How to make your company think like a customer

This article originally appeared
in the 2012, No. 1, issue of
The journal of high-performance business
Customer Relationship Management
How to make your company
think like a customer
By Floren Robinson and Justin M. Brown
ustomers today expect an imaginative, high-quality experience
C
in a multichannel environment. Regard this as an opportunity:
Your company can leverage new strategies and technologies to
create operations capable of making good on your customercentric promise and growing your business.
a ccenture.com/outlook
For too many companies, ensuring
that every customer has a tailored
experience remains an elusive goal.
Indeed, in a 2010 survey of more
than 140 North American companies,
just 3 percent were identified as truly
“customer-centric organizations.”
Fully a third were found to be “customer oblivious.”
The stakes are high. Some studies
suggest that failing to deliver a highquality customer experience can result
in a staggering erosion of a company’s
customer base—a loss of as much as
50 percent over a five-year period.
Why do some companies succeed
while so many fail? Often, the cause
is internal barriers. Even the bestintentioned attempts at customercentricity can be sabotaged by siloed
strategies, organizations, processes,
technologies and data, which can
result in disconnected sales, marketing
and service functions. Your customer
views all of your functions and
business units as a single company.
Shouldn’t you?
Merely adding customer-centricity
to your vision statement isn’t enough.
Thinking like your customer is the
first challenge, and delivering a
positive customer experience is even
harder. Achieving customer-centricity
requires rethinking the way business
is done. And this, in turn, requires
a holistic approach that encompasses
everything from analytics and insights
to strategy and customer experience,
from operating model design and
execution to governance and transformation management.
Identifying the obstacles
The rethinking begins by breaking down
the challenge into its constituent parts.
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Your competition is expanding. In
the past, competitive intelligence from
outside your industry wasn’t required.
But today’s consumers compare their
experience with your company not
just to their interactions with your
immediate competitors but to their
experiences with companies in general.
The pampered luxury car customer
expects the same attention from the
cable provider and at the retail store
at the mall. Are you prepared to meet
that expectation?
Your customers are evolving. The
traditional shopper has been joined by
the digitally oriented, multichannel
customer; as a result, operating models
must accommodate both. The traditional
customer may still be reluctant to
share personal information, but the
growing base of digital customers
tends to be more open with data,
especially if it is used to provide
them with a better product or service
experience.
Nike did exactly that with its Nike +
iPod Sport Kit, partnering with Apple
to change the running shoe forever.
Anticipating that runners would be
eager to adopt technology and online
channels to augment their training,
the company developed a sensor for
the left shoe that sends workout data
wirelessly to an iPod. The sensor
tracks distance, time, pace and calories burned—and even tells runners
if they’ve beaten their personal best.
Back at home, Nike’s online portal
enables the runner to plot goals and
compete with others. Can you identify similar ways to reinvent yourself
as markets evolve?
The voice of dissatisfaction echoes
louder than ever before. Social
media sites and online research
are accelerating word of mouth.
According to conventional wisdom,
a dissatisfied customer might tell
10 people of a negative experience;
today, social media enables that same
customer to reach thousands with a
few keystrokes. Do you have a strategy
to address negative feedback hitting
the Web?
You must kill the back-office mentality. The days of a cloistered back office
are over. What once seemed like smart
organization—discrete processes, databases and designated teams designed
for efficiency—creates siloed operating
models that prevent companies from
coordinating interactions and customer
experiences. Is there a backroom firewall at your company that’s become
a liability?
You need effective connectivity,
not just flashy capabilities. Few
companies understand what actually
happens as a customer moves from one
interaction to another. To offer the best
customer experience, it is necessary
to connect customer-facing and noncustomer-facing functions. For example,
an increasing number of companies are
connecting internal data and analytical
capabilities such as “next-best-action”
decision making to enable contact
centers and sales forces to dynamically
drive interactions based on real-time
customer insight. Look closely at your
own company: Are handoffs seamless
and informed? Are the right people
armed with the right information, at
the right time, to anticipate and address
customer needs?
Having familiarized yourself with the
obstacles in the dramatically altered
customer environment, you can begin to
build a framework for a customer-centric
operating model. There are five areas
of focus surrounding the customer.
