What causes disruption to your evolving digital business?

Tags

Customer Focus, Digital Business, Disruption, Ecosystem, Innovation

There are a number of disruptions that create havoc and chaos to your evolving digital business. Either individually and in combination, they could inflict a death spiral. Despite the way it sounds, this is not hyperbole. This is not a myth. This is serious.

Here are a few to think about. There are others.

• Technological innovations (technology-induced), which are more impactful than ever before. However, again, it’s not the technology that drives the disruption. It’s how it is used and adopted by customers, partners, competitors and various stakeholders. Technologies with clear disruption potential include IoT, artificial intelligence, edge computing, virtual and augmented reality and blockchain. However, the most disruptive potential occurs when they get combined and enable new applications as we see in the convergence of AI, IoT and big data analytics. In industrial change the convergence of IT and OT is also a game changer.
• Customer behavior and demands. Customers can be pesky creatures creating so-called customer-induced disruption that is not necessarily related to technology. Technology often enables or, as just mentioned, causes it, when adopted and turned into business challenges. An example of a force that drives digital change and is not caused by technology but merely strengthened by it in combination with other factors: the demand of customers for ease of use and simplicity in dealing with businesses is far older than today. It goes back to times when even the Internet didn’t exist. In that sense, digital change can be simply catching up too because businesses don’t have another option anymore (it’s not as if they didn’t know the importance of making interactions and support for customers easy and frictionless decades ago).
• Innovation- and invention-induced. Entirely novel approaches to human and business challenges, as well as innovations and inventions that create a new reality, whether it’s in science, business, technology or even a non-technological context of true innovation can be disruptive. The invention of medicines that change healthcare and society (as has happened several times in the past), the printing press, the train, what can be next? Your best bet is probably in life sciences and the application of technology within the human body and mind.
• Ecosystem-induced. Economical changes, demands from partners who want you to adapt, evolutions towards collaborations in business ecosystems, regulatory changes (consider the impact of the GDPR, for example), geo-political changes, the list is endless. Regulators are not just looking at the impact of digital technologies from a personal data protection perspective as they do with the GDPR in the EU of course. The world is full of new regulations and they do require approaches on the level of people, processes, strategies AND technologies as anyone who has been serious about GDPR compliance can tell you. There are calls to regulate the IoT in the US and other countries, calls to regulate blockchain, the usage of IoT is already being limited in the upcoming EU ePrivacy Regulation (and GDPR), all across the globe energy efficiency and ecology are driving the agenda in smart buildings and smart cities (e.g. the revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive in the EU that demands the usage of smart technologies and additional support for electrical cars), banking regulations are changing, the list is really endless.

And this ecosystem aspect brings us again to this essential aspect of digital business change: the interdependency and interconnectedness of everything.

It all overlaps and is connected; from disruption, business processes and models to business activities and each single activity of the organization and the broader ecosystem in which it operates. The butterfly effect in action. Think about how virtually all business processes de facto are linked, the interconnectedness of business activities from the customer perspective, the way information runs across all digital transformations and much more.

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As a leader, I must provide a compelling vision for the future

Tags

Action Items, Burning Platform, Customer Experience, Customer Focus

You role is one of a leader and you want more of a focus on the customer experience.

• What should I do first? The first thing is to have a vision for the future. We know that a vision is compelling for our staff. The vision should contrast a burning platform that understands the current pain points.
• Who do I involve in creating the vision? It is important to include as many people as possible at validating the vision. Creating the vision may reside with you and you alone.
• How do I avoid creating long lists of action items? The question here is really about staying strategic and avoiding becoming tactical. Others will want to know “what to do”. I should avoid telling them if I can.

Great leaders provide a compelling vision for the future and avoid a long list of action items.

 

So … let’s start the journey. What is our promise to our customers?

Tags

Brand, Customer Focus, Promise

Promise

Now is the time to think it through. This is the start of the journey. Whether we know it or not, our customers think we have made a promise to them.

We need to be clear about customer promises. That isn’t easy. What is our promise?

So there are some stages to this:

1. Thinking and talking it out. There may be many stakeholders to consult on this.
2. Making the promise. This is a solid communication plan that is faithfully executed.
3. Embracing it at every level and making it our own.
4. Keeping it. This is the tough part.

So  … let’s start the journey. What is our promise to our customers?

What is organizational culture?

