Digital enterprise transformation is changing the way that marketers are reaching customers. The new digital marketing world requires a strategic, integrated approach that considers how all internal teams, systems and workflows work together to meet the customer on their terms.
A holistic perspective of the customer journey and organisational targets, combined with vision and the willingness to shake the status quo, can drive digital leadership for the entire organisation. In other words, it is a day in the life of the ‘new’ Disruptor CMO.
There are three specific areas where the Disruptor CMO needs to focus for the most significant impact in driving digital leadership: Generation Customer, Cultural Alignment and CIO Partnership.
Generation Customer
It is vital to expand beyond brand and demand to customer experience. We are now in Generation Customer, which has seven key characteristics as follows.
- Access: customers want to be able to get information in any way they want – and fast. That is not limited to omni-channel support – they want to search and employ options on their own before they get into a conversation with a person.
- Personalisation: customers expect businesses to know about them from their very first interaction and do not want to be greeted as a stranger.
- Engagement: customers want engagement with sellers when they are ready. They do not want to waste time with premature conversations or having to search for the right company contact when close to a buying decision.
- Availability: buyers want the people they buy from to be as available to them as other people they know (which means sales representatives need to be available by whatever channel the buyers prefer to use).
- Speed: customers need to complete their purchases as quickly as possible (so process issues and tech glitches are a turn-off; automation is a high priority).
- Expertise: sales representatives must be subject matter experts. It is not about selling to a customer – instead, it’s about adding value to the decision process in order to get deals closed.
- Alignment: businesses need to focus on aligning internal processes and efficiencies around customer desires and needs. Businesses that serve Generation Customer understand how to complete this realignment in a way that is beneficial to the customer and the business.
Altogether, I would summarise ‘Generation Customer’ as digital enterprise transformation that puts people back in the center of real-time marketing campaigns and relationships
Cultural alignment
As with any process that rocks the status quo, there needs to be a plan to change and align the greater culture within the workplace. Employees know how to do their jobs the way they are already working; to start something new means getting them on-board with the vision and new way of doing things.
One of the keys to successful cultural alignment is to help employees remember that their role is important or their position would not be necessary. Each individual – whether it’s related to processing paperwork or answering a customer service question or developing a new workflow – plays a significant part in serving your customers. This is evidenced through an inside-out mindset, where most employees think ‘if I just push this project’ or ‘post that piece’ that they will have done their part. But it’s not enough.
Instead, the Disruptor CMO recognises and promotes that each individual contributes to the greater whole by having outside-in thinking: ‘we have customers with names and problems and here is what they need – let me get ‘that’ done faster so they get what they need more efficiently’. It is a mindset shift that the CMO is uniquely positioned to address given their vision, perspective and ability to help employees deliver an outstanding customer experience.
Empowering employees to be customer-centric in their thinking is one significant factor. Another is to consider and partner with the CIO to be effective in what they do every day – working with data, systems and workflows – to deliver great customer experiences.
The CIO is in charge of all culture-facing systems. Customer data and intelligence is gathered by the systems that are the domain of the CIO. By combining the knowledge sets and skills of the CMO and the CIO, cultural alignment becomes a natural process throughout an organisation.
CIO partnership
If today’s CMOs are going to understand who their customers really are, they need the CIO’s support to connect all the internal disparate systems that have a piece of the view of a customer and how they interact with the company. How often does your customer call in to your company? How often does your customer access the support site? How often are they requesting assistance from tech support? How often does your customer go to your store?
A great CMO needs to know how to get full picture of their customer and their buying journey. The CIO has the unique vantage point into how the customer moves through and completes their journey from beginning through the present moment.
Until recently, most of the emphasis on the customer journey has been limited to customer acquisition. That point is really only the beginning of the real relationship. What happens once the customer logs in post-acquisition is the make-or-break point in the relationship with that customer.
Marketing technology systems unfortunately tend to emphasise the beginning, or acquisition phase, of a customer relationship but do not address what happens once they become a customer. Today’s successful CMOs know that digital marketing has evolved to a new level and that the CIO, with their expertise and systems-orientation, is invaluable in supporting this wave of digital marketing.
Altogether, the new CMO is a visionary motivational leader, shock absorber and strategic go-to resource who can discover, build for and live on the leading edge all at the same time. Their success will foster the complete digital transformation of an organisation.
