That time between being born and dying
This week, I’ve been finishing up the first, full draft of my book, The Business Bottleneck. I’ll send it over tomorrow, on Monday, so it’s mostly finished for now.
As always with a text at this point, it’d be nice to go through and marble it up more, even add more content. I don’t think I’ll get around to talking about hiring, skills development, and compensation, for example. But, whatever, you’ve got ship.
Deadpool
The bit below is a chunk of text from my deadpool for the book, it’s on some new uses for software in the insurance industry. What’s a “deadpool”? Well, it’s where I put large pieces of text I want to cut from the thing I’m writing.
It serves several purposes: (1.) I feel better about deleting it because I’m not actually deleting it, (2.) it’s a good base for new pieces of content (like below!), and, (3.) it saves it in case I do want to use it in, here, the book.
Have a deadpool!
Customer relationship in insurance
The goal of many digital strategies is to improve customer experience and engagement. This sounds abstract, but these leads to very real business impacts. A happier, more productive user stays with you, spends more, recruits more customers, and builds up a ready pool of customers for new businesses you might create.
We are linking customer-satisfaction improvement with business impact through this willingness to recommend in two ways. The first, of course: once a customer becomes loyal, he or she tends to retain his or her policies with us. The second way: through new promoters, we can gain more new customers. In many cases, we are also observing cost reduction, because the solutions we are offering to our customers remove some steps from their journeys. For example, in call centers, when you avoid repetitive calls, it means that you can save call- center costs, and also, of course, your agents, your intermediaries, will not deal with similar problems. Firuzan Iscan, Allianz.
Happy customers are a strategic asset. Many traditional businesses have lagged in the customer relationship department, treating the ongoing experience as just a series of transactions, or as they’re sometimes called, “touch points.”
Take life insurance, for example. “The trust level for insurance companies is relatively low, even compared to banks,” says Zurich Insurance’s Monika Schulze. “So the question is why?” she asks, “And one of the answers is frequency of contact. So, we sell policies to customers, then we leave them basically alone until they have to renew again, and that’s it.” For the most part, this is a non-relationship. That means that it’s all too easy for customers to search for alternatives, especially online as they lounge on the divan with their phone.
It’s little wonder that customers are interested in insurance companies that pop up in their Instagram feeds and otherwise treating insurance as a commodity. Indeed, Gartner L2 estimates that between 2013 and 2019, the number of Americans attempting to buy life insurance online has doubled.
To most people, insurance is a commodity provided by faceless companies. Among other things, commodity status can mean lower revenue for insurance that are used to higher premiums. Forrester’s Oliwia Berdak gives an example: “In Q4 2015, insurance customers who bought comprehensive motor insurance via a comparison website paid an average annual premium of £550.8, compared to an average annual premium of £800.5 for policies purchased via any other direct channel.”
Also, when there’s low customer loyalty and interaction, insurance startups are given a window to slip in and steal the long-term customer relationship. These interlopers “try to enter the customer interface,” Allianz’s CIO Andreas Nolte says, “and offering some convenient service for the end customer for managing their insurance or some lean contract administration or some life planning or investment planning.”
In this example, improving and maintaining a good customer relationship has large, beneficials effects.
Original programming
First, thanks to Kevin Goldberg for including Software Defined Talk on his recommended podcasts list.
Speaking of, this week’s episode has me much befuddled by some slides, and coverage of them:
No Change in our journey: Coté is eating and drinking in this episode, so deal with it. Also, we discuss some odd slides, Mirantis buying Docker Enterprise, and saving code with vikings.
Sustainability
From Harley Manning at Forreste:
To understand why this is the question for CX measurement programs, stop and reflect on what C-level executives really care about: revenue growth, cost reduction, and profitability. If you work at a publicly traded company, they also care about stock price. Those are the metrics that are top of mind for your execs, every day, all the time. At best, NPS, CSAT, and other typical CX metrics are nice-to-have afterthoughts.
Why? Because when revenue, profits, and stock price go up, and costs go down, your CEO and other members of your C-suite can make surreal amounts of money. And when those metrics don’t improve, they eventually get ousted from the business. Those are their stark alternatives: Get rich, or get fired. It’s not a subtle or nuanced choice they’re making, and they expect you to get that.