Tags

Act, Believe, Culture, Customer Focus, Think

Transform Culture

Management guru Peter Drucker is credited with saying that “culture eats strategy for lunch.” It is hard to find any leader who doesn’t think so but many don’t understand what their own culture is like. It can be the blind leading the blind some days. Much of building a culture is about intentionality, particularly when it comes down to a customer focus.

Culture can make or break the success of a company, which can be a scary phenomenon for executives. While leaders tend to be comfortable around strategy discussions, they’re often painfully awkward discussing corporate culture.

What Exactly is Organizational Culture?

Culture is how employees think, believe, and act.

• Think: Employees are intellectually bought-in and understand the company’s vision and why it is important to the company. What is the company communicating?
• Believe: Employees see that leaders are truly committed to what is important to the company. What are leaders demonstrating with their behaviors?
• Act. Employees adjust their behaviors to align with what is important to the company. What do employees do when no one is looking?

Companies often focus on the think level, hoping that a barrage of communications can drive culture change. Well it can’t. You need to develop plans that deal with all three levels: Think, Believe, and Act.

Do our leaders:

• Understand why customers, not products, are all important to our efforts?
• Demonstrate a true commitment to the customer experience?
• Support alignment to the customer vision?

Bellhops lead the way in amazing customer service

Tags

Autonomy, Customer Focus, Training

Amazing employee engagement

How can you create more autonomy in your work environment?

We know that engaged employees lead to engaged customers. Investing in our people pays off with an enhanced bottom line.

So bellhops? Yes, there is a lot to learn.

And these are college students.

Here are five ideas.

1. Create parameters, then offer choices.
2. Reward the grinders.
3. Relinquish the 9 to 5. Seriously!!
4. Find a way to unify the culture.
5. Instill values through training.

Here are five principles from the Bellhops that you can borrow to create more autonomy in your workplace.

via 5 Ways to Give Employees More Freedom | Inc.com.

Why Amazon Gives so Many Perks to Prime Members

Tags

Amazon, Customer Focus

Free shipping, special deals, free video streaming and, since last week, free access to a selection of digital books and magazines – Amazon Prime members get a lot of bang for their buck. But why is it that Amazon keeps adding new perks for Prime members? After all, the company is a for-profit organization whose objective is to earn money, not give away stuff for free.

The answer is simple: Prime members tend to spend a lot more money on Amazon than non-members. Hence, getting more people to sign up for membership is worth a lot to the company because it ultimately promises an increase in sales.

This chart, based on data published by Morgan Stanley last week, illustrates just how valuable Prime members are to Amazon’s core business. While more than 40 percent of Prime members spend more than $1,000 a year on Amazon, 80 percent of non-members spend less than $500. On average, a Prime subscriber in the U.S. spends $2,486 a year on Amazon, the average non-Prime shopper merely spends $544 a year.

Source: • Chart: Why Amazon Gives so Many Perks to Prime Members | Statista

How do we know who the customer is behind all the devices connecting with us?

Tags

Customer Focus, Marc Benioff, Salesforce

How do we know who the customer is behind all the devices connecting with us?

We live a world of the connected customer. Can the “Internet of Customers” be fulfilled?

We all wish that it could be done easily.

Here are some thoughts from Forrester Research on Salesforce1 and it’s promise. For the digital business that is obsessed about it’s customers, this is a huge issue. 

After one of the biggest announcements in the marketing technology space of 2013 — Salesforce.com’s purchase of ExactTarget — few were surprised to see the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud feature prominently at Dreamforce in San Francisco. But the real headline grabber was the introduction of Salesforce1, a cloud-based platform for what the company calls the “Internet of customers.” We’ve got a deeper look into the implications of this for marketers for Forrester clients, but some of our key takeaways were that Salesforce:

• Gets the age of the customer and what it means for their products. CEO Marc Benioff spoke at length about the “customers behind the devices” and the importance of engaging with those individuals, rather than the things they use to connect to the Web. We are in what Forrester calls the age of the customer, where “the most successful enterprises reinvent themselves to systematically understand and serve increasingly powerful customers.” The Salesforce1 vision is to be the technology engine behind those firms — and the announcement takes a big step in that direction.
• Commits to an integrated future . . . at some point. Salesforce1 offers a slew of technical changes that make integration not only a priority but also a possibility. Marketers who increasingly need to deliver a consistent experience across all interactions over the course of the customer life cycle will find some of that need met in Salesforce1. The details around how the different clouds will connect remains vague, however. (For more about the technical elements of the integration, check out  John Rymer’s post.)
• Needs to answer questions about how marketers will unlock the benefits of Salesforce1. The vision and demos we saw at Dreamforce whet marketers’ appetites, but it remains unclear how they will tap Salesforce1’s potential without more information around pricing, inter-cloud connections, and ROI of a new approach. Without that clarity, it’s hard to call Salesforce1 a true marketing technology platform.

