Why do Customer-Centric Organizations Fail?

In an earlier post on customer-centricity I had argued that executive reviews rarely go beyond the numbers (revenue, subscribers, traffic, etc.) and fail to capture a more powerful growth engine – our customers. But, what if our strategies are built around customer success, yet the goals are not achieved? 

There could be a multitude of reasons namely, market saturation, competitive pressures, product quality, marketing success, operational effectiveness, etc. While most of the listed here may be in play, in some form or the other, I want to bring our attention to “operational readiness.” 

We can hire the best consultants to design our product, consumer and marketing strategy, but it is our operational readiness that will determine how well we deliver on this strategy. 

Let’s take an example, we have our corporate mandates such as; expand our footprint, diversify our product offerings, increase ARPU, reduce cost, sign a new partnership, etc. We conduct due diligence, come up with a strategy to achieve that objective, and with a fancy deck, will have all the approvals needed for a launch. However, there is often a need for "incremental investments" and a shift from "corporate ways" that are critical for our operations to deliver. 

In my experience at leading new product launches and customer-facing site enhancements, the build phase often springs up unexpected surprises that either cause delays, or force a go-ahead with a compromised product/service features. These could be in the form of systems and process updates (may require capital investments), shift in strategy to offer a "beta" version of the product, shrink the scope of support offered through CRM, etc. As a P&L manager, it is important to highlight the larger gains and keep the project ROI positive and within acceptable range.

A well thought out and “realistic” implementation plan should be integral to the strategy deck for a new initiative. 

So, don’t underestimate the value of conducting due diligence and investments around building operational capabilities to meet the strategic goals. That is one activity which will significantly impact the success of; new product launch, analytics integration, a website redesign, and systems upgrade, etc.  

The bottom-line is that the cost of an unsatisfied customer is far too high to under-estimate the costs of poor delivery. 

In one of my client engagements, I had to re-evaluate the product features and SLAs that were agreed upon with the partner, as these were leading to customer complaints and unacceptable levels of churn. Part of the strategic redo included a better communication collateral for sales and marketing channels. The compromises made during the launch to meet the deadlines would come back to bite so quickly - no one had imagined! 

Corporate Innovation is at Risk ...

A new product or service does not come around every day. Organizations are built around the core innovative idea and thrive on systems, processes and capabilities to manage subsequent growth. In more mature organizations, repeatable processes are created to deliver the value, service and support to customers. However, this "order and routine" also leads to a corporate culture that becomes “inhospitable” to innovation. Let me share a great quote from one of marketing's leading innovative thinkers - this would become my inspiration for this post. 

“Organizations by their very nature are designed to promote order and routine. They are inhospitable environment for innovation.” - Ted Levitt.

How can we look at innovation in a mature organization?

As someone has said, “innovation is anything, but business as usual.” Most daily tasks in an office tend to fall into the routine job duties, but the teams need to be encouraged to challenge the status quo and find ways to improve product, service, processes. In other words, INNOVATE! 

Let’s take an example of a project meeting that I participated in. While trying to resolve the poor quality complaint on a new product, it was brought to our attention that often the call-issue is not captured and/or is categorized inaccurately in CRM system. Adding a new complaint code based on new service would have seemed like an obvious next step, but, the support team was reluctant to do so, as it would overload the already complex list. A deeper dialogue revealed that patching the legacy systems (linear fix) was no longer a viable option and our analysts suggested an overhaul of CRM-coding that better represented the new business and customer experience priorities (innovative fix) . I saw the innovation happen right there!

Innovation does not start at the CEO level, or even at one or 2 levels below. It can just as easily start at the lowest level, amongst the troops in the trenches. It is our analysts and managers, who are interacting with the customers, vendors and internal stakeholders that are most aware of the issues and probably can help lead or collaborate on more pragmatic go-forward strategies. 

If you happen to be in such advanced organizations, don't be surprised if the next great idea for customer service, cost efficiency, reporting, etc., comes from one of the many of the "routine" meetings. It is these voices that need to be heard! It is this “out of the box” thinking that needs to be encouraged! It is this "corporate culture" that needs to be nurtured! It is the senior leaders who should lead such "corporate innovation” by encouraging participation and curbing the “quick resolution” mindset.