Yes, and… I don’t know man. That’s a recipe for “be careful what you ask for.”
There’s no accounting for long term optionality and sustainability in that view if taken literally (which is to say, I’m sure the intention is to include a long term view which addresses those here and now growth goals).
Good luck paying for today with all the tech debt, outsourcing deals, and other short cuts you’ll make. But, for a five year term, the results have a good chance of being good if you borrow from the future.
But, you have to align to the corporate strategy, long term or not.
Yay, alignment…?
…but I do want to hear you
Earlier this week I had a call in zoom, and the co-worker on the other end said (approximately) “we’ve turned our video off. We read your newsletter.”
Well. People actually read this!
All the videos were off. It was very relaxing.
“I’m not gonna be Merlin Mann anymore.”
Everything feels like it asks more than it’s claiming and it delivers less than it claims. – Ep. 360: “Chicken Arse, IA.”
Small batches and a “business value” example
From some product management types at the US Digital Service:
Getting learning early in the process:
Neglecting to include user input during implementation is probably one of the biggest causes of failure in government projects. It is unlikely that your initial research identified the precise, perfect way to solve the problem. Assuming that’s true, when do you want to learn you’re wrong? Typically, the government learns at the end of the project, after years have passed and millions of dollars spent. Instead, using an Agile approach to software development, you can deliver a minimal viable product (MVP) that solves part of the need or problem. With the feedback from your users, you can then make changes to the requirements and build and release the next iteration of the product.
Business value metrics:
For example, when we launched a new online healthcare application for Veterans, our goal was to make it easier for Veterans to apply for healthcare, thus increasing the percentage of applications that the VA received electronically. This trailing metric — applications submitted electronically — was just the first we defined. We also identified a leading indicator of the amount of traffic received at the start of the application. This gave us insight into how well we were driving usage and communicating the benefits of the online application process from Vets.gov. We then developed usage metrics in the form of a user funnel and defined key steps in the application process to see where Veterans were dropping out.
Books
I’ve gotten distracted by drawing stuff in Procreate, so my reading is a bit down.
“But really,” she said, “nothing’s radioactive anymore.” (The book)
I’m into this book Sourdough, it’s calming and fun, with just a trickle of mystery in it.
Following up on Medallion Status, I’m listening to Vacationland. These stories are good on their own, and in the back of my head I’m cataloging the mechanics of converting ever day life into stories, essays, that would compose a book.
As ever, listening to a book read by the author is great. They understand exactly how it should sound. The best example of this is Neil Gaiman reading Norse Mythology - it’s fantastic.
“Dude, there’s a lot of things we all want.”
Not sure what to do with this (because I like it):
A firm’s ability to provide above-market returns depended on their ability to develop a compelling brand identity, and then treat this ID as a religion, nodding to the identity with every action/investment.
And then:
I sold my stake in Prophet in 2002. I had started hating the services industry. Success in the services industry is a function of your ability to communicate ideas and develop relationships. I loved the former and despised the latter — managing colleagues and being friends with people for money. The services industry is prostitution, minus the dignity. If you spend a lot of time at dinners with people who aren’t your family, it means you’re selling something that is mediocre.
Hey, and while we’re up in there:
The Dow is one of the least important metrics in our society, indicating the health of the wealthiest — 80% of stocks are owned by the top 10% income-earning households. A better question: Which candidate could reverse a 3-year decline in life expectancy? Facebook, Russia, Chipotle, unemployment … what do any of these things matter if we’re dying sooner?
As always, his style of writing is fun, but annoying. Claims are supported more by vim then footnotes; there’s a wide range of topics; he speaks freely. I envy those things and would like to write exactly like that. (I suppose that’s my podcasting style, mostly.
I aspire to the simplicity of footnoteless-bravado.
Relevant to your interests
“[P]rescriptive low-code”. “Vendors spend all their time focusing on their own differentiation, when, maybe, they should be focused on their ability to help their customers differentiate.” It’s all “intellectual vaudeville” to me. “If the reporting isn’t working, the issue is probably the story idea.” Jaywalking considered just fine (and legal) in The Netherlands.