Deliver A Premium Customer Experience By Collaborating Across Departments
Organizations across the board are seeing the need for increased collaboration across departments. In a recent study from Forrester, 86% of CMO’s surveyed said they were seeing much more consultation from their peers on business issues, and 76% saw their role increase in decision making. “The data,” says Forrester VP Laura Ramos, “shows more and more CMO’s are brought into to contribute towards the direction on the company.”
IHOP’s Kirk Thompson agrees. “There was a time when CMO’s were the advertising department, or trade shows, or PR, and marketing would lead those functional conversations. In my experience, this has evolved over the last 7-10 years. CMO’s now come in with bigger business chops and opinions because the organization realized that, at the end of the day, matters is what people buy, think of, experience, like, dislike or recommend. Everything is marketing because it’s about the customer, and connecting with the customer. Those functional silos have increasingly vanished and now it’s all about how we drive business growth together; one more purchase, one more experience, one more recommendation.”
Laura adds, “What marketing is good at is communication, and everyone is talking about ‘the customer journey.’ Understanding the day in the life of a customer is an instrumental tool.”
“Pause and trace the customer journey: where it starts, where it goes, where it ends – you want that information before you start making decisions.” Kirk continues, “Each departments functional items will throw out another data point – something that he or she knows better than anyone else at the table – that doesn’t come up because we’re working on our own areas. When you define enough unique factors of why they buy – generational, or cultural, or age, or income, or geographic – you identify quickly there are different people and different habits: moms, kids, or reluctant shoppers. This makes you think differently about it, and it drives everything.”
Download A View From The Top: The Evolution of Marketing and the Customer Journey by author Kevin Popović.
Based on Incite Summit West, this book examines current thinking from marketing leadership from some of the largest brands. The contributors were senior level and accomplished, but most importantly, that they are all very active in the development and delivery of the work on behalf of their organizations. These speakers are not sitting in the ivory tower, they are leading their troops into battle – and they are winning.