There’s a great trend sweeping the world’s college campuses.  It’s very serious (not).  It’s mattress dominos!

This made me laugh.

I developed a special affection for lines of falling dominos the night a group of MBA students made me realize how instructive they are in understanding what drives decision making and performance outcomes in any organization. I’d given my students a one-page case, asking them to make a speech as the CEO of a $600-million dollar organization, answering the simple question, “What is the purpose of your business?”

The ensuing debate ended with the lesson I learned long ago from Theodore Leavitt, confirmed in my own experiences as a line executive and later proven in work with clients and national studies we’ve done at Aveus:

Solving a problem well for a carefully chosen target customer yields the best financial outcomes.

On my way home that night I realized using customer experience to drive financial performance is just like a line of falling dominos.

And you know what? Your organization has its own line of falling dominos.

Imagine your last domino is profit, or the financial outcome your organizations seeks. The first domino is purpose – the need you are out to solve for your target customers, or as Clayton Christensen calls it: “the job your customers are asking you to do.” All the dominos in between are the decisions made and actions taken across your organization every day – decisions and actions that must align with your purpose in order to tip the back domino and win a financial payoff. (If you’re a social sector organization, you might measure sustainable social outcomes in place of profits, but you get the idea.)

Imagine that you have been wise in choosing your target customer and the problem you can solve for them. Then imagine your perfect vision of what happens as your target customer:

• Realizes a need,
• Learns about options to solve the need,
• Tries you out,
• Buys, and then uses your product or service to…
• Solve their problem, and then
• Evolve to another need over time.

This ideal vision is your target customer experience.

Have you defined a target customer experience for your function, product, brand or company?

There is a link between solving a problem well for a target customer (your front domino) and financial performance (your back domino). The link is all your daily decisions and actions. Aligned well with the front domino, they result in great financial performance. Aligned poorly, inconsistently, or only by some in your organization…not so much.

Is everyone in your organization focused on solving a clear need for a carefully chosen target customer – or are they focused on something else?

To put this to work, match a problem your organization can solve well with a big market of customers who would truly value having the solution. Align each domino in between – whether it be the emotional tone of your interactions, your hiring decisions, your product design choices or fulfillment processes – to the front domino experience that solves a need for your customer better than anyone else.  You’ll create a chain reaction that leads to great financial performance.

Those MBA students changed my thinking about customer experience. Now I see a clearly-defined target customer experience as a perfectly placed front domino, and financial performance as the reward, or last domino.

What do you see?

You might also find useful:

BOOK: Check out Domino. This how-to book can help you define your target experience and then translate it to the daily actions that drive performance.

PODCAST: Blake Landau at Customer Management IQ gets the full story behind my “what’s the purpose of your business?” challenge – and other big ideas.

JUST FOR FUN: See the truly amazing winning entry for World Domino Day 2008.