Closing the Chasm of Strategic Intents and Customer Engagement
Okay the topic sounds a little heavy I know, I was feeling heavy and academic today, and....well to be honest one of my close colleagues child was hit by a car today, hospitalised and had surgery and so on.
Thankfully the whole experience with staff was fantastic... so good customer engagement I guess.
So.... most of those who know me, know that I care a lot about working relationships than the dollar. I spend more time on developing people, including relationships and myself than may be I ought to, and yes, I could be a bit more cut throat in the decisions den. I simply just don’t sell customers into something they don’t need, I don’t work that way, and I won’t…
Why, because people and relationships matter in my business. I’ll share a secret……ready…to me, you the reader and customers are my purpose and lifeline to the experiences I want from life and business. That’s how I measure my success, not turnover/profit. Sound about new age, zenlike....well maybe , the truth is I value experiences over money and when I ask others, it seems to be the same. There is a wealth of evidence on happiness and income levels, and if you read it you will find their is correlation to a point and then it makes no difference.
"More is less" and "Less is More"
I’d rather it be written on my tombstone, “Matt engaged in life and people, versus Matt was a filthy rich bleep screwing over every customer and employee”
One thing I do know best is how to engage your most valuable people your customers and your team. In business or projects, the people whether it’s my customers, team, stakeholder or partner, mirror my skills or lack of engagement skills. When I need them to take action it is often influenced by understanding my business intents and the intents of the partner/customer.
In my research on product branding and customer engagement I came across a useful article, here are some the key points I learnt. As we move into uncertain times, it's worth understanding how to engage with customers more effectively. Never underestimate the power of word of mouth (WOM), my most successful marketing strategy to date.
Remember if you are reading this blog, I challenge you to take action.
Key points are only good if you take some action, so make it worth your while. If nothing changes, nothing changes…….pretty easy science isn’t it……
Internal challenges There is evidence to suggest a growing link between customer strategies and business success. Many organisations are able to develop suitable strategies but fail to execute them properly.
Total customer engagement, here is a short summary.
4 Main points focus you
8 areas to focus action
The model in brief
1 Customer economics. Begin by building a customer economic business case. Define engaged versus non-engaged customers in terms of loyalty, share of wallet and recommendation to determine customer lifetime value. Then compare engaged customers versus other customers, as this will help build the business case for your customer initiatives.
2 Governance. Create a customer program committee where all key customer functional areas are represented. The key internal sponsor should be a senior executive and the committee should be chaired by the CEO. Ensure the program team has a mix of project management, analytical and functional expertise.
3 Design. Design all key strategic elements together including brand, customer value proposition, internal culture and customer experience. Start with your vision, customer value proposition and planned customer experience. This ensures that the creation of your strategic elements is designed with a view to achieving your vision and your planned customer outcomes. Ensure the heads of all key functional areas are present in the design stage namely sales, marketing,service, HR and operations. Focus on more than mere satisfaction. Ensure that your planned customer experience includes emotional elements as well.
4 Engage. Invite all staff to participate in the creation of engaged customers. Involve staff by empowering them to develop innovative ways to create engaged customers. Ensure leaders exhibit the right behaviours. Staff engagement is a function of staff understanding your strategy, knowing what is expected of them, knowing they have the skills and resources required, being personally committed to your strategy and finally knowing that they are making a difference.
The key to engaging staff is to sell staff the strategy from two perspectives:
1 rational – business benefits, competitive benefits, market perspective; and
2 emotional – customer perspective, doing the right thing, an invitation to make a difference;
and to involve them in the design and delivery of your customer experience elements.
5 Measure. Measure customer engagement levels in terms of consideration, recommendation and loyalty. Follow a rating question with a question asking the reason for the score. Ensure that measures around recommendation and loyalty are granular and are census based so that results are at an appropriate operational level (branch, retail outlet, product, call centre team or other channel). From an internal perspective each team should be measured on their behaviours by peers and internal clients against the organisational values. Encourage inter-functional discussions post feedback.
6 Embed. Invite staff to develop initiatives against your planned customer experience. In addition, encourage staff to innovate and develop new initiatives. Deliver customer feedback to functional areas that are best qualified to make improvements. Create processes so that staff can make improvements against customer feedback.
7 Performance management. Manage, reward and recognise against the following:. living the organisational values; internal peer ratings against agreed behaviours based on organisational values; customer measures – recommendation, loyalty and consideration. Hire and fire based on fit with organisational values and behaviours.
8 Okay so what now? Here it is....business grows when we grow, so what will you change or what action will you take from this blog?
Matt Cartwright
Inspiring People, Inspiring Business, Inspiring Results
© Copyright 2008 -12
Okay the topic sounds a little heavy I know, I was feeling heavy and academic today, and....well to be honest one of my close colleagues child was hit by a car today, hospitalised and had surgery and so on.
