Repeat Customers Break Corporate Through Silos.
Recurring revenue businesses are a bit closer to their customers by necessity but not always by design. An inherent customer familiarity sometimes gets in the way of operating with a truly intentional customer-centric approach throughout the organization. But the best customers, those that come back again and again, are leading the way through one of the biggest roadblocks to customer centricity: Corporate Silos.
As we’ve stated before, the benefits of customer centricity are well documented: category performance leadership, with more loyalty and more advocacy. And while most everyone agrees that customer centricity is essential, many still struggle with execution. We’ve found there are common barriers to overcome, continuing with this series, let’s look at the third item below and tackle the rest in future newsletters…
Building a Common Understanding - Clarify what real customer centricity entails across the organization. (prior newsletter)
Incorporating Employee Experience - Your people create your customer experiences, make it good for them to make it better for customers. (prior newsletter)
Breaking Down Silos - Enable collaboration on customer journeys across teams. Share insights cross-functionally.
Rethinking Metrics - Incentives and KPIs need to align to customer retention and lifetime value, not just short-term revenue. (prior newsletter)
Long(er)-Term Mindsets - Resist pressure to over-optimize for immediate revenue at the cost of CX. (prior newsletter)
Closing the Feedback Loop - Act on robust voice of customer programs and inform strategy discussions.
Accountability and Consistency - Set customer-centric goals and track them. Audit practices across the organization.
Customers break through silos, customer-centric organizations follow their lead.
The problem is all too common — silos stifle innovation, impede decision-making, and create a fragmented customer experience.
Silos are organization-centric.
A corporate silo is a term used to describe isolated, compartmentalized, and often departmentalized structures within an organization. As a result, information, knowledge, and resources are contained within each silo, hindering the organization's ability to work cohesively, share insights, and respond effectively to changes or opportunities.
The repeat-customer perspective is a strategic pivot because it is led by an individual or team who takes ownership for the customer experience throughout the journey. Their aim is to provide value and satisfaction to the customer at every stage of their interaction with the company to create loyalty. Doing so necessitates discrete departments working together to provide a cohesive and consistent experience. It requires data and information sharing to gain a comprehensive view of the customer's interactions with the company.
To do this well, it needs to be the CEO’s commitment and the responsibility of their direct reports to bring the customer perspective into all decision points affecting the customer. In doing so, they can create loyalty & advocacy above and beyond the alternatives — it is still a competitive advantage when so few organizations are willing and able to prioritize the customer experience. These are the ultimate goals, the functional drivers of net-growth, increased profitability, and it’s why subscribers are better customers.
All of that is certainly easier said than done.
The Four Seasons Example:
Nearly all of us associate the Four Season’s with customer care, exceptional service and a loyal following, yet according to Skift’s recent interview with Marc Speichert CCO, customer centricity is still their strategic priority:
Customer insight: “We need to understand our guests better than anyone else”. The company analyzed its customer segmentation to understand all of its guests — especially its most valuable ones. The study found Four Seasons had rebounded from the pandemic stronger than its rivals.
Employee Engagement: “We are the leading hospitality luxury brand, so how do we set that expectation for everyone within the organization? How do we build a team that gets us to the next level?”
Direct Relationships: building the brand’s strength with savvier marketing and helping drive more direct bookings.
Their new ad recreates a real-life customer experience seamlessly delivered from end to end:
There’s room for improvement, even amongst those renowned for customer experience. So let’s break it down a bit further:
Setting and Communicating the Vision:
Senior executives, including the CEO and other C-suite leaders, need to establish a clear and compelling vision of what a customer-centric culture means for the organization. This vision should emphasize the importance of putting customers at the center of all decision-making processes and actions.
Employee Engagement:
Actions speak louder than words. Senior executives must demonstrate their commitment to customer-centricity through their behavior and decisions. They should actively engage with customers, participate in customer feedback sessions, and prioritize customer-oriented initiatives. See our prior newsletter
Senior executives should regularly interact with employees at all levels to understand their perspectives and challenges. This engagement fosters a sense of unity and encourages employees to actively contribute to the customer-centric culture.
To reinforce the customer-centric focus, executives should align key performance indicators (KPIs) and employee incentives with customer-centric goals. This ensures that employees are rewarded for actions that prioritize customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Allocate Resources:
To champion a customer-centric culture, senior executives should allocate the necessary resources, both financial and human, to support customer-centric initiatives. This includes investing in technology, training, and processes that enhance the customer experience. Our workshop is a great start
Embrace Feedback:
Senior leaders should be open to receiving and acting upon feedback from customers and employees. They should use feedback as a valuable resource for improving processes and services.
Expect Unfettered Collaboration:
Require cross-functional collaboration by leading initiatives that expect different teams to work together to improve the overall customer experience.
Measure and Monitor Progress:
Implement key metrics and performance indicators to measure the organization's progress toward customer-centric goals. Share this data with the organization, reinforcing the importance of customer-centricity.
Celebrate Successes:
Recognize and celebrate achievements related to customer-centric initiatives. Acknowledging and rewarding teams and individuals for their contributions can motivate employees to remain committed to the culture.
The House of Kaizen Growth Framework is a helpful tool that has been built for this purpose and tested under these circumstances. It provides a repeat-customer-centric perspective to transition from organization-centric silos to valuable customer-centric outcomes. It starts with an inventory of the complete subscriber journey understanding the their needs at each stage. You’re challenged to rethink all the areas you’re willing and able to improve. Goal alignment matches the customer’s objectives with appropriate business metrics to represent mutual value that can be sustained ongoing.
All of this quickly diagnoses performance-to-potential across the entire framework of opportunity. Then you can target experiments to test acquisition, engagement, retention, and expansion programs that contribute to CLV.
The framework literally puts everyone on the same page with the repeat-customer/subscriber at the center of the focus. It has supported the work we do for clients in our initial diagnostics as well as ongoing engagements to provide consistent and accountable customer centricity around decisions that drive growth. The result is more sustainable growth through changing or challenging markets.
For the first time, our Subscriber Growth Framework is available in a self-guided workshop where customer-centric leaders can learn and incorporate our approach in your efforts.
