What Red Converse and The Bear taught me about internal Customer Engagement

This is my first article. I promised that I would experiment with the different formats. If you think my previous posts have been too long, well, fear not. This post will be longer, but hit the “save for later button” and come back, when you are ready.

In short: This post is about internal customer engagement and my learnings and reflections from my experiments the last couple of years. In this article, I will introduce three perspectives: Customer awareness, Customer understanding, and Customer trust. If you are swamped in internal Stakeholder management, I can only recommend that you engage in this article. If you are dealing with “real" customers, I’m certain that you might gain something as well.

Expected reading time: 10 minutes

For the past +5 years my key counterparts have been internal stakeholders, and we have been engaged in the mutual dance, we call Stakeholder management. I have, however, for quite some time been conflicted with the term. Both words are conflicting. Stakeholder; you hold a stake in a project, but do you own it, contribute to it, or are you just one of many that needs to be heard. Management; For those who read my last post of leadership and management, it is no surprise that I am not a big fan of managing anything.

With this is in mind, I have debated with many people, what we should call the internal relationship engagement instead of Stakeholder management, and even more important, how should we go about it. For some time, we called it “partner engagement”, as an alternative, but it still felt wrong. Consequently, we ultimately landed on “Customers”. While there is no internal monetary transaction, the internal customer mindset is just the most accurate. Treating key counterparts (or stakeholders) as customers establish a completely different respect and mindset. And with this epiphany in mind, we can embark on the customer journey.

For the sake of this article, I have divided the journey into the three steps, I mentioned in the intro: Customer awareness, Customer understanding, and Customer trust. My own journey was significantly more chaotic, and not aligned around these three steps. However, gathering my thoughts around the topic, the outcome is clear - classic Kierkegaard: “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards”.

Customer awareness - let’s walk in our Customers’ shoes.

Do you know what your customers see and look like? Are you project managing activities for your own sake, or for the sake of the customers. I have too many times experienced a project, where a project team have secluded themselves for too long time, only to eventually realising that their approach is too far from their customers’ needs or wishes. During this realisation, I stumbled over a concept introduced by Jeff Lawson in his book Ask Your Developer. Jeff Lawson is the founder and CEO of Twilio, a highly succesful startup developing a software communication interface.

Reflecting on the same frustration as described here, Jeff Lawson introduced a simple and radical campaign. He bought a bunch of red Converse shoes branded with the Twilio logos, and asked all customers if they would exchange a pair of red Converse with a pair of the customers’ own shoes. In a short time, Twilio walls were covered by customer shoes in various shapes and forms. And every time the developers look up, they were reminded about their customers, and why they were doing their job. Simple, but also fun, engaging, and clearly something that dialed up customer awareness. If you are into an interesting perspective on software development and leadership, this is my recommendation for a good read.

My translation of the Customers’ shoes aspect has focused on understanding our internal customers’ needs and wishes, engaging with them early and frequently, and allowing to pivot, when the customers want to. Being aware of our internal customers real demand and being crystal clear on roles and responsibilities is a crucial first step in the customer journey.

Customer understanding - mapping the journey

The next part is one of my favorites and some of the most eye-opening in my understanding of customer engagement. My inspiration comes solely from Will Guidara , the author of “Unreasonable Hospitality” and co-producer of the TV-series The Bear. If you are a foodie, and haven’t read his book, and not seen The Bear, well, it is your lucky day - here’s to great content for the many weeks. Will Guidara is obsessed with customers, especially the customer journey and finding patterns in customers’ behaviour.

Let me give you an example of the customer journey and where it can make a difference to understand this journey. Simple question: Have you ever had a flat tire, where you needed to visit the repair shop? Where did your journey start? And where does the journey start from the repair shop’s point of view. Your journey starts in the forest, where you have to drag your punctured bike back home, followed by the hassle to find out of when the repair shop is open, and the hassle with getting the bike to the repair shop, and likely several potential additional steps on your journey. For the repair shop, the first encounter is when the doorbell rings, and the customer steps into the repair shop. But could it be different? Is there anything, the repair shop could do to change these dynamics? Is there potentially a competitive edge here, simply by understanding the full customer journey?

Will Guidara mastery comes with describing the journey, sometimes more than 100 touchpoints, and subsequently identify where the real value lies, and especially where can you gain a competitive advantage. In the restaurant world, Will Guidara and his co-owned restaurant Eleven Madison Park took it to the extreme, and the concept was called Unreasonable Hospitality. A collection of small and deeply impactful gestures that changed the entire dynamic at the restaurant. If want to experience this in real life, see the episode from The Bear called “Forks”.

My translation is not as fancy as the unreasonable hospitality gestures, but I have become significantly more aware of my customers’ end-to-end journey. Often, I have under-appreciated the preparation required from customers, before we step into the room. Do you understand your customers’s journey? Do you understand, where you add value, and even more importantly, where you can add the extra little edge, because you are Aware of your customer, and you Understand their journey?

Customer Trust - Building to last

The final part of the journey is all about gaining Customer trust. Some of you might know David Maister's Trust equation already. For newcomers, at first sight it might be too theoretical, but for completeness in the customer journey, I think it’s relevant.

The Trust equation stems from David Maister’s book The trusted Advisor. Honestly, I don’t think you need to read the book. Find a few Youtube videos on the Trust equation instead, it is better time spent.

As depicted below, Trust is established with the combination of Credibility, Reliability, and Intimacy, divided by Self-orientation.

Obviously, this is not a mathematical equation, where you can get a clear facit, but conceptually and intuitively, you very easy grasp the concepts of the trust-equation. If you work on becoming credible in what you deliver, if your insights and approach is reliable, and you create a room of inter-personal relations (read: intimacy), you are advancing on the trust-equation. What will drag you down is your self-orientation, what’s in it for me, rather than what can we achieve together.

For me, the Trust equation is the last piece of the customer journey. We start with the awareness, subsequently the understanding, but ultimately we focus on building trust. In other words, we start with then end in mind.

Too often when it comes to internal customers, the self-orientation stands in the way. Due to the lack of a transaction and a contract, internal customers too often are focused on their own outcome rather than the outcome in totality. I’m truly guilty of self-orientation, and what then becomes stakeholder management rather than customer engagement.

The wrap-up

Awareness, Understanding, Trust. Three aspects, big words. I hope this gatering of reflections, concrete examples, and maybe a bit of structure can help you develop the relationship with your customers, irrespective of they are internal or external, transactional or relationships. Don’t take internal customers for granted, be curious in understanding them, and ultimately go the extra mile in building the trust - I’m certain it will pay off for everybody.

Big shout out to all my colleagues, who have been standing tall in experimenting on some of these crazy examples. And credits to those of you, who have introduced some of these concepts to me. You know who you are!

So my questions to you? Has this article given you perspective on stakeholder management and customer engagement? Is it sufficiently relevant to make you change behavior? Was the article too short and not detailed enough, or too long with too many details? Any feedback and discussion is truly appreciated.

This week’s inspiration:

Reading - Don’t be yourself

Music - Tame Impala - Deadbeat

Inspiration - The CostCo business model (the 1.5 dollar hot-dog)

Streak #5