Customer Centricity: The Next Frontier Webinar & Template
No customers. No business. Simple. Right?
Try this. Ask any product manager in your (B2B) company about the amount of time they spend with customers. Better yet, ask anyone in your engineering group to characterize the customers of your company. Go one step further.
Get a few people from product management, engineering, and marketing in a room and discuss the most important customer insights that inform your firm’s product and portfolio strategies – and the data that supports these insights. Many of you who read this already have answers in your head. Ok, enough therapy.
It should go without saying that companies who truly understand the needs and motivations of their customers – and have robust investments in the infrastructure and processes to do so, tend to achieve greater success than their rivals.
Of course, you want to attract and retain customers. Of course, you know that customers are smarter than ever and are better able to make informed choices. But how do you create better connections with customers to deliver more value than your competitors?
While many firms are using the newest technologies to capture customer journeys (e.g., ride-hailing apps or virtual try-on experiences), it’s only one source of data for those transactionally rich firms. Technologies are important, but what’s most important is to create the ability to achieve what’s shown in the diagram below:
However, achieving what’s shown in the diagram requires infrastructure and culture. Merely saying the words (the what’s) will not make it happen. Companies that can properly target customers and deliver compelling value propositions have shown success when they incorporate the following:
- The appointment of a Chief Customer officer (think ambassador or diplomat) to establish a customer-centric culture.
- Development of programs and investments to capture customer needs and plan & structure visits (research).
- Creation of tools, methods, and technologies to gather and share customer research data.
- Engagement of cross-functional teams in assessing customer needs.
While these practices are vital, they are just the tip of the iceberg. If you’d like some practical guidelines on how to implement some of these, you’ll be interested in my recorded webinar. As an added bonus, during the webinar, you’ll be provided with a free customer visit plan template.