INSIGHT Customer Excellence
“If you don’t know this stuff about your customers then there’s no need to worry about it as some other firm will
take the problem away from you by finding it out and stealing all your customers.”
Ian Hunter, Contributing Editor, Comms Business
One Step Beyond
Nothing stands still in
Ian Hunter takes a look at the business trend towards achieving Customer Excellence (CX) and what is driving it.
He says that having a customer first or customer led ethos throughout a business should be a given these days
but how can you develop this further?
business other than the
need to control costs,
retain customers and
gain a competitive advantage.
e trouble is that these three
business objectives are constantly
under pressure and/or attack from
competitors.
We live in an age of
disruption typied by the fact
that worlds largest taxi rm
own no vehicles and the biggest
accommodation outt own no
hotels. Whilst disruptors such as
Uber and AirBnb are the poster
boys for disruption there are
freshly minted and innovative
competitors of all shapes and sizes
emerging and only too willing to
relieve you of long term clients
and contracts. ey are seizing
their competitive advantage and
at the same time destroying your
objective of holding on to your
customers. And as for your cost
base? at’s just own out the
window.
In a nutshell, this describes the
case for Digital Transformation
and the need to mitigate against
being digitally disrupted.
Today, having a customer rst
ethos within an organisation and
customer led business strategy
should really be a given – after
all not much happens without
customers and the revenues they
generate. Leave aside all the rms
that have never made a dollar
in real prot that have market
capitalisations measured in the
billions – that’s fairy dust that can
and does frequently disappear in
the wind.
In another nutshell, the case
for a customer led strategy could
be summed up as follows. If you
know as much as you can about
your customers – what they like,
dislike, what they want next, then
you can fast track giving them
more of what they like, eliminate
what they don’t like about your
products and services and save a
fortune on product development
by giving them new stu that
they actually want.
If you don’t know this stu
about your customers then there’s
no need to worry about it as some
other rm will take the problem
away from you by nding it out
and stealing all your customers.
So, this leads us neatly on
to collaborative working and in
this context collaboration means
sharing the information that all
your customer facing teams have
garnered from your clients. is
is the ‘collaborative workgroups
in – silos out’ strategy being
adopted by businesses that have
recognised customer data has a
far greater value to them when
it is more widely shared and
its meaning and implications
understood and acted upon.
Here’s an illustration of
why working in silos is bad.
ere’s little point in Marketing
launching a new product they
believe will be a top seller if the
Sales team already know it will be
too expensive and the Technical
team don’t have the skills to
maintain in the eld.
You can see why, according
to Harvard Business School
professor Clayton Christensen,
each year more than 30,000 new
consumer products are launched
and 80% of them fail.
Another nutshell; In short,
customer excellence is about
being excellent in the eyes
of your customer. A simple
concept, but very important.
Customer Excellence drives
protable growth. By putting
your customer at the centre
of everything the company
does, you’ll ensure that you’re
delivering the product or service
that they need.
A study by Forrester found
that CX leaders delivered
compound annual revenue
growth rates (CAGR) of 17%
©Andrey Popov-stock.adobe.com
compared to just 3% for CX
laggards.
e major wins from CX
are in the existing customer
base, helping businesses increase
life-time value of customers,
reduce churn and drive
customer advocacy through
better relationships. ese aren’t
marketing KPI’s, these are the
operational fundamentals for
most businesses, underpinning
the case for much wider
ownership of CX, including
at senior levels, within
organisations.
I said that nothing stands
still and it’s now a fact that
those organisations that have
already undertaken their DX/CX
journeys are now planning their
own next steps to maximise their
return on investments.
And those moves almost
certainly, and worryingly for the
laggards, involve accelerating
their performances and
coming even harder after the
competition.
46 | Comms Business Magazine | February 2019 www.commsbusiness.co.uk
/Popov-stock.adobe.com
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