Source: For Marketers, Salesforce1 Aspires To Be The Platform Of Customer Obsession | Forrester Research

Why do customers feel like we are treating them all the same?

Tags

Customer Focus, Persona

Why do customers feel like we are treating them all the same? Because, for the most part, we are.

Think about it. Our product is pretty much one size fits all. There is little distinction in what we offer.

Our marketing messages and lists are not segmented very well. We pretty much say the same or similar things to most customers.

Our sales process and sales messages aren’t that refined.

Now, this is not universally true. Some companies have figured out how to treat different customers differently. At a minimum, they create personas to differentiate the product, marketing and sales approach.

As a customer, this works. We all know it. We all know when a company goes out of the way to meet my goals and needs.

What middle managers really think about the customer experience.

Tags

Customer Experience, Customer Focus, Middle Managers

The challenge

Middle managers face a big squeeze in the focus on the customer experience. Senior management has a vision. Current operations and the “whirlwind of the urgent” siphon off time and energy. It all can’t be done. Something must give. Senior management needs to understand this and allow middle managers the time to focus on the future.

The best thing senior management can do is to get middle management’s perspective on what operationally can be abandoned to enable the future vision that is so necessary to stay in business. It will be a real battle of ignoring the future for the tyranny of the present.

That report you wanted yesterday has to be done. The quarterly numbers have to be met. Middle managers think: “What do you want me to stop doing so I can improve the customer experience?” They have learned, however, not to say it out loud. They simply trudge on and give you what you have asked for today, not what you aspire to for the future.

It doesn’t have to be that way. We can focus on initiatives that improve the customer experience and the future vision. Senior management needs to be disciplined to make it happen.

What are the seven stages to embracing customer insight data in a world obsessed with customers?

Tags

Bruce Temkin, Customer Data, Customer Focus, Customer Insight

It isn’t easy to change. None of us get there overnight. There is no road to Damascus conversion, so to speak.

A culture that is customer focused is also focused on the data. Bruce Temkin suggests there are seven stages to embracing customer insights as useful and valuable. The seven stages are:

1. Resist
2. Consider
3. Request
4. Incorporate
5. Envision
6. Demand
7. Embrace

Is digital transformation like adding racing stripes to a 20 year old Chevy?

Tags

Customer Focus, Digital Transformation, Leadership

Digital business transformation is about making fundamental changes in how business is conducted in order to help cope with a shift in environment. The shift has occurred. The shift is becoming a digital business. The approach should be about transformation.

What is happening in many cases is that we are adding racing stripes to a 20 year old Chevy and think we now have a race car. We don’t have a racecar. We still have a 20 year old Chevy that looks fast but isn’t.

The first thing is to recognize is that there is a “burning platform”. This is a decision by the CEO and the C-Suite that the business must be different to survive. Without that fundamental vision at the highest level, complete transformation can’t occur. Incremental gains can be made by others but true transformation has to be owned by the most senior of senior management.

Your company is likely to face an extinction event in the next 10 years. And while you may see it coming, you may not have enough time to save your company.” ~~Nigel Fenwick, “The Future of Business is Digital”

Are middle managers an obstacle to a customer focused world?

Tags

Ambassadors, Change Management, Customer Focus, Engagement, Feedback, Middle Managers

Leadership

There is a common perception that middle managers can be an obstacle to a customer focused world. That perception is a fallacy. Bruce Temkin has some great suggestions that help with this critical group.

1. View your success through the eyes of middle managers.
2. Create group of middle manager ambassadors.
3. Actively gather feedback from middle managers.
4. Track engagement levels of middle managers.
5. Train middle managers to support change efforts.

But middle managers aren’t obstacles, they’re the the backbone to stability within an organization. If you want to create sustainable change, then they are a critical building block. Rather than viewing this employee group as a problem, treat them as the guardians of your success and activate them as part of your efforts.

via CX Fallacy #8: Middle Managers Are Obstacles | Customer Experience Matters.

 

Predictions 2016: Welcome To The Digital Savvy, Customer Obsessed Leader

Tags

CEO, CIO, Customer Focus, Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation

Our business world continues to change at a very dizzying pace. 2016 will not be any different. We all need to continue to obsess about the customer and realize that consumers demand better digital experiences.