Corporate innovation can only be kept alive if we let the “bottoms-up” approach to flourish.

Here are a few ideas to encourage corporate innovation:

• Tying manager performance with matrix feedback from colleagues, which will ensure that managers are encouraging participation
• Training project managers to record and follow-up on any “out of the box” initiatives that emanate from the routine meetings, instead of staying focused on task lists
• Senior leadership finding time to discuss those ideas, not always relying on a formal business case to justify the time/resources spend
• Institutionalizing a reward system for innovative ideas and solutions, and making sure idea, and NOT the value, is recognized - value invariably follows!

Corporate innovation, if done right, holds real promise for more mature organizations. It ought to be at the core of corporate culture and true leadership here would improve employee engagement, get them vested deeper with the organization’s success, and may significantly contribute to the bottom-line.

* image from: awma.org

Big Data – Framework to Be Smarter with Analysis

Marketers use data to assess campaign success, allocate budget, delineate customer analytics, design new products, optimize acquisition and retention, etc. However, with multiple data sources and owners, organizations often struggle with consolidating the right data and reporting to fully answer the questions asked. Along comes big data!  

Big data is exciting and challenging at the same time, since it affords a holistic look of customer analytics, yet exacerbates the complexity due to legacy data-silos and stakeholder needs.

This is a call for "smarter” approach to defining and using big data for tactical and strategic marketing objectives.

For marketers, a mapping exercise, as below, may help create a framework of available and needed data and systems. The layout identifies the evolution of data capture and applications, as organizations mature, and highlights the value being injected back into the business. It is telling in different ways – gaps in data capture, systems limitations, analytical resource allocation, etc. But most importantly, it highlights the need to innovate and upgrade legacy systems such that the analytics efforts can be targeted for the greatest impact and ROI.

It must be noted that the data silos are identified as they relate to customer analytics. Note that, as a marketer, I am looking into our current systems, so we can model returns from existing capabilities and tie the improvements to enhanced future investments. In other words, try and look at the parts to solve for the whole - get some short-term wins to articulate investments and the need to be on an "analytics fast lane.”

The question to ask of the management is – here’s where we are and here’s where we can be. Are we ready to invest?

The framework may help articulate big data scope and ROI, and also facilitate:

• Breaking down projects into chunks of easily manageable proposals
• Identifying the next big investment 
• Developing internal capabilities (organizational and personnel) 
• Providing a launching pad for execs to commit to larger projects

With investment along X-axis, we can improve our capabilities along Y-axis, which in turn, contributes to the growth trajectory graph. 

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! 

Understanding a Survey Design – Lessons from the Presidential Polls!

In the politically charged environment, I noticed that surveys are often used as a tool (arguably) to form public opinion. The research and analysis is inspiring and made me wonder if the insights could be directly used towards marketing effectiveness?

A recent HBR article stated that polls dramatically over-estimate support for third-party candidates, when very little actually exists. The premise being “naming any third-party candidate” will garner more votes from responders who are on the fence about Clinton or Trump. However, it won’t translate into real ballot due to the lack of familiarity with these candidates. The revealing conclusion was that the independent candidates cannot be overly optimistic about the survey results, since being named in the survey will alone get you some votes, but the actual support may be much less than that.

Now let’s think marketing surveys – most tend to be “leading” the respondents, so we as marketers can get specific data that we “like.” Not a good sign, if you are banking on survey results to build the business case for a new product/service and have been leading the consumers into picking an answer on the survey. The responses will point to what’s listed on the survey, instead of providing an insight into how much do the consumers know about and/or need the new offering.

Another related and interesting reference in the above article was to a book on “Answering questions versus revealing preferences,” by Zallar and Feldman. The research argued that responders are not necessarily revealing “considered opinions, instead are just answering questions quickly.” The responses do shift based on the answers choices given!  

If I were to summarize in marketing context;

“Educate and NOT lead the consumer to get a more considered opinion.”

