean CX Score book:

Lean CX ScoreThis is an excerpt from "The Lean CX Score."  Get your copy now and start creating disruptors that completely annihilate your competition.

Oh and good news!  You'll be improving the speed, morale and engagement of your teams at the same time.  Get the Lean CX Score now.