Analysis and insights
Your strategy and operations must be guided by the people
they’re meant to serve: your customers.
Once you’ve resolved to pursue
customer-centricity, market research
and analytics can help you understand
what you’re aiming for. Next, auditing
your company’s current performance
in meeting customer needs and wants
can help you improve your products
and services.
Research conducted by Wells Fargo
offers a case in point. Even as account
holders flock to new services online,
at ATMs and via mobile devices, the
bank’s analysis revealed that 60 percent of ATM transactions are made
by customers who still prefer banking
with a teller.
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That insight, along with others, led to
Wells Fargo’s decision to tie platforms
together, meaning a customer can open
an account online, make a deposit
at a branch, withdraw cash from an
ATM and check balances on a mobile
device, confident that everything will
work just as it would with a teller. Wells
Fargo’s investment in multiple integrated
channels thus makes for a unified
customer experience.
Your analysis will produce more valuable insights if you keep a few simple
rules in mind.
Don’t be afraid to collect criticism.
Unaddressed customer feedback can
have harmful repercussions, but if
you develop the ability to gather and
organize customer reactions, you can
use them to inform and enhance your
operations. Links across functions are
usually required, since a poor customer
experience with one channel is often
communicated through another, only
to have a third group tasked with resolution. Think car rentals: Reservations
are made online or by phone, then the
consumer encounters different employee
teams at pickup and drop-off.
Conduct an “enterprise customer
experience audit.” The audit aims to
assess the effectiveness of customerfacing and internal capabilities of
working in unison to deliver the intended
customer experience. Navigate a series
of interactions with your company
(Continued on page 5)
The Accenture Customer-Centric Operating Model Framework
The Accenture Customer-Centric Operating Model Framework is designed to be used by companies at any stage of maturity
on the journey to customer-centricity. Whether a company is looking for smaller “quick win” enhancements or is in need
of a comprehensive transformation, it can use this framework to translate customer-focused strategies into execution. The
framework
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Governance
Strategy
and customer
experience
Analysis
and insights
The customer
Operating model
design and execution
Transformation
management
Analysis and
insights
Strategy and
customer experience
Operating model
design and execution
• Market research
• Customer segmentation
• Performance
• Customer needs,
• Customer-centric strategy
behavior and feedback
• Customer analytics
and reporting
• Industry landscape
• End-to-end customer
experience auditing
• Customer experience
blueprint
• Sales, marketing, service
integration strategy
• Investment strategy
• Product/service portfolio,
innovation and partner
strategy
Governance
• Governance strategy
and program
management
• Cross-organizational
• People/organization
• Business process
roles and
responsibilities
• Governance-related
• Technology
processes
• Channels
• Channel enablement
and business rules
• Escalation paths
Transformation
management
• Change management
• Cultural transformation
• Interim operations
support
• Program management
office
• Implementation
reporting
• Customer data
• Operating model
principles and enterprise
architecture strategy
The
framework
relies upon five basic principles.
Source:
Accenture analysis
• Comprehensiveness is key, and an end-to-end strategy
helps companies set priorities for maximum return on
investment.
• Integration supports collaboration and coordination
across functions based on a consistent vision.
• The framework allows for scalability, permitting a
comprehensive overhaul or more modest adjustments
in particular areas.
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• Iteration is essential, as feedback loops within the
framework make the process cyclical and support
continuous improvement.
• Maintaining your focus helps keep your customers’
wants and anticipated future needs at the core of
everything your company does.
(Continued from page 3)
from your customer’s perspective,
understanding not just the external
but also the internal capabilities that
drive the experience. Be on the lookout
for awkward transitions—for example,
where the customer moves from browsing
to purchase and on to service, shifting
from retail store to Internet or other
mediums of communication.
On the back end, determine whether the
right information gets to the appropriate
people at the right time to delight the
customer. The intelligence gained in a
customer experience audit will provide
the insights required to move from
vision to execution.
Powerful information
Customer experience audits can act
as internal benchmarks as well. If
analyzed and conducted routinely,
they will guide the journey toward
customer-centricity.
