Archivio: “amex”

Hai presente quando leggi un post che fa accendere una serie di pensieri vaganti fino a quel momento? Ecco, mi è successo con “Within Five Years Call Centres Will Be Run By Marketing” incrociato qualche giorno fa.

Si parte dai temi della consumerizzazione, riprendendo un dato di una ricerca svolta da Accenture nel 2012:

“At the turn of the millennium, companies spent twice as much on IT hardware per employee as consumers spent. By 2008, the two sides had reached parity.”

Solo che le opportunità per le aziende nel relazionarsi con questi “consumatori digitali”, sono complicate dalla multicanalità e da molteplici varianti di customer journey:

No surprises then we’ve invented the language of ‘cross-channel’ and ‘omni-channel’ to point beyond the utter failure of traditional point solutions to keep up. (…) This becomes all the more apparent when we look through the re-architecting eyes of CX (customer experience) professionals who map those wiggly customer journeys across the badlands of functional silos. They know that the mapping part of their mission is the easy bit. Bending the organisation like origami into an outside-in shape is quite another matter!

Situazione che merita una dose di sano realismo:

At the centre of the issue is a set of conflicting beliefs that keep organisations locked into a certain shape and pattern of behaviour. One belief holds there is more money in existing customers. The other bets on finding a constant stream of new ones. The former is what everyone goes to conferences to feel uplifted by; like a good Southern Baptist Sunday morning does for the soul. The latter is what is dictated by the governance of annual planning and the assumptions that sit behind ‘how to make the numbers this year’.

E l’attenzione ai nuovi clienti è suffragata dai dati:

At a global level we invest $500bn in Marketing compared with just $9bn in Service. (source: G-force 2013). And of that marketing budget, organisations spend just 2% on actively maintaining relationships with existing customers (source: Adobe Digital Index)

È Forrester con un report sulla customer experience  del 2013 che riporta l’attenzione sui nuovi customer journey e sulla loro rilevanza:

All those connected devices allow consumers to adopt new patterns of engagement that spread experiences across multiple touch points. However organisations are so behind the curve that consumers are slowed down and limited in their channel options. All of which degrades the brand’s value.  The answer is to plan and deliver seamless experiences starting with real time reporting of these new, multi device, cross channel customer journeys.

Poi l’articolo cita due ricerche (“Foresee Experience Index Q4 2013” e “Amex’s 2012 Global Customer Service Barometer”) che dimostrano quanto una buona customer experience genera un evidente aumento della propensione all’acquisto e dell’advocacy.

Da ciò ne deriva che il marketing deve fare un passo indietro:

Marketers needs to cultivate the habit of listening before talking. A habit that will take some practice before becoming natural since their current instinct is to conduct an ongoing monologue with customers.

Perché, come evidenzia anche lo studio JD Powers Survey svolto negli Stati Uniti (Q1 2013):

So many companies jump to the marketing piece, but consumers are looking more and more to social channels for support.

Ed il marketing può “pescare” dal customer support numerose opportunità e insight, riassunti in tre punti (rimando all’articolo per la loro descrizione):

  1. Customer Inspired Topics
  2. Expectation Management
  3. Service Triggered Stories

Questa la visione per un prossimo futuro:

All customer facing functions will operate under a single plan and budget. As by far the richest and most influential budget holder, Marketing has taken command under the united remit of ‘Customer Engagement’.

Ma se le organizzazioni vogliono davvero arrivare a questo, è adesso che devono iniziare a strutturarsi per abbattere gradualmente i silos, per coordinare i touchpoint interessati dal customer journey, per passare dal CRM al CEM (Customer Experience – o Engagement – Management).

Lo dimostrano anche alcune esperienze che stiamo facendo in OpenKnowledge insieme ai nostri clienti, nelle quali i processi di cambiamento e orientamento al consumatore, richiedono tempi oggettivamente lunghi e piani strategici e di implementazione approfonditi e trasversali rispetto ai dipartimenti dell’azienda. Cose non banali, ma decisamente necessarie.