‘Experience’ the true path to transformation

Published on : 18/10/2018

Highlights from our recent Business Transformation Summit

On Tuesday 9th October, over 500 L&D professionals from five cities across the globe gathered to discuss ‘The Power of Experience’. This year’s event in Lisbon, Portugal was a great success, and streamed live to captive audiences in London, Milan, Paris and Singapore.The event featured two inspirational keynotes. Brand futurist and best-selling author Martin Lindstrom spoke about the transformation of the customer experience, and Jeanne Meister told us how Artificial intelligence (AI) is already impacting on the experience of the employee.A panel of L&D professionals also shared insights into how they use the learner experience to inspire high performance, while Cegos experts in each city challenged attendees to come up with fresh ideas on how the ‘experience’ concept can contribute to learning.It was a truly stimulating event that generated a lot of discussion.So, what did we learn?

“If you want to study animals, don’t go to the zoo. Go to the Amazon.”

In Martin Lindstrom’s experience, you need to meet your customers – or learners – directly to fully understand what motivates them. Try to see things from their point of view. If you can create empathy, you’ll find surprising ways to gather the Small Data, which Martin defines as “the seemingly insignificant behavioural observations that take place in people’s homes and lead us towards one or more unmet customer needs.” It’s the Small Data that inspires the breakthrough moments, when ideas or transformative ways of doing things help turn around a brand or improve the learner experience.

You need to take good care of top talent if you want to retain them

According to Jeanne Meister, it is much harder these days to attract and retain talent, meaning you need to offer them the best possible experience in the workplace. Artificial Intelligence, ironically, presents HR professionals with amazing opportunities to create more human and personalised employee experiences during key moments of their career. When it comes to Learning and Development, mobile coaching chatbots actually increase user engagement and act as a powerful tool to reinforce learning.

Working together brings results

Three key success factors for any kind of experience are purpose, community and empathy.Japan Tobacco International shared their Talent Management manifesto, which states that everyone has a role to play and individuals should understand their importance within the framework of the company:“Together, we treat all employees fairly and respectfully, ensure transparency of rules and standards, and empower growth opportunities.”They see the role of the manager as being as much about helping people develop as managing projects.

There is risk and opportunity behind the rapid introduction of technologies in the delivery of experience

Risk: Technology often ends up as an obstacle to human-to-human interactions, which are key to a successful user experience.
Opportunity: When combined appropriately, Small and Big Data can drive better experience for users as well as enhanced jobs and savings for providers.

The ‘experience economy’ is a key driver in global business

“The idea of the ‘experience economy’ was first suggested almost 20 years ago by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore from Harvard Business School, who described the ‘inexorable shift away from selling goods and services to staging experiences as the next step in the economy's evolution,’” said Ricardo Martins, Managing Director, CEGOC Portugal, in his opening speech.“This year, we chose the theme of ‘experience’ to guide us through business transformation. What will companies do to make sure they provide positive experiences to their customers?” To survive in the ‘experience economy’, delivering memorable customer experiences day-to-day is a must. This can only be achieved by employees being made 100% ready and engaged thanks to inspiring human-to-human learning and employee experiences.

Happy employees lead to happy consumers

“To make consumers happy, you need happy employees, and you need learners who know how to implement the promises of the customer experience,” says Simon Vuillaume, Director of International Projects at Cegos Group.“All this is in the context of constant change. The customer experiences change, the employee experiences change, so the learning changes. The challenge is to align everything and keep the customer at the centre, because without customers there can be no employees, and no learners! “Back in 1999, when Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore explained that we were entering the era of the ‘experience economy’, they also predicted the advent of a ‘transformation economy’. It seems to me that we are already there.”

Do you need to transform your customer and employee experience?

Cegos experts work closely with our clients to develop first-rate transformational programmes on both a local and international level. We use the 4REAL approach, which puts on-the-job learning at the heart of our training programmes to guarantee excellent results.Get in touch if you would like to discuss how we can help transform your people and your business, or if you have any questions arising from the event.