CEOs realize that, increasingly, future growth is tied to their ability to continuously deliver new digital services that create value for customers – across both B2C and B2B business environments. But failure to meet evolving customer expectations will result in losing customers and ultimately lower revenue growth. Without a technology team focused on building the digital platforms of tomorrow, companies cannot hope to keep up with their evolving customer expectations. 2016 will be a pivotal year for CIOs and CEOs – one that will see a significant change in leadership thinking when it comes to a company’s technology capabilities and digital assets

Source: Predictions 2016: Welcome To The Digital Savvy, Customer Obsessed CIO | Forrester Blogs

How Hampton Hotels Built And Sustains Its Customer-Obsessed Culture

Tags

Culture, Customer Focus, Customer Obsessed, Forrester Research

Sam Stern, from Forrester Research in his report, “How Hampton Hotels Built And Sustains Its Customer-Obsessed Culture,” is a case study of the hotel chain. The brand has been on a nearly 10-year journey to differentiate its hotels from competitors on the basis of exceptional guest experiences. It all started back in 2004. As part of the brand’s 20th-anniversary celebration, Hampton asked its hotel owners to make about 120 product upgrades ranging from curved shower curtain rods to easy-to-use alarm clocks. Within a year, competitors had copied all of the new features.

The next year, in response to the cutthroat competition in the hotel industry, Hampton embarked on a culture transformation intended to differentiate its hotels from competitors by delivering superior guest experiences. Along the way, the team at Hampton learned important lessons about how to create and sustain a customer-obsessed culture:

• Leverage executive support.
• Create a comprehensive training program.
• Monitor and maintain customer focus over time.

For more information about how Hampton created and sustains its customer-obsessed culture, read the full report.

via How Hampton Hotels Built And Sustains Its Customer-Obsessed Culture | Forrester Blogs.

Avoid the “Just Following Up” Email

Tags

Customer Focus, Email, Follow Up, Value

Email

None of us like to be interupted by emails that have no value. Sending one email and then resending it “to just follow up” is the worst. Maybe the effort should have been made to make the first one useful. If I don’t respond, make the second one even more valuable. I may be ignoring you for any number of reasons but keep adding value. I will respect that.

In today’s world of constant interruptions, you can’t afford to interrupt a prospect without providing some value or at least including a call-to-action.

The concept of sending multiple “checking-in” emails is quite interesting. In fact, data from Referral Squirrel shows that:

1. 2% of sales are made on the First contact.
2. 3% of sales are made on the Second contact.
3. 5% of sales are made on the Third contact.
4. 10% of sales are made on the Fourth contact.
5. 80% of sales are made on the Fifth to Twelfth contact.

However …

1. 48% of salespeople never follow up with a prospect.
2. 25% of salespeople make a second contact and stop.
3. 12% of salespeople make three contacts and stop.
4. Only 10% of sales people make it more than Three contacts with a prospect.

Source: Avoid the “Just Following Up” Email | Hendrik de Vries | LinkedIn

Thinking about 2015: Being obsessed and focused on our customers is not an either/or kind of thing.

Tags

Customer Focus, Customer Obsession, Passion

Focus

Being obsessed and focused on our customers is not an either/or kind of thing.

It is “yes/and” at its core.

We need to be obsessed AND we need to be focused.

We need to be passionate about our focus on the things that make a difference for our customers and will transform us into a digital business.

Why employee engagement is important — Examples from Doug Conant, former CEO at Campbell Soup

Tags

Campbell Soup, Customer Focus, Doug Conant, Employee Engagement

Being customer focused is about how engaged our employees are on any given day. Engaged employees lead to engage customers.

No one knows this better than Doug Conant. From 2001 to 2011, Doug served as CEO and President of the Campbell Soup Company. He was the 11th leader of this iconic company’s 141-year history – faced with reversing a precipitous decline in market value.

Conant dramatically transformed the global leadership team, reconfigured the portfolio, cut costs, and made integral strategic investments. These visionary changes resulted in cumulative shareholder returns in the top tier of the global food industry.

Here is a short video where he explains his approach to employee engagement.

 

Conant’s mission to achieve superior employee engagement levels was a crucial contributor to the company’s exemplary performance. Under his leadership, employee engagement at Campbell Soup went from being among the worst in the Fortune 500 to being consistently among the best. The company was also celebrated as a leader in social responsibility and ethical leadership during his tenure.

A lifelong advocate for ethical practices and corporate responsibility, Conant remains actively involved with many non-profits and advocacy programs.

Read more about his work with public advocacy here.

