After a short morning break the keynote sessions at Forrester Marketing Forum continued with a session led by Gary Skidmore, Corporate Officer and EVP, with Harte-Hanks.
How do you make customers the very center of what you do? That's the big question on everybody's mind here. Look to Starbucks, they've made an emotional connection with their customers. Think about their customer experience. As a customer you can order the drink you want with the ingredients you want. It's all about the customer. Gary then showed his standard Starbucks order: Tall, Decaf, Non-Fat, Iced, Vanilla, Latte.
Are your customers fans? Apple has a serious fan base. Look at the iPod, 100 million sale and over 2 billion songs downloaded. Think about the social game, "What's on your iPod?" Everybody has a unique playlist on their iPod..it's a unique customer experience.
To win in the market you must let your customers rule. Think about the upcoming generation, they are growing up with this new set of customer experiences that are all about them. Each year, as they grow older they will become more of your revenue base. It's all about them.
Want to create a customer-centric organization? First off, take care of your employees. Take care of their needs so they can focus on taking care of your customers' needs. For example, Cabela's encourages their staff to borrow equipment from their inventory. They want them to experience the products as the customers would.
Customer-centricity is a journey not a destination. If it's done right it will touch every facet of your organization.
Five strategies for achieving customer centricity:
- Information: Accurate, high-quality data about your customers
- Opportunity: Give people access to the data to build relationships and look for opportunities
- Insight: Understand the data, target and predict
- Engagement: The application of the data
- Interaction: Program execution, look to work in all channels in all locations (online/offline)
However, in business you have to make trade-offs. Knowing your customers will help you make those decisions.
Customers want access, they want information. Know how they want access. Customers also want choices. However, what they choose today might be different from what they choose next week. Customers also want experiences. Experience is becoming the secret sauce in business. Customers want reciprocity. They also want control.
