Customer centricity is a concept which has been around for many years as a prominent focus area around the board room table. However, it is evident that many organisations chant their intentions of customer-centricity, but few of them do what is really necessary to make it a reality. Becoming customer-centric is more than improving your customer service or hiring a team to manage insights. What is missing, as a start, is a clearly articulated customer strategy.
A customer strategy is more than improving your customers’ ad hoc interactions with the business. Its more than kick-ass service or slick design. It’s a coordinated effort on developing experiences and creating long-term value for customers, along with the necessary capabilities, offerings, channels and operating model.
In recent years there have been numerous studies conducted to understand where organisations stand when it comes to their customers and the strategies around them; the result – most do not have a clearly defined customer strategy.
It has become clear that critical to closing deals, selling products, and retaining those key customers does not come down to only product, price, quality, features, or service. But – it’s about speaking the language of the customer. Sales and marketing anticipate client needs, value propositions cater to these needs, the experience is consistent with the brand messaging and everybody sings off the same hymn sheet when it comes to dealing with customers – culture is an execution accelerator.
In the absence of a deliberate, well thought-out and designed customer strategy, your organisation is reactive, not proactively engaging with, or providing long term value to its customers. Your teams’ efforts are uncoordinated and actions up to their specific interpretation of the strategy – which in essence dilutes the power of your strategy.
A coordinated effort through a customer strategy ensures your capabilities are aligned to deliver against your promise, to achieve the outcome of greater long-term value and experiences for your target customers – and, in essence, to grow sustainable profitability.
MORE ABOUT MARY-JANE TALBOT
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.