This is an important consideration, when designing the survey and considering the responses. Consumers are not sitting around thinking about our new product or service, so a “considered opinion” is the last thing we should expect. However, we can still strive to help them provide a considered opinion through a better survey design, in terms of educating the consumer about the purpose, product/service, benefits and goals. How we do that will depend upon the specified goals, but the results will be closer to a considered opinion, rather than a multiple choice selector.

The article brought to fore some pertinent nuances, even while drawing attention to more common approaches employed, such as, be specific and short, or squeeze in a few more questions to get more responses. But, it is up to us to decide if we want “more” data or “quality” data. The choice is ours!

Why is my conversion low? (rewind)

It was exactly 7 years ago that I asked this question on this blog. 

So much has changed since then. We have device proliferation, big data, IoT, marketing automation and advancements in web delivery, including a whole lot more literature on customer experience, engagement and conversions.

However, a lot of organizations seem to be struggling with the basics of conversion, that were highlighted in the post. A key question still lingers!

"Is my page designed to cater to my target audience, or am I being generous to all web browsers?"

It needs to be reinforced that an analytics rigor is essential to a sustained web strategy, be it campaign management, online shopping experience, other. Here is a set of key questions to answer:

1. Who is our target audience?
2. Do we have a clearly defined goal for the website/page(s)?
3. Are 1 and 2 based on solid data analysis and modeling?
4. Do we have a clear "call for action" on our pages?

I have come across a few organizations that are either not diligent on this front or have not invested in the resources to be analytically-savvy. 

It is only getting more complex with above mentioned industry changes, and proactive investments towards basic advancements in addressing customer experience and conversions will only be a prudent strategy - food for thought!

Are You Ready For the Anlaytics Fast-Lane?

Data and analytics are everywhere, with numerous examples of how the right analysis yields significant lifts in marketing or operational efficiencies. The returns are, without doubt, measurable and worth the investment. However, a word of caution for the leaders – don’t be swayed by case studies and peer recommendations, or assume that employing an analytics firm will yield similar results for your business. Being ready to utilize the feedback in a timely manner, with a clear implementation plan, is equally critical to realizing the ROI on your analytics investment. Here are a few questions to ask yourself, before embarking on an analytics project.

1. What is the problem statement? Be clear with what question you need answered. It could be; defining the target audience for your product or/service, understanding customer engagement with your product, improving acquisition effectiveness with better offers, identifying churn propensity by customer cohorts, etc. The key is to explicitly state the goal, stay focused and avoid the “noise.” Defining a clear problem statement upfront is crucial to staying focused and not be distracted by a lot "interesting" findings that are bound to pop-up.
2. Do you have the right data set? Work with your analytics and IT experts to identify the right metrics needed to answer the above questions. A third party perspective is always recommended in such instances, since it helps question the status quo and is not bound by what is familiar. Start as comprehensive as possible, since analytical modeling often throws new data dependencies that may not have been obvious. A holistic view of data points available from the data warehouse go a long way in defining the problem statement.
3. Is the organization ready to ingest the analysis? The best time to use the analysis is “now.” I have often contended that analysis based on historical data is like playing catch-up. But, with predictive modeling we can project certain behaviors with a fair degree of certainty. The imperative hence is, that an organization has the operational capability to act quickly on the recommendations (marketing & sales changes, product updates, online experience edits, etc.). Invest in the back-end systems that can adapt and learn from the new programs, or else, run the risk of being obsolete.
4. Do you have dedicated personnel to guide the process? This is the most important determinant of success, and perhaps the most overlooked as well. A well defined problem statement, predictive analytical models and process efficiency cannot be achieved unless we have the right analytical minds leading and nurturing the program. As an organization, we need to recognize the need for analytics leader who has the resources and can rally the operational teams to achieve the desired outcomes. The ROI of analytical projects depends on this critical investment, just as it does on problem statement and analytical modeling.

Analytics and data modeling empower the businesses, and to stay competitive, businesses need to equally weigh continuous innovation and implementation. Rapid deployment is as critical for success, as is harnessing and modeling business metrics!