The digitization is pushing us into the direction where we need to re-think traditional ways of communication and interaction. We interact with user / consumer through marketing communication, products and services, through support and my other channels. “Data is the new oil” is a slogan everyone has read. The user / consumer get’s a huge power through the data he shares with us.
Customer Experience (#CX) and Customer Centricity are the engines. They are new engines which requires change. There are two approaches to reach #CX for a marketing point of view.
Data by themselves are difficult to manage and analyze and much more as far as you go on a deeper level…. special if you go on a 1:1 level. It’s much more easy to act on an 1.many approach to reach quick results. But… one day you reach a level where the 1:many approach isn’t enough and your user / customer as well as your competitors are pushing you into the 1:1 approach.
Data does not have an ROI. You can use them to understand a user, predict his next step / needs and deliver the right information (not just advertising). With this you set a stimulus and gain an user behavior.
These days you need to re-think everything you have learned before. It’s not your brand who comes first and is important, it’s the user / customer. An user does not think in channels like marketers do, they want to have the right information at the right time and the right format and he is switching channels quickly forward and backward. Maybe they are in a store, they are in a train or just relaxing on a couch with their tablet (and calling later the hotline).
Customer centricity requires change in all areas of a company, not only in marketing. It requires a change in what we do but also in why we are doing it. Think about your own contract as an employer… You have a base salary and an bonus. The bonus is based on what results? On your personal… measured on company goals, not customer goals!
Beside what we change the other point is the speed of change. Everything is getting faster and faster. This requires a different way of how we do it. Agility is the big buzzword here which gives us the flexibility which is required. The waterfall model (Wikipedia) is past, it’s needed to work agile. Maybe you do not need to work strict on Scrum and other models, but your thinking and interaction needs to be agile and flexible.
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