How to align strategy around the customer

I recently had a frustrating, but familiar, customer experience.

I was having an issue with a service provider, so I called support. I went through a long routing process that took a few minutes to complete. When I finally got to an operator, I gave my name, my account number, and my address. The person I was speaking with didn’t have the answer, so they transferred me to a different department, where I was asked for … my name, my account number, and my address. They didn’t know the answer either.

By the time my issue was resolved, I must have given the same identifying information and explained my problem four or five times.

Situations like these arise because of misaligned teams and function-out strategy. Routing systems, asking customers for the same information over and over again — this is how companies bridge the gaps between different processes and behaviors. And unfortunately, customers are the one who suffer because of it.

Aligned teams are the foundation of everything you do. But the discipline of aligned strategy is the next crucial step to building a delightful customer experience.

Be customer-in, not function-out

The interaction I had is unfortunately all too common, because too many companies run on a function-out strategy.

Function-out strategy is when customer-facing teams (Marketing, Sales, Customer) design strategy based on what is best for their function.

Customer-in strategy is when the starting point is not what’s best for the function, but what’s best for the customer. Customer-in strategy requires a deep understanding of the customer journey — how are they behaving at each stage and therefore what support do they need? What kinds of handoffs and transitions exist, and therefore what should the strategy look like?

Let’s use surveys as an example. Getting customer feedback is crucial. But customers interact with a lot of different teams. If every single team that works with customers sends out their own survey, the customer could be bombarded with dozens or even hundreds of surveys. But in a customer-in world, the customer’s needs would be put first and teams would need to be deliberate about how and when to survey customers.

From aligned teams to aligned strategy

A good way to tell if you operate function-out or customer-in is to ask leaders on Marketing, Sales and Service what their goal is. If they say things like “close more deals” or “generate more leads”, you are operating function-out.

A customer-in answer should be the same across teams and be centered around the customer. But to get there, you first need a customer-in strategy. Here’s how to build one.

1. Set a winning aspiration

The concept of a “winning aspiration” comes from Playing to Win by A.G. Lafley, the former CEO of Procter & Gamble, and Roger Martin. It’s one of the best books on strategy out there and I would recommend every leader read it.

A winning aspiration states why you exist, what you seek to be, and what winning looks like for your organization. It should be centered around your customers.

For example, HubSpot’s Flywheel team, our aligned leadership team, set a winning aspiration of “Create a disruptive customer experience that helps HubSpot and our customers grow better.”

This aspiration defines:

• Why we (the Flywheel team) exist — to create a disruptive customer experience
• What we seek to be — we will use our learnings from creating the HubSpot customer experience, to teach our customers how to do the same
• What winning looks like — when our customers are successfully scaling their businesses using our platform and methodology

2. Create 3-year strategy

Companies fail when they build for the present and not the future. Therefore, the best way to plan is to set a rolling 3-year vision that is updated yearly. This allows you to make transformational, not incremental investments, and lay the foundation to grow.

As a leadership team, answer these two questions:

Where will we play? Define the strategic areas your business will invest in, and just as importantly, where you will not invest. These can be broad, like the personas you will serve. They can also be specific, like choosing to invest in self-service as the primary method of customer support. But they should be aspirational and focused on where the business should be in 3 years.

How will we win? This is about your strengths, tactics, methods and value. Also consider customer behavior. What is your organization particularly good at? How do your customers expect to engage with you? How will your value proposition help you stand out?

While your choices should be supported by data, many decisions will be mission-driven or philosophical choices.

3. Operationalize 3-year strategy into 1-year plan

The final step of aligned customer-in strategy is operationalizing your 3-year vision. What needs to happen to make it a reality? Think about this in two parts — what can be achieved through refining existing processes; and what requires transformation (then what that transformation looks like in 1-year increments).

The output of this process is what goes into your 1-year plan, which keeps your business aligned in three key ways.

1. Prioritization of a small set of critical initiatives: A business can only do so many things well in one year, so focus only on what’s core to your strategy.
2. Cross-functional alignment and commitment for resources: Dependencies will emerge in planning, rather than in-year, so you can get ahead of them and prioritize correctly.
3. Company-wide accountability: Use the plan as the “source of truth” on the organization’s overall health. Work that’s not on the plan should be reviewed at a department or team level.

Customer-in strategy during a pandemic

Crunch Fitness is a chain of fitness studios with over 300+ locations that happens to be a HubSpot customer. Crunch’s motto is, “No Judgments,” and their mission is to create a fun and safe space for anyone to work out.

Prior to the pandemic, Crunch Fitness had already started aligning its business to ensure a consistent experience for everyone who stepped foot in a Crunch gym. They did this through creating a single view of the customer and running all franchise operations through one system.

Then, the world changed. As businesses around the world closed their physical stores, Crunch had to pivot their 100% in-person business to adapt to a digital world — and do it quickly.

To keep members strong and engaged at home, Crunch launched the Gym Shorts newsletter, a biweekly newsletter with motivation, workouts designed for the home, and inspiration.

To keep members informed, Crunch also created a single landing page on the site with information on Crunch location policies and hours, and also local restrictions.

Because Crunch’s focus was on their customers (and because their teams were already aligned), they were able to adapt quickly to meet changing circumstances. The alignment across franchises allowed for best practice sharing and continual innovation during 2020. Crunch was able to not only survive, but thrive in an incredibly challenging year. That is the power of a customer-in strategy.

Aligned strategy builds upon aligned teams. Your strategy becomes the roadmap for what the entire organization will focus on. Now, it’s time to get into the fun stuff — aligned systems is up next, a discipline that’s undergone a massive transformation during my career in tech.