Customer Centricity and the Digital World : friends or foes?
“Advertising should be information about the merchandise that will be helpful to the customer in satisfactory purchasing. It should answer the questions about the merchandise that the customer would naturally ask […] It must not be what the merchant wants to say about the goods in order to force them upon the public…”
That sounds like a pretty common element of any current marketing strategy of any corporation you might think — and you’d be thinking correctly, except perhaps on the time stamp. This is one excerpt of many advertising methods that were published nearly 90 years ago, by John Wanamaker, who is considered by some to be a “pioneer in marketing”.
I thought the above strategy was particularly spot on in defining what could be called the holy grail of any business strategy; customer centricity — also known as putting the customer at the center of everything you do. In this particular instance it’s all about the customer, and most of the few other strategies I read had the same tone, if not a more reinforced one about customers being the priority. In the digital world we’re in, it should be no different than it was back then and I’ve asked an expert in the field, Matthieu Tran-Van, to share with us his views on the matter in an interview — do stay on! (full disclosure: since Matthieu is a Googler, there’ll be lots of great insights on data to come!)
“What the digital era has enabled is having more insights, data, profiling of those customers”
Yet, companies have been trying to adopt customer centricity for decades now and are still trying, to this day. I believe I’d be correct in saying that many of us have been there, myself included, on the phone, sometimes exasperated, faced with a menu of endless options in desperate search of a (comforting we hope!) living and breathing human voice?
And I’m not going to start on the chatbots, which, granted, are becoming more and more humans, but are still a piece of software trying to emulate actual human interaction. And whilst it’s exciting to see the way the world is changing, and the way technology is continuously disrupting our lives in a positive light, the increasing scarcity of the personal touch is evidence that companies are missing the biggest point; the quality of customers’ experiences.
Customer centricity starts at the top; it requires organizations, regardless of their size, to have a culture that is rooted in putting customers at the center of their business, just like John Wanamaker did in his department stores.
Unfortunately, in most company cultures, the financial bottom-line will be the main driver — forgetting that that very bottom-line can only stem from their customers.
“Providing success to my clients, will enable me, by definition, to grow”
How can a marketing department successfully be the sole bearer of a message that reflects how important the customer is when the company culture is too sales-driven or too product-focused? Customer experiences will not improve unless it becomes a TOP priority and an integral driver of an organization’s structure, work processes and systems.
A great example of an organization that had the most extreme turnaround in business history, mostly by putting its customers first, is Lego. On advice of consultants, the company started diversifying by creating a whole range of other products (theme parks, jewelry for girls, clothes) to align with some of what their competition sold. But diversification is what drove the company to near bankruptcy. What brought Lego back to success is its incredible ability to interact with people; they actively encourage interactions with their fans and have teams that travel the world over to study their most valuable consumers; children (and families — they call it “camping with consumers”). Moreover, the company will favor making great products over making more money — it would rather spend more in outsourcing as long as the product is better.
“Every analysis we do should lead to an actionable next step that can make a customer happier”
Fast forward 90 years from Wanamaker’s strategies, where digital has become the new normal and where life without a mobile device within reach seems like a dystopian concept. An era where data is the new oil and where companies and tech giants are vying for every single details of our daily lives — to serve us, customers, better.
And according to Matthieu, customer centricity supported by data can yield great results — when aligned as they should be.
Matthieu has been living and breathing marketing for the past 13 years and has been working at Google since 2012, helping global organizations with their digital transformation. The successful entrepreneur also has his own website where he shares the best of everything business and web-marketing (you’ll have to gain new or revive your French skills to get more of Matthieu’s great expertise published online!).
My favorite tip had to be the first one in question 3! (oh, and please do note that these are his own views and are in no way representing his current employer’s!)
As you’ll have heard from Matthieu, too many companies are missing the part of activating the data they gather — but Netflix for example, isn’t one of them. The streaming giant uses data analytics to meet its consumers’ needs by recommending content to its +150 million subscribers.
Another giant adopting the same winning strategy is Apple: its products are designed to capture valuable data, that is then used to determine how to best approach new products and services. Both strategies have customers at the very center of them, and we’re all witnesses to how successful these companies are ; how many of us are customers of one or the other, if not both?
The shift to the digital/online world has created a few challenges, but it has also created many opportunities ; marrying great customer focus with the right approach to analyzing data might be one of the secret to an almost perfect customer experience (because we all know perfection doesn’t exist!).
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Business Strategy. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DBS.
