As marketers, many of us work in siloed organizations. Some companies organize around products, other companies organize around functions, and still others around geographies (and even some can make silos out of all of those areas together!). The organizational structures, processes and systems supporting these silos keep us from seeing the world around us and prevent us from understanding the bigger picture, or as I like to put it, “seeing the whole.”
The discipline behind “seeing the whole” is called systems thinking. A system is a group of components (or in the case of our organization: functional areas, products, geographies) that interact and influence each other. But buried deep in our silos, we lose sight (or have no line of sight) into how those interactions and influences pull towards or against each other. I remember way back in my career, working for a company where I was so distant from what the “line function” of the organization, that it didn’t make a difference to me whether the company manufactured cars or issued insurance policies – my job would be the same. Unfortunately, that may be a prevalent mode of thinking for many marketing professionals, especially in larger companies.
That example refers to being distant from the product – even that perspective is short-sighted. If we lose sight of the company’s mission and vision, we will never have line of sight into why it’s important, much less who it’s important to – our customer. So we have to break down these silos and become systems thinkers from the customer’s perspective: How does our organization align to support the customer? What is the role of marketing in this world of the customer?
This perspective is more critical now than ever. We live in an era of heightened customer expectations and instant gratification. The customer expects us to know who they are, anticipate when they will want/need something, and respond to that demand with relevant, personal offers or messages. Yet that isn’t new – customers have always wanted relevancy and personalization, they were just at the mercy of the companies they were doing business with. In this new era, where many of our goods and services are commoditized, most things can be purchased or found with the click of a button. The balance of power has shifted towards the customer.
A world filled with commodity products implies that price becomes the differentiator between companies, yet differentiation isn’t necessarily about the cost of goods. Many customers choose to do business with a company because of convenience (the company understands how the customer wants to interact with them) or relationship (the customer understands who they are and what’s important to them). But when a company can’t present a single face to the customer, the customer’s need for convenience and relationship/affinity won’t be achieved.
We return to the problem at hand: Shifting away from organizational silos to a customer-centric perspective is a long, hard journey. Remember that most companies have decades-old organizational structures, technology systems, processes, etc. built around the old way of doing business. The infrastructure does not support (or promote) a systems-thinking view of the customer. Reorienting and mobilizing staff, integrating technologies and data in new ways, and designing new service processes requires significant organizational, financial and time commitment. Fortunately, many companies across a wide variety of industries are beginning the journey.
While it may seem daunting, there are incremental approaches that can be taken throughout the transformation. Specifically, process and quality improvement techniques are being evolved to support the customer journey and allow you to view internal organizational and marketing processes from the customer’s perspective: The Value Stream. Customer value streams represent all of the steps that go into delivering a product or service to a customer. Value stream mapping is a great exercise, because for many organizations, it’s the first time that they’re bringing internal groups together to discuss the different interactions (looking at it from an end-to-end process perspective, not through the lenses of organizational or functional silos).
Customer experience mapping takes a slightly different twist on the value stream approach. In this activity, the entire customer lifecycle is mapped, and all interaction points between the customer, company and suppliers are identified. Value stream mapping can be used after that exercise to identify and assess the current state of people, processes, technology and data associated with that customer experience. Making the customer experience journey visible helps the organization identify and prioritize areas for marketers to target to improve or streamline that experience. Taking a systems-view of customer experience is the first step towards creating relevant and profitable relationships between the customer and company throughout the entire customer lifecycle. Pretty soon you’ll be getting to: “Dear Customer: We know you! Welcome to the family. All the best, Marketer.”
