Customer strategy is the glue that binds your organisation’s path to customer-centricity. Many organisations merely focus on adhoc improvements to their customer experience rather than time and resources well spent on orchestrating the transformation through a customer strategy. The path to customer-centricity is not easy, but there are 3 key elements organisations can focus their efforts on:
Many organisations make sweeping statements around knowing their customer needs. But do they really? It’s not only about customer satisfaction surveys which can be superficial and only scratch the surface of really understanding customers. There is a myriad of data points along a customer’s end-to-end journey which can provide rich and full insights. The basis of understanding customers deeply and to cultivate their loyalty is owning a good data capability and the aggregation and analysis of this into actionable usable insights. In order for this capability to offer a competitive advantage, it needs to be an organisation-wide effort with accountability held across the organisation at board level (for example Chief Customer Officer), and to own and run the capability cross-functional.
Ad hoc improvements to your organisation’s customer experience will not suffice in achieving customer centricity. Instead, this should be a coordinated proactive effort at continual improvements to the end-to-end experience. The cx design capability should also not be left up to a team of people operating in isolation, but rather should have a broad mandate integrated across the enterprise. Your customers’ experience is everybody’s responsibility, from sales through to back-office.
Forrester defines the culture competency as “creating a system of shared values and behaviours that focus employees on delivering great customer experiences.” Organisations need to realign their organisational structure to enable employee’s autonomy and to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Culture should be built through hiring staff with the right attitudes and behaviours, and by defining and rewarding emergent customer centric behaviours. Culture transformations are arguably the most difficult component of a customer centric strategy, but – at the same time – a critical enabler.
Practice Lead: Customer Strategy, Immersion Group
Connect with Mary-Jane on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-jane-talbot-23b15910/
Through her years in customer experience Mary-Jane has gained a world of knowledge and expertise which she applies to her pioneered methodologies and best practice models. Mary-Jane spends her days helping clients improve their customer strategy and transition into a more customer-obsessed organisation. Mary-Jane specializes in Customer Strategy, CX, Target Operating Models, Marketing strategy, Marketing planning and Implementation, Operating model development and delivery; Marketing and communications strategy; Management consulting, currency trading / dealing; Investment banking operations.
