alignment with the company’s availability
of resources for execution.
Marketing undertakings will not work
if the finances and human resources to
deliver are absent. This exact same script
may be lifted and placed at the center of
the customer experience plan of action.
Service excellence activities must be
well planned and aligned with the ‘state’
in which the customer is currently or is
anticipated to be. This will be determined
by environmental factors both internal
and external.
If the customer communication plan that
includes messaging out to the customer,
to nurture an emotional connection
towards relationship building does not
factor in seasons and the mental state
of the customer as determined by what’s
happening around them, then it will fall
on deaf ears.
Putting an ear to the ground and planning
for customer experience activities that
align to the nation’s frame of mind, will
go a long way to confirm to customers
that you have them at heart and are in
alignment with their needs.
And as with all good plans, one cannot
disregard the strategic importance of
allying activity scheduling with budget
and team resource availability for
execution. If different departments have
their antennae signaling directionally
towards factors affecting the customer
from a time, trends, and season
perspective, would it not make more sense
Putting an ear to
the
ground
and
planning for customer
experience activities
that align to the nation’s
frame of mind, will go
a long way to confirm
to customers that you
have them at heart and
are in alignment with
their needs.
20 MAL23/18 ISSUE
It is important to know and understand the cus-
tomer before any attempts can be made to design
activities and initiatives to provide delightful ser-
vice to them. To elicit customer appreciation, one
must absolutely know who the customer is, where
they are from, what their preferences are, what
environmental triggers they respond to, what in-
fluences their decision making, and whether or
not they are sensitive to brand changes.
for the strategic themes on marketing and
customer experience to be aligned?
A great marketing strategy must have a
core functionality in place to listen to the
voice of the customer. Market research
derives results from the outcomes of
customer feedback. Innovation must
lie at the heart of marketing in order to
continuously re-invigorate products and
services.
Innovation is fed from market research
results as the fodder for creative
application. This plugs into whatever
direction that the organization would like
to pursue, be it expansion, new distribution
channels, new markets, or introduction of
new or enhanced products.
To have effectively informed strategies the
customers must speak up and customer
data must be gathered for decision
making. Awareness of the market and
the market desires, will serve to have
a responsive brand that communicates
effectively and whose marketing messages
are well received. It is needless to say that
any customer experience strategy that
does not take into account this same
philosophy of listening to the voice of the
customer, is bound to fail from the word
go.
Listening to customers using whatever
listening device that best suits the parties
at hand, involves proactively seeking their
feedback to ascertain where the brand is
meeting or failing to deliver on the brand
promise. Listening also requires that
responsiveness is in place to effectively
reach out and quell any discontent that
may have arisen or is threatening to arise,
and provide solutions. Customers must be
listened to, and the customer experience
strategy needs to be deliberate and certain
about this.
Congruence between the marketing and
customer experience strategy can be found
where marketing will be seeking insights
into product and service performance,
communication channels and customer
preferences, and customer experience will
be seeking the same but from the lens of
listening out for customer satisfaction,
tapping into proposals for improvement
and soliciting idea generation. Should the
two strategies as such not be harmonized
with one plan of action that generates the
desired results to be used by the different
departments as they deem fit?
A great marketing strategy must have
in place measurement tools to assess
performance against marketing strategy.
The return on investment for marketing
efforts is often a very tricky affair
as marketing campaigns targeted at
influencing buyer decision, cannot be
activity per activity mapped directly onto
purchase per purchase. It is the result of
consistent marketing efforts that buyers
shift from ‘thoughts-to-boughts’.
Marketing metrics therefore, are best
enumerated activity wise with the number
of customer communication reach outs
recorded, activities planned and executed,
attendance reached and secondary
markets served.
In pretty much the same format, customer
experience being an emotional affair, is
extremely complicated to report in terms
of direct return on investment. Customer
sentiment is not wholly attributed to
one customer service activity, but a series