Harness the power of reporting and
analytics. Tools that provide a
360-degree view of customer profile
information, preferences and behaviors
give leaders in customer-centricity
a more complete understanding of
their customers. By building on such
a foundation with technologies that
drive predictive modeling and nextbest-action decision making, you
can anticipate a customer’s needs or
actions in order to tailor messages or
offers to that customer, distinguishing
your company from the competition.
Although some companies long ago
implemented vital strategies like
these, few have fully realized the potential. One financial services provider
has, however. A multichannel analytics
strategy that drew upon Web and
phone data provided insights into
which channels were preferred by
customers in different age brackets.
By matching the evolving financial and
insurance needs of aging customers with
its products, the company improved
both service delivery and marketing
effectiveness.
Understanding industry dynamics,
assessing your internal capabilities
and leveraging insights to deliver
responsive service and make operational improvements are all essential
to enhancing the experience of your
customers.
Strategy and customer experience
Customer experience is the North Star of your company’s strategy.
Simple insight can lead to powerful
business models. Take leading online
shoe retailer Zappos.com. In typical
off beat style, Zappos calls its policy
“WOW,” and it reflects a basic insight
into selling footwear: No consumer can
know from a catalog whether a shoe
fits. So Zappos offers free shipping and
returns. By removing the risks, Zappos
makes shopping online the next-best
thing to walking into a shoe store.
Again, a few simple principles:
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Design from the top down and the
bottom up via a “customer experience
blueprint.” First, define the big picture
by establishing a strategic vision. Next,
define what “good” looks like on the
ground, outlining the ideal customer
experience blueprint at the tactical level.
Make clear for your employees the stepby-step path you expect your customers
to follow. When compared to your existing enterprise architecture, the blueprint can reveal changes that will ease
customer access, and may offer insights
into how to phase in such changes. Finally, connect the top-down vision with
the bottom-up blueprint, and define the
roadmap to make both a reality.
There are lots of ways to rearrange
resources, whether they’re people,
processes, technologies or data. But
leaders in customer-centricity have
found that the right plan creates both
customer value and business value.
Zappos is a prime example.
Establish collaborative planning
across functions and business units.
Isolated planning can lead to fragmentation—the survival of those
dreaded silos—at the product or
functional level, or both. Integrated
planning—going to market with a
cohesive, unified approach and integrated customer experience blueprint—leads to compatibility between
customer and product strategies
and collaborative execution across
business units and customer-facing
functions.
Consider expanding core products
and services. Adopting a customer-
centric strategy may require growth
beyond the current product portfolio
or service model. Think of Nike as
a purveyor of digital fitness services,
or Ford Motor Co. as a provider of
electric vehicle management services
(see sidebar, page 7). The two companies provided important new value
propositions to their customers by
shifting both their product lines and
operating models.
The proposition doesn’t have to be that
big or far-reaching. US restaurant chain
Applebee’s, for example, expanded its
menu and provided increased nutrition
information in a partnership with
Weight Watchers International.
Adopting the Weight Watchers points
system helped reposition Applebee’s
as a restaurant offering healthy
choices to customers looking for
healthier lifestyles.
Operating model design and execution
A successful operating model merges strategies, people, processes,
technologies and data.
Designing and implementing an
operating model means taking a
holistic approach as you address issues
ranging from corporate culture
to IT. While the biggest challenge
is to achieve unity in design and
execution, that often means—once
again—dismantling silos. As with an
orchestra, everyone must play from
the same score and follow the conductor
if an operating model is to produce a
harmonious customer experience.
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Refine customer-focused processes.
Connecting processes, linking organizational structures and integrating
systems can ease the flow of information.
Be prepared to define customerimpacting processes as they will
define activities, drive technology
and channel requirements, and define
roles and responsibilities. A customerfocused process architecture makes
clear where customer handoffs
occur; which steps shape the customer
experience; and how data, technology,
processes and people must be leveraged.
Build new internal- and externalfacing capabilities. Some companies
using advanced CRM capabilities
know whether the customer contacting
the call center has previously voiced
opinions about a product online,
prompting the agent who answers to
deliver relevant messaging or offers.
The result is a more personalized
interaction.
