Mastery—after all it’s in my name

While I was studying architecture, many of our assignments in school involved drafting layouts over and over again—using rulers, pencils and erasers. (Yes, these were the prehistoric times!) Autodesk’s AutoCAD was still in its infancy, and for some people, it was either a revolution in design, or a huge hurdle.

For many of my friends in the industry, who weren’t comfortable with this new way of designing using pixels instead of pencils (remember this was the late ‘80s, early ‘90s), it was a cumbersome experience.

A dream come true

I spent hours and hours using AutoCAD and its sister tool 3ds MAX.  I would stay up late every night for weeks at a time exploring and experimenting.  Little did I know at that moment, I was putting in my time.

In his book, The Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell outlines the concept of the 10,000 hour rule. According to Gladwell, in order to master something you need to put in 10,000 hours of practice. I was doing just that. But not to become a great architect. I was building a foundation for the digital and interactive world.

Daniel Pink also touches on the subject in his book, Drive,  in which he wrote, “For true innovation, think autonomy, mastery and purpose.”

During a recent all-staff meeting at Delvinia, I asked the team; Out of these three, which do you think is the most important?  Most answered purpose, which, instinctually, I would agree with. It drives people to be creative and innovative when solving problems. If we have a purpose, then we know what road to go on, right?

However, I believe, it’s hard to know what your purpose is, if you don’t know what you’re good at or what your true passion is. Mastering a subject, a craft, even your business is key to unlocking success, purpose and autonomy.

Master Craftsperson

As I look around the office today we have a very diverse group of people. Our team includes artists, anthropologists, MBAs, researchers, engineers and myself, with a background in architecture. Each of us has our own areas of passion and mastery. But collectively as one firm, our true purpose is becoming realized.

We have mastered the art of solving diverse and complex problems in an ever changing world. We can do this because we are masters at understanding how people behave in an increasingly digital world and at designing experiences for real people across a complex world of interactive screens.

Finally, if you are focused on become a master at something you will be successful. Whatever your definition of success is. In business we measure success based on customer satisfaction and revenues.  Both of which are byproducts of mastering one’s own craft. Think about the greatest people and companies in history and I bet you can point to the one thing they were a master at.

What are you trying to master?

Delvinia’s Customer-Centric Approach to VoC Programs

Voice of the Customer is a term that’s commonly being used to describe the process of using digital technologies across various customer touchpoints to collect, analyze and interpret customer feedback and data.

Sounds straightforward. But in today’s digital world, keeping pace with the changing habits and behaviours of customers has never been so challenging.

Digital and social technologies create new and exciting opportunities to collect market research and connect with digital savvy consumers. But, moving from a method-driven approach to a consumer-centric approach poses challenges when it comes to deriving insights in a timely manner.

Many companies are collecting a lot of data about their customers but they lack the ability to quickly turn that data into insights and action. Furthermore, the number of customer touchpoints are increasing across every organization.

Sales, marketing, customer support, and even market research departments all have direct access to customer touchpoints. But when an organization is looking at finding ways to collect feedback to derive actionable insights, many organizations struggle with the question:  Who owns the voice of the customer?

We believe that effectively capturing the voice of the customer lies at the intersection of marketing, CRM and research. And, adopting a consumer-centric approach (rather than a technology-driven solution) will result in a more effective way to collect data that can be turned into actionable insights.

A Customer-Centric Approach

The essence of a customer-centric voice of the customer program is about the intersection of:

• Asking consumers to provide feedback and have a dialogue with your organization by creating relevant digital experiences that will motivate consumers to share their opinions and participate in market research
• Being able to link an individual’s responses to a profile of their habits and behaviours, in a manner that ensures that their privacy and personal information are protected
• Listening to the dialogue about your brand or organization through the use of social monitoring technologies
• Observing how customers are interacting and transacting with your organization through methods such as web analytics or transactional data
• Utilizing both internal and external data sources that your organization collects from its customers
• Finally, being able to integrate all of this data into a near-real time snapshot that will help your organization quickly derive data-driven insights that result in action.

Delvinia, in partnership with AskingCanadians™, is launching a new service line that builds on the consumer-centric understanding of digital technologies and our ability to leverage digital tools to capture the voice of the customer and provide relevant solutions to derive insight from customer data.

Our Voice of the Customer service line includes programs, platforms and products designed to help companies efficiently and cost-effectively integrate the voice of the customer into any marketing or customer experience program.  It will enable market researchers to derive insights in ways that will help them motivate consumers to want to share their feedback.

Keep watching this space for future posts about our approach to VoC.

COC Launches 2012/13 Season and Delvinia-Designed Digital Brochure

The Canadian Opera Company announced the line-up for its 2012/13 season at a press conference at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts last week. The new season—the company’s 63^rd—is described as a celebration of opera’s greatest masterpieces. The season features seven productions including Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore, Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus and Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

The season launch, held January 18, also marked the launch of the COC’s third annual digital brochure, developed by Delvinia to support online subscription renewals.

While the overall user experience and strategy behind the piece remains the same as last season—to showcase the upcoming season and entice users to subscribe online—our team completed a creative refresh of the design. Rather than building the brochure in Flash, as was the case last year, we designed the brochure in Java to ensure compatibility with smartphones and tablets.

The digital brochure includes a synopsis of each opera, including a link to a sound clip and more information about the performance dates and casting. This year’s brochure also features a stronger call to action to generate subscriptions and a season trailer featuring video clips from General Director Alexander Neef and artists like Ben Heppner, who is returning to the COC for the first time in 17 years.

We hope you’ll visit coc.ca to take a look for yourself and we wish the COC all the best with its exciting new season!

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