Phil Sager: Experience Is the New Product; Here's How to Manage It

Well-designed customer episodes can deliver better customer experiences at a lower cost. Phil Sager, a partner with Bain's Financial Services practice, describes how reorganizing around episodes, instead of products or functions, can produce scalable results. 

Read the Bain Brief: Experience is the New Product; Here's How to Manage It

Read the transcript below. 

PHIL SAGER: Historically, executives have organized their business around products, channels and functional areas. This seemingly logical way of organizing your business makes it really hard to deliver against ever-increasing customer expectations. The pioneers are reorganizing around the customer experience. The unit of transformation is the episode, and the ways of working are agile. Bain defines a customer episode from the customer's point of view -- outside in.

It starts when a customer expresses a need: "I want to live in a home that I own." And the episode ends when the customer moves into that home, not when the bank or financial institution defines the end of the episode. Experience with leading companies suggests that this approach is delivering materially better customer experiences at radically lower costs.

Organizations start by defining a consistent taxonomy of episodes, outside in -- think like a customer. They start by selecting one to two episodes to pilot this approach. Then, as they build confidence and capability, they scale the approach across the organization. They then redefine executive leadership roles, not in product or functional responsibilities, but around delivering industry-leading customer experiences. Teams will enjoy the ownership. The CFO will enjoy better business results. And the customers will stay longer, buy more and tell people about the great experiences.

Read the Brief

Experience Is the New Product; Here's How to Manage It

Organize around customer episodes, improving them through Agile teams.