The Customer Framework (TCF) have heard numerous proclamations from Senior Management Teams that they are going to drive their organisation to be far more “Customer Centric”. We have also seen many references to “Customer Focus” as one of the three critical strategic areas for the forthcoming year. We hear this in virtually all of the clients we work with and many of the other organisations with which we engage in research or benchmarking activity.
But only when we dare to ask the simple question “So, what exactly do you mean by that?” does it become clear that these bold statements are often meaningless at best and likely to drive severe value destruction at worst. When pushed, senior business stakeholders will offer a mix of next level ‘definitions’ varying from targets around customer satisfaction or attrition rates through to statements about customer delight or advocacy. Although this level of one-dimensional clarity is commendable and does have a role, it cannot be enough to lead the system, process and behavioural changes needed to drive real change towards customer centricity.
The simple reality is that organisations need to develop their own definition that is meaningful to them, reflects their own corporate goals and takes into account their starting point. This definition needs to be developed at the more detailed level before being summarised in relevant high level statements. It needs to provide a powerful reference point to drive other strategies and plans in the same ‘Customer’ direction.
So:
- When the IT team are developing their plans, they can understand the relative importance of delivering analytical capability versus a real-time single view system
- When the contact centre is planning its resourcing they know if they need to increase resources to deliver ‘delight and meaningful relationships’ and
- When the marketing planning function is designing new programmes they have a clear steer on the relative importance of targeting new acquisition and increasing customer retention.
At TCF we have gone as far as developing a module of our core SCHEMA toolset to help clients achieve this level of detailed definition. The twenty ‘dimension’ model on which we collaborate with a client is a combination of individual inputs from stakeholders and a high impact alignment workshop, It identifies for a client a definition of customer centricity unique to them around which they can build a meaningful customer focused programme.