Do your customer systems and tools actually focus on your customers?

Tags

Culture, Customer Ecosystem, Customer Focus, Digital Executive, Socialize

Customer Ecosystem

Most customer systems are designed to focus on the needs of the company and not the customer. Successful organizations see customer systems as a part of an ecosystem. They don’t stand in isolation.

Seeing systems as an ecosystem leads to thinking and acting on aligning systems to play nice together.

The digital executive focuses on aligning systems to understand customer needs. Effort is made to view interactions from the customer’s perspective. The digital executive will create a journey based on customer insight and socialize that within the company.

Key takeaways:

1. Digital executives are proactive in understanding the relationship from the point of view of the customer.
2. Customer systems are seen as an ecosystem.
3. Socializing insights within the company culture are important.

 

Guest Blog: Jeb Dasteel — The Customer Connection – Building Lasting Relationships in an Instant Access World

Tags

Customer Focus, Guest Blog, Jeb Dasteel, Journey Mapping, Oracle, Social Media

Jeb Dasteel – Chief Customer Officer – Oracle

Jeb Dasteel is Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer at Oracle. He has been with Oracle since 1998. Prior to joining Oracle, Jeb worked as an IT strategy and operations principal consultant at Gemini Consulting.

———Guest Blog————–

Today’s customers literally have a world of information at their fingertips. Gone are the days when the vendor – via sales representatives, advertising, and marketing – was the primary source for information on a product or service.

Customers increasingly search online for information, join social networks, and leverage other social media channels for trusted third-party information and perspectives.  A 2013 study, “B2B Technology Decision Journey,”  found that 80% of IT decision makers deem word-of-mouth input as the most important influence when making buying decisions; and 58% said they use social media to learn from trusted peers.

To build strong relationships in this rapidly changing, instant access environment, the ability to connect and, more importantly, collaborate with customers in new ways is imperative.  We’re taking this to heart at Oracle.

There is no question that the balance of power has shifted decisively in favor of the customer, who expects easy access to a full set of technology and business research and resources.  Vendors can still play a vital role in this information exchange by integrating the offline and online worlds to manage the path of the customer’s journey.

For example, online communities, such as those here at Oracle, like Eloqua’s Topliners, MyOracleSupport, the Oracle Technology Network, Oracle Customer Connect and those run by our independent Oracle User Groups, can help customers take advantage of solutions and proactively resolve support issues.  Our research shows that for every 300 online interactions via these communities, 100 support calls are avoided.

As important, when our sales teams begin to pay greater attention to customers’ online and social media interactions, they gain insight that can fortify trust and enable greater collaboration for solving a customer’s business challenges – before an inquiry is even made.

We are also focused on automating interaction flows across social and online channels – and look to use search results, white paper downloads, and social media postings to foster stronger customer relationships and relationships.  We are also looking to use cloud-based tools to help track the customer’s actual usage of our products and capture insight into their everyday experience, with an eye toward adding value and extending collaboration.  By better understanding technology adoption issues and patterns, we can help our customers to build a roadmap that enables them to get the greatest value possible out of their investment in Oracle.

As part of our integrated strategy to expand customer collaboration, we are creating specific programs that focus on better understanding, documenting, and augmenting the customer’s journey – acting as a source for professional development and knowledge expansion.  We’ve launched a Customer Experience (CX) Journey Mapping Program, for example, that helps businesses to overcome organizational barriers to achieving true customer centricity.  Serving as a trusted advisor, we share journey-mapping tools and techniques with customers to help them jump-start their CX transformation process.  These half-day courses give customers the fundamentals for customer centricity and how to apply them at their organizations.  They also serve to further strengthen our customer relationships.

At Oracle, customer centricity is no longer about one-off initiatives.  Instead, it means making this concept the foundation of our corporate DNA.  While we are still in the early stages of our journey, customers are taking note.  For example, the CIO of a global construction and engineering firm recently remarked, “Our conversations with Oracle are more creative.  We’re more comfortable throwing something at the wall to get their reaction.  In the old world, Oracle would say ‘this does not fit with our product hierarchy,’ but now it’s likely to generate enthusiasm. The barriers have fallen away.”

As the customer market changes with heavier reliance on online channels to make decisions, find information, and communicate – we, too, must make that change.  By bringing mechanisms to support proactive collaboration, instant access to information, as well as by creating programs to enhance CX and customer-centricity, we are able to intertwine this new DNA into not only our everyday customer interactions but our overall corporate culture.  We look forward to seeing what the customer market has in store next and how we cannot only intertwine these changes into our customer interactions, but how we can help our customers do the same.

