{"id":25307,"date":"2014-08-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/?p=25307"},"modified":"2024-07-24T15:09:50","modified_gmt":"2024-07-24T21:09:50","slug":"customer-centric-for-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/blog\/customer-centric-for-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Tips to be Customer-Centric for Growth: Reflections on GrowthBeat"},"content":{"rendered":"

I heard about Venture Beat’s GrowthBeat<\/a> conference a little last minute and made the decision to attend. \u00a0As a marketer and a founder of a platform often leveraged by marketers, I was interested to hear the latest on growth (who isn’t?) and connect up with other marketing minds in the tech community.<\/p>\n

GrowthBeat brought together some excellent speakers and panels — great case studies of how companies that have been willing to push the boundaries, iterate quickly, and leverage new tools are learning and finding success. \u00a0But a few themes resonated for me at the higher-level–themes that spoke to the future of marketing, the future of organizations, and the role of the voice of the customer to drive growth.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1. \u00a0Think\u00a0<\/strong>about customer journey management, not just\u00a0campaign management.<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, let me say I’ve always liked the word “journey.”\u00a0 It takes you to a ‘real’ place, away from a spreadsheet. \u00a0It’s what we all desire the numbers and the touchpoints we see every day to reveal for us – a path forward with our customer.<\/p>\n

CPG marketers have been thinking about this ‘journey’ forever. \u00a0The road to loyalty is paved along the purchase cycle–creating desire, helping shape decisions at the point of decide, and delivering a delightful product that brings the consumer back again. \u00a0They talk about the apertures where the consumer is most receptive to a message and adapting with her as her needs evolve. \u00a0They play the long game, making sure that all these messages, all this data about the consumer are in place to achieve something bigger – stronger brand equity and loyalty over time.<\/p>\n

This approach is absolutely relevant in B2B, and we actually have gotten to the point where we can do this well, using real-time analytics, automation, personalization, and listening tools. \u00a0We just have to make sure that these powerful tools still drive towards larger end goals with the customer.<\/p>\n

What does this mean for customer listening?<\/em><\/p>\n

Engaging with customers\u00a0in context, on their journey.<\/em>\u00a0 This is what we are driving for at Wootric. \u00a0The\u00a0end of Net Promoter<\/a> \u00a0“campaigns” \u00a0in favor of a\u00a0Net Promoter System where listening and engaging with customers is ongoing. \u00a0 Reaching your users\u00a0at different stages of their lifecycle, and driving loyalty by paying attention\u00a0to how their needs (and love for you) are\u00a0changing so you can continue to nurture and grow the relationship.\u00a0\u00a0It’s powerful learning. \u00a0It can make you overhaul\u00a0your product. It can make you change your sales approach. \u00a0It can help that customer feel human and heard, and choose to stay with you. \u00a0We’re all on the\u00a0journey.<\/p>\n

2) \u00a0Connect the dots around the customer.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ok, so it seems like a no brainer takeaway. \u00a0Don’t we always want to connect the dots? \u00a0Don’t we try and build our organizations to support that end goal? \u00a0Perhaps we do on some level, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy or successful. \u00a0Eventbrite spoke at the conference\u00a0about their successes aligning\u00a0marketing and product around a key customer insight to drive new growth. \u00a0It sounds simple, but this is something that many companies might struggle to achieve.<\/p>\n

In my CPG marketing\u00a0days, we had a connector function\u00a0– brand. Brand was where the voice of the customer<\/a> and related insights\u00a0converged\u00a0to inform product, marketing, distribution, and sales decisions. \u00a0Analytics tools were centralized under a team that spanned functions. \u00a0 But in tech, I see how those\u00a0dots don’t always connect. \u00a0Everyone is gathering data on the customer, and the information doesn’t always travel or centralize.<\/p>\n

And what happens? \u00a0When it comes time to bring it together we spend too much time figuring out the\u00a0“plumbing” and not enough time acting on the insights.<\/p>\n

[Note: Thanks to GrowthBeat speaker Jennifer Zeszut<\/a>\u00a0for the plumbing analogy – reminds me of my days working on the Liquid-Plumr brand]. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

What does this mean for customer listening?<\/em><\/p>\n

I think it means that even more companies will achieve growth by rallying around a few lead customer-focused metrics like NPS, CSAT and CES (Effort Score). \u00a0 I see it with Net Promoter Score (NPS) specifically — how this one metric resonates with Customer Success, Marketing, Product, User Experience, and the C-Suite. \u00a0 Today it’s often just one<\/em> of these functions that is\u00a0the true champion of NPS. \u00a0But the most successful organizations elevate NPS to a core group of corporate-wide metrics, and it creates incredible customer focus. \u00a0It connects the dots.<\/p>\n

Is NPS on your company’s dashboard or just your functional dashboard?\u00a0\u00a0Beyond the aggregate score, do the themes and user feedback\u00a0tie back to the broader\u00a0business for action? \u00a0Does NPS data\u00a0for a user\u00a0show up in your marketing campaign platform and\u00a0your Customer Success platform? \u00a0The power of the business tools out there today is their ability to integrate, and therefore help us<\/em> integrate — to be able to speak the same language of metrics aligned with the voice of the customer.<\/p>\n

3) \u00a0Disrupt Yourself. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This one is fun. \u00a0It’s a mindset shift for many of us who\u00a0mostly think about disruption in only the biggest sense\u00a0— industry disruption like Uber disrupting transportation\u00a0or\u00a0AirBnB disrupting hospitality.\u00a0 \u00a0What about in the context of your work…literally trying to shake up your own game? \u00a0What could you\u00a0do to turn your approach on its head? \u00a0Pretend to be your own consumer for a day. \u00a0Take yourself off the path for a second and think differently.<\/p>\n

What does this mean for\u00a0customer listening?<\/em><\/p>\n

It means that companies should be open to feedback that inspires or even requires big change. \u00a0Your customers may be telling you that it’s time to stir the pot, and they may even tell you how. \u00a0Go back and read some open-ended feedback in your NPS or other customer surveys. \u00a0Hear it, reflect on it, A\/B test it<\/a>. And don’t be afraid to address it head on.<\/p>\n

Jessica Pfeifer, Co-founder of Wootric, has on-boarded and coached over 100 businesses on the design and implementation of customer experience management programs, including Net Promoter Score.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I heard about Venture Beat’s GrowthBeat conference a little last minute, and made the decision to attend. As a marketer and a founder of a tool often leveraged by marketers, I was interested to hear the latest on growth (who doesn’t?) and connect up with other marketing minds in the tech community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":25308,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[575],"industry":[34,580],"class_list":["post-25307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-customer-experience","tag-wootric","industry-b2b","industry-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25307"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmoment.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=25307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}