Preface

Time is a precious commodity. In a world where the pace of business is continually accelerating, time is becoming the dominant customer currency. Customers want to spend their scarce time well. For example, when ordering a product, the ideal ordering process from the customer’s perspective would take virtually no time and would be completed effectively. The order would be accurate and complete so the customer can avoid spending time on corrective actions.

Real time in this ordering example is the actual time that a customer has to invest with a company to complete the ordering process. However, completing an order (or any process) in “real time” has popularly come to mean completing it virtually instantaneously. The reality is that instantaneous order handling may not always be possible. It is an ideal to strive to achieve, but in reality a rushed delivery of the wrong product or a product that is hard to use will ultimately prove to be counterproductive. From the customer’s perspective, ideal customer experiences include a chain of events that, in their totality, are completed effectively and as instantaneously as possible.

Organizations striving to continually improve their ability to provide ideal customer experiences are real-time organizations. They are the core of what we call “the real-time revolution.” These organizations are demonstrating to the customer that they value the customer’s time. Organizations that come closer than their competitors to this ideal will begin to be viewed as the customer’s preferred provider. As real-time companies distance themselves from their competitors, they will begin to gain market share. Companies that are unable to match the competition’s efforts will be forced to offset their deficiencies by reducing prices and margins. Use of financial incentives may serve as a temporary means to maintain market position. However, if the company is in real-time denial, the ultimate survival of the enterprise will be threatened by other organizations that embrace the real-time revolution.

Organizational leaders have to ask themselves a critical question: “Does our organization truly recognize the importance of time to customers?” What may seem like a simple question requires significant effort to develop the data needed to provide the answer honestly and completely. For example, those in leadership positions will need to consider where and how their customers spend time dealing with the company and its products over the life of the products and services. In addition, they must be able to prioritize their constrained resources so that efforts to improve the customer experience are optimally targeted to projects that customers appreciate. We cite numerous examples throughout the book that show how companies have used real-time concepts to provide meaningful improvements to customer experiences.

This book is for the leaders and members of organizations seeking to understand how they can help make their organizations more “real time.” That includes those in organizations that are just starting to focus on valuing customer time, those in organizations that have implemented some programs to improve customer experiences and are looking to do more, and those who feel threatened by competitors that have been able to win market share by improving their efforts to value customer time. We wrote this book to help all of these readers understand better how to transform their organizations to become more real time.

The book is also for leaders and members of organizations in real-time denial. They may not realize their dire condition. If they continue to ignore the migration of customers to competitors that are providing better real-time experiences, their customer base will eventually disappear. The real-time revolution will leave them wondering why their customers abandoned them. Hopefully this book will help them realize their need for transformation so they can survive and even thrive.

The book is organized to help readers first understand the importance of the real-time revolution and the need to become a real-time organization (introduction and chapter 1). We then explain why leaders need to establish a real-time monitoring and response (RTMR) system to track and adapt to ever more demanding customer expectations about time (chapter 2). The remainder of the book helps readers understand various levers available to transform their organizations to provide customers with experiences that value their time throughout the life of their organization’s products and services. These include the core levers of the product or service (chapter 4), processes (chapter 5), data (chapter 6), and people (chapter 7). Beyond those core levers are technology, culture, strategy, and relationships with a variety of external parties (chapter 8).

The message throughout the book is straightforward: to survive and thrive, organizational leaders, in concert with their members and other stakeholders, must transform their organizations to value customer time more effectively than competitors do. Three related guidelines support this transformation to real time:

1. The real-time organization must be agile enough to detect and respond to changing customer expectations regarding time better than competitors do.

2. The real-time organization must engage customers throughout the life of its products and services such that customers view the organization as valuing their time and, thus, meeting their needs more than competitors do.

3. The real-time organization will be transformed to value customer time through these core organizational levers: products and services, processes, data, and people.

This message applies not only to businesses but also to other organizations where customer real-time expectations are important to meet, including governmental entities, educational institutions, and other not- for-profits. The message is of equal or even greater value for readers in educational institutions that are preparing future organizational leaders to guide their enterprises to success in an increasingly turbulent world. These participants could be students in degree programs (such as graduate programs in business, public, or educational administration) or nondegree programs (such as learning/leadership development programs offered by a specific organization or a professional association).

As the examples throughout the book illustrate, the most successful organizations have recognized that time is increasingly important to customers. One of our contributions from observing these organizations is recognizing that what began as a collection of independent efforts has become a larger movement, a real-time revolution. Organizations around the world are striving to meet customer time expectations. As a result, they are changing the basis for competitive success and failure. Our research indicates that even though most companies are striving to take advantage of digital technologies, those focusing on transformations that customers see as valuing their time have the best bottom-line impacts. Our other contribution is the set of three related guidelines above to assist organizational leaders, members, change agents, and other stakeholders in spreading the message of the real-time revolution: transform your organization to value customer time.