You probably didn’t mean to do it. You were just trying to market the latest brand effort to your new and existing customer base. You were doing your job; getting the message out. Unfortunately, your marketing inadvertently damaged your customer focus. 

However, marketing isn’t the only area to blame for the problem. How you segment customers also contributes to this damage, as well as how well you understand your customers’ expectations of you. It turns out that all of these areas contribute to the customer orientation of your organization. Having a handle on where you are for each of them is an excellent way to improve your customer focus. 

In this episode, we explore the ways that we assess an organization’s customer centricity from the most unfocused on customers, or Naïve, to the most, which are Natural. We take a deeper dive into what we look at in three contributing areas, including Customer Strategy, Marketing, and Customer Expectations. Our hope is that you will be able to do it for organizations, too, starting with your own. 

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

These three areas are significant influences on how we assess an organizations customer centricity in various ways. For Customer Strategy, we see more nuance in the customer segmentation for the Natural companies. In Marketing, we consider how much communication there is throughout an organization so everyone that is in contact with customers is “in the know.” We also look at how often a company takes on customer research to detect changes in Customer Expectations. All of these assessments help us determine where a company is on their journey to putting the customer at the center of everything they do. 

Here are a few key moments in the discussion:

• 05:07   Colin explains how Customer Segmentation demonstrates the customer focus of a company.
• 10:24  We introduce the idea that the Customer Experience strategy should permeate and be the dominant throughout each department’s functional strategies.
• 15:31  Colin introduces the Marketing area and how that shows where customers rank in the company’s focus. 
• 20:07  We explain why and how market research is another indicator of customer-centricity. 
• 22:24  Colin explains why managing Customer Expectations are indicative of customer-centricity.
• 29:04  We share why it is important to keep up customer research to stay on top of changes with Customer Expectations.  

Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey. 

Customer Experience Information & Resources

LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter.

Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. 

Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers. 

Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more. 

How can we help?

Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.