Volume 2, Issue 2
Customer Strategist provides executives with insight that leads to innovative strategies for building more profitable customer relationships. It facilitates learning and action by presenting the most progressive thought leadership and providing access to Peppers & Rogers Group's proprietary consulting methodologies.
Outlook
Is it costly to deliver an outstanding customer experience? Of course it is. But perhaps the more important question is, what is the cost of delivering a subpar customer experience?
Three essential issues to consider so customer experience improvements deliver a real return.
I’m often asked the question: “What’s the ROI of customer experience?” To some degree, that’s a silly question. It’s like asking what’s the ROI of technology for Google, products for Best Buy, movies for NetFlix, or cars for Hertz. ?Customer experience is an integral component of every organization that has customers. Think of it this way, what would happen to the financial health of your company if you just stopped interacting with your customers?
How ironic that even as new technologies drive everything in business to become smaller, faster, and cheaper, the regulatory apparatus of most governments is becoming bigger, slower, and more expensive. Maybe the time has come to drag governments and their policies into the 21st century with the rest of us, and to use the technology to help stabilize and manage the world economy.
Benchmark
Whenever customers have an experience with a brand,
they create current-period, short-term value by buying the
product, as well as long-term value, because the experience
itself makes them more or less likely to do business
with the brand in the future.
Perspectives
Research reveals that customer centricity programs still
have limited bottom-line influence on the business strategies
of small and medium size organizations—but the
desire is there.
SimplexGrinnell raised its net customer advocacy score by 34 percent over three years in large part by doing one thing exceptionally well: acting on customer intelligence. The provider of fire and life-safety solutions captures and reports on customer insight across the company, responds to customer experience issues, and measures the results. Here, Karl Sharicz, manager of customer intelligence at SimplexGrinnell, discusses the challenges that led to the deployment of an enterprise customer feedback program, the processes in place to enable the insight, and the company’s plans to grow the strategy.
Case Studies
When a new market opens, some companies will rush in with short-term growth strategies no matter the product or service on offer. This was not the case with Yapi Kredi Emeklilik. The Turkish financial services company, which offers private pension plans and insurance products, knows its customers are planning for their future. So when it first entered the private pension market, the company decided to focus on its customers’ long-term needs and value, from acquisition to retention.
As important as data and segmentation are to Yapi Kredi Emeklilik’s customer strategy transformation, employee training is also crucial to gaining one-to-one customer relationships.
Photography is a very personal endeavor, capturing memories or creating artistic representations of everyday life. Customers want a brand they can trust to work with their treasured photos. Realizing this, PhotoBox made a commitment to customers to deliver an exceptional experience and to offer the products and services most important to them. Renaud Besnard, operations director, goes so far as to say the company is "customer-obsessed."
PhotoBox’s customer obsession was born from the poor customer reaction to its initial website redesign in early 2008. After that experience, the company made a priority of collecting and acting on customer feedback. “One of the key things the website launch taught us was to be less assumptive about what customers want and to actually ask them,” says Renaud Besnard, operations director. As a result, the company created the PhotoBox Insiders programs.
C-Suite Strategy
Sometime it takes a major shakeup to rethink operations. In the case of Global Crossing, a post-bankruptcy restructuring prompted the telecom company’s leadership to realize that regaining profitability meant increasing its emphasis on getting closer to its customers. Over the past four years the company has been reorganizing around the strategy of building long-term mutual value for its customers and itself. Changes included the creation of customer-facing units that assist sales, service, access management, and support; the integration of the seven touchpoints within Global Crossing’s customer lifecycle (administering quotes, ordering, delivery, billing and payment, service assurance, inventory management, and account servicing); and an internal reorganization, which shifted the responsibility for customer experience to IT rather than having it be a standalone function. Here, Anthony Christie, chief technology and information officer at Global Crossing, discusses the reorganization and how his new role as CTIO helps the company connect every aspect of the business (internally and externally) back to customer experience.
The World Cup is big business for many companies, particularly Nedjma, a mobile phone operator in Algeria. Circumstances surrounding Algeria’s World Cup journey led to 2 million new subscribers for Nedjma in six weeks. CEO Joseph Ged discusses how the company found itself in the situation, as well as his strategy to retain these new customers over the long term.
Proof Points
Top-tier companies in all industries are finding that technology and pervasive information in the hands of customers is changing the game, making it increasingly difficult to rely on brand image, market presence, or scale. What will distinguish the leaders of the future will be outstanding customer service.
Mastering the five essential elements of marketing optimization
will help to improve return on marketing investment and
increase long-term customer equity.