How to become the customer’s champion
This practical piece provides a step-by-step guide on how marketers can become the Customer’s Champion, from undertaking research to learning the language of the board. With the board focused on key financials and the bottom line, marketers have a vital role in representing the needs of the customer internally, to guide strategic decision-making and development. .
Any customer feedback programme can only be successful if the company implements change because of it. Although the vast majority of organisations today will have some form of customer feedback channel in place, which could be a formal survey, or analysis of complaints data, or analysis of their online experience and views, so few companies are able to drive change because of that feedback.
The role of a Customer Champion within the business is to link that feedback to the business and facilitate its utilisation to change the business in a manner that provides both an improved customer experience and delivers bottom line improvements for their company. So what factors does a Customer Champion have to consider to ensure this?
Strategy
1. Absolutely essential for any programme is that there is ownership of both the collection of the feedback and the execution of corrective measures at a CXO level within the business
2. Ensure that the customer feedback is a key foundation and a driver of your strategy. This has to go beyond a ‘headline’ that simply says that customers are very important, and specify what about the customer experience will differentiate your organisation, and how it is being delivered
3. There is an overall measure for the feedback that can be linked to the Key Performance Indicators of the business. Whether that be profitability, market share, increased share of wallet etc. Identifying which is the most effective for your business may take time, so look to see if a range of metrics can be collected initially and track these against the KPIs. The customer metric needs to be presented alongside the corporate KPIs
Measurement
4. Ensure that the company is gathering feedback that reflects the whole of the customer’s journey right from initial awareness through to post purchase experiences. Customer Journey Mapping can prove a valuable tool here
5. Is the feedback actionable? Do your colleagues understand the feedback and do they own the results? Is there an internal owner for each piece of feedback?
6. Does the frequency of the feedback both reflect the ability of the business to absorb and act upon it, whilst still representing the ‘current’ customer experience? Colleagues need to be able to track the impact of their action plans upon the customers’ experience
Involvement
7. All functions of the business need to understand their impact upon the customer’s experience, both directly and how the interaction between functions can influence the customer’s perceptions
8. Create a cross functional team that represents the key customer touchpoints and that owns not only the results coming into the business, but also the interpretation of them as well as the communication and implementation of action pans
Driving change as the customer champion
9. Make the feedback come alive, so within B2B this may be using customer specific feedback, which could be from survey data, or even get customers to come into the business and discuss their views. Look to supplement the feedback with video interviews of customers, use direct customer quotes (attributable where appropriate) to back up quantitative findings. In B2C the use of personas will help employees relate to the customer feedback
10. Look to utilise root cause analysis tools. This will help dig beneath the customer perspective and identify the issues and ownership within the business that drive the customer experience
11. Link the customer metrics with employee reward and recognition programmes. This is particularly key at a senior level as they will control the resources required to deliver change
12. Keep the feedback alive by looking to link the data to the internal reporting mechanism. Ensure that managers are having to report not just the results but their current and planned actions with expected impact upon the customer’s experience.
The above step-by-step guide provided inspiration for a related article on the UK’s Chartered Insiture of Marketing website.
Finally, in order to deliver the above role consideration needs to be given to the key characteristics of a customer champion.
Take the next step
To discuss how to develop and deliver a Customer Champion with your organisation, please contact Customer Champions today.