3 C’s of Consumer Centricity

Back into a few age old discussions on customer centricity and wanted to remember the foundations that formed the basis of organizational changes I was fortunate to have been a part of. (originally published in September 2014)

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Consumer-centric organizations are known to do all they can to engage with their customers and proactively cater to their needs. Often these will include product/service updates, social communications, systems to support consumer-centric strategies, etc. 

However, it is easy to feel burdened with multi-directional pulls on your consumer-centric strategy as tactical urgencies evolve in any business cycle. Keeping a framework of key consumer touch points is imperative in such situations to stay focused and continue to deliver on the promise of better than excellent engagement. I categorize these core consumer touch points into 3 areas – the 3 C’s of Consumer Centricity.

1. Content – what does a consumer see about your brand, products, services? Are you developing content that clearly communicates and reinforces the value of your products and services? Does this content remind the consumer how valuable their relationship is to the brand and vice-versa? Whether a consumer is using your products or not, we need to evolve our content strategy such that it caters to consumer need for information, before and after they make a purchase decision, and at the time of purchase, you will typically get the nod.
2. Choice – Do we offer choice in our products and services? Is our product strategy in-tune with the evolving market dynamics, namely, technological changes, consumer usage behaviors, market expectations, etc.? After we have successfully attracted consumer attention, we need to ensure we are ready to live up to the promise – great product and service. As and when consumers mature and place their trust in your brand, you need to be able to offer a portfolio that goes beyond the core product(s) and allows the customer to strengthen the bond.
3. Community – Speaking of bonding with brand, what better way than to draw customers into your community. Do you have a community that not only caters to customer queries, but also, provides valuable information to enhance your products/services? Social revolution has brought about a radical shift in organizations’ communications tactics, as to how frequently and what do consumers need to know. We need to proactively build this into our marketing strategy and invest in right resources to maintain it and keep it current. 

As we all know, consumer life-cycle starts well before they become our customers, and continues well beyond their first purchase. The 3 C’s provide a marketer’s view into this life-cycle and by creating the planning tools within this framework may just help simplify analysis, refine your marketing/communications strategies, maximize ROIs and contribute to your maturing as a consumer-centric organization.

Customer-Centricity in Government - It's an Imperative

Here's an article from "nextgov" that predicts a flattening of customer-centric growth within the government. 

The study by Forrester forecasts federal spending on customer-centricity and digital transformations to stay flat. Although, data is projected to move towards standardization and open sharing. Mixed bag really, but really worth tracking! 

Customer Centricity and Parallel Marketing Channels

Customer Centricity is enlightening the customer to engage with the brand, no matter what path is chosen. It is, in essence, managing your business with customer at the focal point of your decision-making. What does this entail? Equal focus on enabling multiple marketing channels and implementing internal back-end systems to track customers through these channels.

This implies that all the quantitative and qualitative data from print, web, email and social will need to be integrated such that there is a complete 360-degree view of the customer interaction. 

Big data supposedly is one solution, but is that all? Is it even possible to implement at that grand scale? Are the teams even ready to understand, implement, maintain and utilize the big data scheme to its fullest? 

There needs to be a shift in marketer's mind-set, besides the technology implementation, that aligns with the customer's interaction with their brands.

Let's take an example of the parallel circuit in the diagram above. Electricity travels along the various paths, powered by the battery, lighting the bulb in each path. Our brand needs to replicate the source, powering each of our campaign channels, lighting an interest in customer's mind and closing the loop with customer's connection with the brand (content consumption, purchase, etc.).