Keep in mind that new platforms
such as online portals, capabilities
like mobile-enabled video chat and
other advanced tools are not, in
themselves, the answer. During the
customer-centric transformation,
technology becomes an important
focus across the company as new
foundational, operational, process
MyFord Mobile: Serving the digital customer
Fear of the unknown is to be expected—so Ford Motor Co. decided to harness it.
Recognizing that owning a 2012 Ford Focus Electric will be a new adventure, the
company devised a mobile application called MyFord Mobile to give the customer
more control of the electric car experience.
MyFord Mobile will help Focus Electric owners plan trips, monitor their vehicle’s state
of charge and receive vehicle alerts. The multipurpose app ranges in capability from
identifying cost-effective electricity purchases to helping the owner find where the
car is parked.
Electric cars represent the emergence of a new demographic among car owners, and
Ford aims to serve customers keen to engage digital capabilities for their convenience. Are
there ways you can anticipate your customers’ needs and, in turn, drive brand advocacy?
management and decision-making
technologies are needed to manage
the operating model. The result will
be greater precision in executing
the customer experience blueprint.
Consider connectivity. Collaboration
is key in a customer-centric operating
model. Once your company decides
to break the silos, you must decide
how this should happen. The answer,
dependent on culture, could vary
from formally connecting processes
across the organization to fostering
collaboration in a less structured
way. Before redefining an operating
model, examine your company’s
capacity for collaboration. Processes
are very structured at some organizations; at others, they are more flexible.
How does collaboration work in your
company? Is there a willingness to
change? Be realistic about what is
appropriate for your company’s culture.
If the changes seem too radical in
the short term, consider smaller steps
that can be made now and plan for
larger shifts over time. Leverage
individual objectives and incentive
compensation to get employees moving
in the direction of collaboration.
Governance
This is the glue that holds together a customer-centric operating model.
As your company shifts from a
product-centric to a customer-centric
model, there are many questions to
ask when establishing governance.
Among the most important: How
flexible do you want your vision to
be? How are decisions made, and who
has the power to make them? Both
questions affect the essential tension
between maintaining discipline and
encouraging creativity.
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By definition, governance is about
making decisions and handling excep-
tions. Yet too rigid an approach may
limit innovation and the autonomy of
individual managers to make the best
decision for their parts of the business.
On the other hand, leaders need to be
wary of promoting an undisciplined
“Wild West” mentality. Deciding
where to draw such lines requires a
thoughtful reading of company culture
and behaviors.
Typically, governance involves creating
a board from various customer-facing
and impacting functions that is
LEGO: Beyond the block
For decades, LEGO has been the dominant manufacturer of interlocking bricks for
children. But as consumers have increasingly shifted playtime to the digital frontier,
the Danish company has introduced new capabilities: What used to be just a box of
plastic bricks is now a multichannel experience that neatly adapts the timeless LEGO
product to the high-tech tastes of today’s consumer.
LEGO’s operating model enables connectivity, creating links between its traditional,
store-bought products and new, flashy digital channels and services. Children can
learn to build like the pros through an MBA—“Master Builder Academy”—program,
which sends subscribers new models with special building instructions directly to their
home every two months, and allows builders to show off their creations in an online
community. Teens can now test their building skills through mobile phone applications
and challenge their friends to build-offs using their tablets.
responsible for an array of issues,
including maintaining the vision,
creating a roadmap for evolving
enterprise architecture, initiating an
approach for sourcing new capabilities
and stemming deviations from customercentric decisions. Governance is the
conductor; when one section starts
playing from a different score, the
sound of the whole orchestra changes.
Maintain a shared vision and control
scope. Adhering to a vision can be
difficult because different stakeholders
have different priorities and new
information can drive decision makers
to stray from the path. Visions evolve
based on new insights, but traditionally,
that evolution is deliberate. When
individuals are asked to adhere to a
vision they do not fully understand,
they tend to make decisions that are
not aligned with that vision, thus
requiring governance. If one function
within the organization deviates from
the larger plan, a formal escalation
process needs to be in place to manage
any potential negative impact. The governance team needs to be in a position
to make the right calls so that everyone
keeps focused on the same goals.