 

Are you a customer-focused or operations-focused company?

Tags

Customer Focus, Customer Service, Employee Engagement, Empowerment, Hiring, Leadership, Operations, Training

I want you to focus on your customers

There are differences on how to approach your business. You get to decide. How conscious is that choice? Has inertia taken over?

It is important to think through, plan and execute around creating a better customer experience.

Some companies really understand customer service. They know how to hire for it, train for it and deliver it. Other companies claim to give customer service, but in reality, they are grounded in an operations mentality with rules and policies that allow for little flexibility, preventing them from being anything more than just average or satisfactory. 

via Six Differences Between Customer-Focused Companies and Operations-Focused Companies.

Here are some ideas to focus on:

1. Empowerment – employees can make decisions in the best interest of the customer
2. Hiring – bring people on who fit the customer-focused culture
3. Training – spend time and money on soft skills like relationship building
4. Leadership – create a vision and mission that is focused on the customer
5. People first – employees and their engagement make a difference
6. Customer service – service comes first, no matter what

 

Guest blog: Roberta Anderson — Be your own advocate

Tags

Assumptions, Customer Focus, Cyber Security, Guest Blog, Roberta Anderson, Security

Roberta Anderson is the Chief Information Security Officer for the City of Colorado Springs. She has over 15 years of information and cyber security expertise in both the public, private, and Department of Defense sectors. She holds the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), NSA and Committee for National Security Systems (CNSS) 4011 and 4012 certifications, in addition to Security + and Network +. She has her Bachelors in Cybercrime Investigation, and Masters in Cyber Security and Information Assurance. You can connect with Roberta on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/roberta-anderson/96/428/293

————————-Guest Blog———————

 Be Your Own Advocate

Security

A recent study of 2,000 consumers in an online survey revealed nearly 3/4 of respondents did not think companies cared enough about the security and privacy of their data.

“Despite being outraged over a string of recent retailer breaches and revelations regarding the National Security Agency’s monitoring activities, Eric Chiu, president and co-founder of HyTrust, said he hasn’t witnessed any notable shift in consumers’ behavior around valuing security. Consumer inaction doesn’t mean organizations can continue to ignore data privacy and security though, warned Chiu, who pointed to the recent breach at Minneapolis-based retailer Target as an example of spiraling costs associated with suffering a data breach.”—techtarget.com

From a consumer perspective, this means people should not assume their data is being protected; people need to be their own advocates. From a business perspective, this means the bar needs to be raised. If companies want to increase consumer trust, as well as be customer focused, they need to improve their internal information security practices.

Cyber-attacks are increasingly easy with faulty software, absent internal auditing processes, and budget cuts, but the responsibility to perform due diligence should not yield. Customers deserve for their data to be protected, and even though the majority is not demanding it now, the time is not too far in the future.

Eventually, consumers and lawmakers alike are going to mandate better information security practices. President Obama has officially endorsed a better framework for improving the Nation’s cybersecurity through Executive Order 13636 “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity”. Smart companies will do the same by ensuring they are thinking innovatively and “ahead of the curve”. It is the companies who respond to customer protection without being asked which will likely profit, and improve their customer base. Don’t wait until a breach occurs to modify your data security, it could prove to be very costly.

http://www.cyberlinguist.com/2014/03/16/be-your-own-advocate/ (link to original blog posting – Roberta’s Blog)

Is customer-centric transformation a no-brainer?

Tags

Customer Centric, Customer Focus, Customer Obsession, Doug Leather, Peppers and Rogers

Customer Expectations

Doug Leather suggest there are three questions to think about when it comes to transforming our work with customers. The questions are designed to get us thinking. The ideas originally came from Peppers and Rogers. I’m a big fan of their work. Our work, as digital executives, is to be focused, even obsessed, with our customers. Our mission is no less that total transformation.

Here are the questions:

1. Who is the one stakeholder, whom if you maximized the return thereof, would benefit ALL stakeholders?
2. Would you agree that customers create 100% of business value in almost all cases?
3. What do shareholders & investors really want?

I’m guilty! I admit that I’m a customer-centric evangelist because quite frankly, how else can you build meaningful competitive advantage? Customer-centricity is all about differentiation and it’s almost impossible to sustain differentiation around product, price and distribution footprint. But you can sustain differentiation around your customer knowledge, insights and understanding.  via Customer-Centric Transformation a no-brainer: Check out why! | Doug Leather’s Blog.