Q&A: CX at the Center, with Christian Eckhardt, CEO & Co-Founder of Customlytics
Some of the biggest names in business have built their mega-successful companies on the map by putting the customer experience at the center of it all! From Apple to Amazon, customer centricity is driving enormous profits.
We recently talked to Christian Eckhardt, CEO & Co-Founder of Customlytics, the leading full-stack mobile technology and marketing consultancy in Europe. Christian is a mobile-tech expert and accomplished product manager. At Customlytics he puts this experience to use as a reliable contact and onboarding partner for new clients and partners. He can pinpoint any marketing, product or technology need that app businesses face — always with a good deal of pragmatism, honesty, and a straightforward approach.
Below you will find a very abridged Q&A with Christian, as well as a video of Christian’s full interview with MobileGroove’s Peggy Anne Salz. Christian will join us for The Great Marketing Debates Panel on May 19. Until then, read on to get a sneak peek into some of the insights he will share during the discussion and take a deep dive into the idea of customer-centricity.
Q: Customer-centricity is a broad term. How do you define it?
A: I would define customer-centricity as running the entire company with a laser focus on providing the best possible customer experience. It’s not a coincidence that the likes of Steve Jobs (“Always start with the customer experience, not with the technology”) and Jeff Bezos (“The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer”) have followed this principle to make their companies as successful as they are today. This is 100% the concept that we are suggesting with our Marketing Master Map. Essentially what we say with it is that you will inevitably be successful with your business if you are just laser focussed on your customer experience while keeping a holistic view on mobile marketing.
Q: What is the business impact of understanding the customer and knowing the customer journey, and how can it best be measured?
A: The bottom line is going to be sales. This is the one overarching metric that everything is about. Derived from this, there are of course several metrics that you can measure like conversion rates (inside and outside of your product) and many other signals to look at.
Q: What is the biggest mistake marketers make on the path to achieving greater customer-centricity in their marketing and messaging?
A: I guess the biggest mistake is to lose yourself in this very complex world of digital marketing and missing out on the bigger picture. Again, this is where the Master Map comes in very handy. It is a holistic marketing blueprint for mobile marketers to align all of their marketing activities across the full stack.
Q: This is a year like no other. What is the biggest change you have seen to your business, and how are you preparing to harness this transformation to drive a positive outcome for you and your customers?
A: If you are asking for my company Customlytics the biggest change was clearly that we essentially had to give up any physical collaboration in the office (almost completely). We have always been a modern workplace I would say but this full stop of any office work whatsoever was definitely a challenge. There are team members that have been with us for months already and they have only seen the office on their first day at the job for picking up their equipment. So, yeah, keeping the bond between teams and establishing some form of digital social interaction is certainly something every company had to work in since the beginning of Corona.
Now, if you are asking about the various clients that we work with, I guess what we have seen is a major uplift for anyone that operates a digital business (which naturally is basically our entire customer base). Most of them have actually outperformed previous years in 2020. The Corona crisis has forced companies to really think about their digitalization.
Q: What information, examples or advice are you the most excited to discuss or share during our panel?
A: I would love to hear how the brands have been doing in the crisis that did not really have such a digital-focused business before the crisis. We don’t have many of these in our client base so I would be really interested in hearing about them.
Outside of this, I am obviously excited about the vast amount of changes in the digital marketing landscape (from tracking to new channels coming up) and I am happy to talk about that.
Q: If you had to design a billboard ad to keep marketers inspired and motivated as they address the chief challenges and opportunities in the year ahead, what would it say?
A: Keep calm and carry on with your marketing.
To hear more from Christian, and his fellow panelists, join The Great Debates on May 19.