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Be explicit about who owns customer
relationships. The governance
board must decide where ownership
lies based on the company and its
products; it can be at the corporate,
franchise or brand level. Clear ownership of the customer helps to ensure
a deliberate and consistent customer
experience. If ownership is not clear,
inconsistent customer experiences
or internal turf battles for share of
voice may ensue. If multiple business
units or brands within a company have
overlapping customer segments, the
company will need to be careful not to
oversaturate its customers with proactive
and unsolicited communications.
Keep track of touchpoints.
Analytically driven capabilities
and commonsense rules concerning
how the company interacts with its
customers can prevent oversaturation.
A governance committee can help
define the appropriate business rules
around frequency and cadence of
customer touchpoints. When a company
proactively engages its customers
too frequently, the contacts become
spam; therefore, it should establish
business rules around the ideal number
of customer touchpoints so that the
contacts drive a positive experience.
Coordination is even more critical
when multiple business units or brands
share targeted customers.
For further reading
“Bringing Science to Selling:
What Every Chief Sales Officer Should
Know About Sales Analytics”:
http://www.accenture.com/us-en/Pages/
insight-bringing-science-selling-knowabout-sales-analytics.aspx
“Building a Differentiated
Service Experience Strategy to
Drive High Performance”:
http://www.accenture.com/us-en/Pages/
insight-building-differentiated-serviceexperience-strategy.aspx
“Maximizing Customer Retention:
A Strategic Approach to
Effective Churn Management”:
http://www.accenture.com/us-en/Pages/
insight-strategic-approach-effectivechurn-management.aspx
For these and other articles,
please visit www.accenture.com.
Transformation management
These initiatives integrate new behaviors and allow the business
to serve customers without interruptions to operations.
Ensuring adoption of a customer-centric
focus across the organization requires
a strong leadership commitment
to managing change. A traditional
project management office won’t be
enough. Significant attention needs to
be dedicated to the behavioral changes,
cultural implications, operational impacts and interim plans.
How do you get to the new? One
of the greatest challenges during
the transition from the old operating
model to the new is building the
new model while simultaneously
continuing to operate the old without
disruption. How do you balance the
old world with the new? How do you
prepare your team for these changes?
Your company’s culture may embrace
or resist change, but to realize the
full return of customer-centricity
programs, employees and vendors
need guidance during the transition.
Establish a customer experience
champion at the executive level.
Dedicated senior leadership involvement
demonstrates the importance of the
program. It will also make it easier
for the organization to evolve its
customer vision by having this leader
focus on both high-level strategy and
tactical execution. This individual will
take a cross-functional perspective to
connecting the discrete pieces into a
comprehensive approach to customer
interactions, enforcing the breaking
of silos.
Don’t expect these changes to just
happen. Some organizations assume
these changes will take care of
themselves over time. This is rarely
the case, so resist the it-just-sort-ofhappens mindset. The most successful
transforming companies have a robust
change management program that
includes training—skills and knowledge—
and communications.
Create a change management program
for training and communications.
Some of the most challenging moments
of change take place after you go live.
Plan for support beyond initial milestones until your organization has
truly institutionalized your vision.
Customers today expect an imaginative, high-quality experience in a multichannel
environment. Failure to adapt to this new reality will mean not only lost business
but a growing gap in product development. If you’re not listening and responding
to your customers, chances are you’re not anticipating new needs and demands.
Industry leaders are constantly enhancing their customer-centric operating
models and raising customer expectations; therefore, it’s critical for your company
to get customer-centricity right. Regard this as an opportunity: Your company can
leverage new processes, roles and data to create operations capable of making good
on your customer-centric promise and growing your business.
But you must put the focus of your company’s thinking on the customer, even
if it means entering unchartered waters.
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About the authors
Floren Robinson is a New York-based senior executive in Accenture’s Analytics
& Marketing Services group. Ms. Robinson, whose work focuses on commercial
transformations and operating model design, has spent the past 12 years helping
clients focus on their external and internal customers.
[email protected]
Justin M. Brown is a Chicago-based consultant in Accenture’s Analytics & Marketing
Services group. He advises companies across industries in the areas of analytics,
customer experience, and customer-centric operating model transformation.
[email protected]
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Copyright © 2012 Accenture
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