Marketers talk a lot about optimizing the customer experience, and how to win customer loyalty. But increasingly, there is a new perspective starting to emerge from the lexicon and the zeitgeist of this particular marketing movement. Instead of becoming more customer-focused, some brands are talking about becoming more customer-obsessed, which is what it takes to intensify customer engagement in today’s dynamic marketing landscape.
When Forrester analyst Leah Buley took the stage during CXNYC 2015, Forrester’s conference for customer experience professionals, she described what these new customer-obsessed companies look like, and how they strive to cultivate and maintain a customer experience that turns customers into advocates. Throughout her Speaker Spotlight Q&A, she also discussed how brands could take customer experience to a new level by getting back to a more CX-focused approach.
It is no secret that brands should strive to meet customer wants and needs, and this requires understanding their changing habits and expectations. But Buley focused on an idea that is not often elucidated. That is, just as customers adapt and change, so too do the internal workings of companies adapt and change.
“The reality is that organizations are not static bodies,” Buley said. “They are, in fact, organisms that change and grow over time. And as they grow, their relationship to the customer also changes and grows. So this ideal of customer obsession can mean really different things depending on the state the company itself is in.”
The different stages that companies often find themselves in often impact customer experience based on two key factors: Size and customer-centricity. Buley noted that the smaller the company, the more likely they are to be more mindful of the customer experience. The reason being that smaller companies are often started by individuals with a singular goal to provide some sort of exceptional product or service to a specific group of people. They are also better able to focus more on their customers as individuals.
“In that sense they represent the perspective of the customer,” Buley said. “They can see what they want to be better in the world around them. And as a result, early customers of those companies end up being very like-minded individuals.”
As companies grow and expand, however, this mission is often lost in the machinations of the corporate machine. As companies need more and more money to continue operating, customer-centricity tends to take a backseat to the nature of doing big business. During this “adolescent” stage, they start to realize the importance of sales and marketing to attract larger and more diverse segments of the population.
“They begin to target new customers that may not really be what their target customer-base ought to be,” Buley continued. “And this can lead to some hard lessons. But the companies that learn from these lessons, grow into the next stage, which is called ‘prime.’”
Buley equates this stage to being in the prime of one’s life. Companies at this point have learned who their customers are and how to best serve them. There is a perfect balance of customer service, efficiency, and creativity, and, according to Buley, this is where companies should stay.
“But companies don’t stay here because companies in their prime are successful, so they continue to grow, which means even more customers and more product lines,” said Buley. “And this leads to a stage of bureaucracy, where the sheer scale of the business requires a company to develop a very inward focus on the operations, efficiency, and administration.”
From here, specialized departments spring up, and customer data and insights are dissected and analyzed to such a high degree that consumers start to seem less human and more like abstract concepts.
“A company in a bureaucracy eventually finds itself very far away from knowing its customers,” explained Buley. “Instead companies become quantified. They become data and percentages.”
This is where companies can lose customer-centricity. And this, of course, requires a company to try and return to the values and core principles that once made it focus on the customer. Here, at least acknowledging the problem and realizing the need to course correct is a step in the right direction.
It may not be easy, but it is possible and Buley cites Amazon and Southwest as good examples of very large companies that are currently excelling in this CX arena.
“The way they keep their customer centricity is through their culture,” she said.
Furthermore, there is a process that many of the largest customer-centric brands have followed.
The first step is to secure executive support. If the proper leadership is not in place, the right values cannot be disseminated downward and throughout the organization. After that, specialized teams can be built to spearhead the customer experience transition.
“Once these pieces are in place, companies can then create a shared understanding of what a great customer experience actually means for their brand, product, and customers,” Buley stressed. “And once that shared understanding is clear, it can be rolled out across the entire organization to rally and inspire employees to the cause.”
The final step, which never truly ends, requires that these new principles and values be embedded into every facet of the organization.
This journey may not be easy, and it will certainly be a long one, but returning to a company culture of customer-centricity is becoming more important than ever. And this transformation will be worth it in the long run.
About the Author: Mark Johnson
Mark is CEO & CMO of Loyalty360. He has significant experience in selling, designing and administering prepaid, loyalty/CRM programs, as well as data-driven marketing communication programs.