Thankfully the whole experience with staff was fantastic... so good customer engagement I guess.
So.... most of those who know me, know that I care a lot about working relationships than the dollar. I spend more time on developing people, including relationships and myself than may be I ought to, and yes, I could be a bit more cut throat in the decisions den. I simply just don’t sell customers into something they don’t need, I don’t work that way, and I won’t…
Why, because people and relationships matter in my business. I’ll share a secret……ready…to me, you the reader and customers are my purpose and lifeline to the experiences I want from life and business. That’s how I measure my success, not turnover/profit. Sound about new age, zenlike....well maybe , the truth is I value experiences over money and when I ask others, it seems to be the same. There is a wealth of evidence on happiness and income levels, and if you read it you will find their is correlation to a point and then it makes no difference.
"More is less" and "Less is More"
I’d rather it be written on my tombstone, “Matt engaged in life and people, versus Matt was a filthy rich bleep screwing over every customer and employee”
One thing I do know best is how to engage your most valuable people your customers and your team. In business or projects, the people whether it’s my customers, team, stakeholder or partner, mirror my skills or lack of engagement skills. When I need them to take action it is often influenced by understanding my business intents and the intents of the partner/customer.
In my research on product branding and customer engagement I came across a useful article, here are some the key points I learnt. As we move into uncertain times, it's worth understanding how to engage with customers more effectively. Never underestimate the power of word of mouth (WOM), my most successful marketing strategy to date.
Remember if you are reading this blog, I challenge you to take action.
Key points are only good if you take some action, so make it worth your while. If nothing changes, nothing changes…….pretty easy science isn’t it……
Internal challenges There is evidence to suggest a growing link between customer strategies and business success. Many organisations are able to develop suitable strategies but fail to execute them properly.
Total customer engagement, here is a short summary.
4 Main points focus you
- Customer value proposition. What the organisation can offer its customers.
- Brand. What the company is and what it stands for.
- Internal culture. This reflects what goals, values and behaviours should be in place to ensure that employees can consistently provide a quality service to the customer.
- Customer experience. Reflects both the physical and emotional aspects of what occurs during interactions.
8 areas to focus action
The model in brief
1 Customer economics. Begin by building a customer economic business case. Define engaged versus non-engaged customers in terms of loyalty, share of wallet and recommendation to determine customer lifetime value. Then compare engaged customers versus other customers, as this will help build the business case for your customer initiatives.
2 Governance. Create a customer program committee where all key customer functional areas are represented. The key internal sponsor should be a senior executive and the committee should be chaired by the CEO. Ensure the program team has a mix of project management, analytical and functional expertise.
3 Design. Design all key strategic elements together including brand, customer value proposition, internal culture and customer experience. Start with your vision, customer value proposition and planned customer experience. This ensures that the creation of your strategic elements is designed with a view to achieving your vision and your planned customer outcomes. Ensure the heads of all key functional areas are present in the design stage namely sales, marketing,service, HR and operations. Focus on more than mere satisfaction. Ensure that your planned customer experience includes emotional elements as well.
4 Engage. Invite all staff to participate in the creation of engaged customers. Involve staff by empowering them to develop innovative ways to create engaged customers. Ensure leaders exhibit the right behaviours. Staff engagement is a function of staff understanding your strategy, knowing what is expected of them, knowing they have the skills and resources required, being personally committed to your strategy and finally knowing that they are making a difference.
The key to engaging staff is to sell staff the strategy from two perspectives:
1 rational – business benefits, competitive benefits, market perspective; and
2 emotional – customer perspective, doing the right thing, an invitation to make a difference;
and to involve them in the design and delivery of your customer experience elements.
5 Measure. Measure customer engagement levels in terms of consideration, recommendation and loyalty. Follow a rating question with a question asking the reason for the score. Ensure that measures around recommendation and loyalty are granular and are census based so that results are at an appropriate operational level (branch, retail outlet, product, call centre team or other channel). From an internal perspective each team should be measured on their behaviours by peers and internal clients against the organisational values. Encourage inter-functional discussions post feedback.
6 Embed. Invite staff to develop initiatives against your planned customer experience. In addition, encourage staff to innovate and develop new initiatives. Deliver customer feedback to functional areas that are best qualified to make improvements. Create processes so that staff can make improvements against customer feedback.
7 Performance management. Manage, reward and recognise against the following:. living the organisational values; internal peer ratings against agreed behaviours based on organisational values; customer measures – recommendation, loyalty and consideration. Hire and fire based on fit with organisational values and behaviours.
8 Okay so what now? Here it is....business grows when we grow, so what will you change or what action will you take from this blog?
- What
- When
- How
Matt Cartwright
Inspiring People, Inspiring Business, Inspiring Results
© Copyright 2008 -12
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