Changes in Corporate Culture - The Key to Delivering Great Customer Experiences in the 21st Century

The legendary Steve Jobs, the former co–founder and CEO of Apple Inc., the world’s largest IT company, once said, “get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.” This can by and large be taken as a mantra by corporate organizations looking to deliver great customer experiences in the 21st Century.

A lot of people interpret Steve’s philosophy as being dismissive of customer preferences and feedback, which used to be the holy–grail for organizations looking to bring out new and innovative products to differentiate themselves in the market and stay ahead of competition. A contrarian view however exists which says that what he actually wanted to convey was the need to understand the latent needs of a customer. That a customer often does not know what he wants unless he experiences it. For that to happen, you had to get as close to the customer as probably their loved ones.

A quote from another legend Henry Ford, who developed the world’s first mass affordable car, effectively kills it.  ‘If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse’,” he once famously said.

Customer experience in the 21st century cannot be rooted on just being sporadic and transactional in nature. In this era of all pervasive technology, customers are leaving behind digital footprints everywhere. Even when they are not explicitly sharing feedback, wearable wireless devices like fit–bit for example, are capturing significant amounts of data which can help organizations analyse and anticipate their latent needs. This can effectively help them get ‘closer than ever to your customers’ as Steve Jobs said.

Therefore, to deliver the best customer experiences in the 21st Century, it is imperative that the existing corporate culture undergoes a fundamental change in character. The challenge is to create a single view of the customer in order to anticipate and imagine their requirements and be able to devise personalized experiences at multiple customer touch–points that exist today.

Take for example how the healthcare sector is changing? Today there is much talk of concepts like preventive care, population health management and wellness management. A far cry from the days when the interaction of customers and prospective patients with healthcare providers used to be limited to diagnosis of disease symptoms and its cure. So post your discharge from a healthcare facility, it is likely these days that you not only get constant reminders on your ‘connected’ device on medicinal intake and refills, but timely information on aspects like periodic online consultation with healthcare practitioners, changing diet plans basis your dietary preferences and required lifestyle changes – all basis your stage of recovery, timely reminder and schedules for home-pick up of blood and other samples for periodic testing etc.. This has given an entirely new dimension by way of a more complete and holistic experience with your healthcare provider.

Similarly, in the retail sector, it is becoming increasingly common, that digital footprints that buyers leave behind while shopping are analysed, resulting in personalised offers being created and shared with customers to enhance their experience and ‘connect’ with the online or brick and mortar retailer. So, you certainly feel great, if that pair of Rayban Aviators that you have been longing and searching for, for the past year and unable to buy because of budgetary or other constraints, is delivered to your doorstep on your Birthday as part of the annual shopping points that you might have collected. That is the kind of 21st Century customer experience that customers today are starting to take for granted and corporates have no choice but to adopt and align with them.

Effective use of cutting–edge technology solutions is just one important aspect of the 21st Century customer experience paradigm that corporate organizations need to incorporate going forward. An equally important aspect however, is bringing about a change in the organizational culture, the way corporate leadership and employees have been approaching customer experience all this while. Corporate leadership across the board needs to move beyond legacy customer relationship management technology to begin with. Admittedly, it is a journey beyond their comfort zones, but it has to happen for them to stay relevant, given a recent survey found out that only 10% of business and IT executives felt that their investment in CRM resulted in meeting or exceeding organizational targets. They have to start thinking on the lines of evolved and all–encompassing digital technology interventions at each and every touch–point of the customer experience life–cycle.

Take the example of the new marketing approach of Storyscaping – a term mooted by two senior executives of a leading digital marketing company and published in a book by the same name. It refers to the bringing together of ‘the power of stories with the excitement and experiences to create immersive worlds where brands and consumers connect.’ The approach, application and philosophy of Storyscaping combines brand purpose, consumers’ emotional desires and behaviour, product positioning and the application of an ‘Organizing Idea’ i.e. a statement of action that defines what the brand must do to change consumer behaviour and the consumer experience. This new approach has revolutionised customer experience in the 21st century and is an example of the application of digital technology to create a whole new ‘connect’ with customers. Adoption of such new age technology applications might take time and inflict considerable pain on traditional marketing departments, given it is a huge deviation from their comfort zones, but corporates will do well to adopt them or risk being left behind in the growth curve.

Over and above corporate leadership, employees too need to undergo a change in the way they approach customer experience. They need to appreciate that today customer experience predates product or service purchases and sustains far beyond a simple after sales service. In fact, it sometimes nowadays initiates even before the design phase of a product. So employees will do well to remember that delivering great service begins with transforming themselves into brand advocates first.

Undoubtedly, the future of customer experience lies in establishing synergies between customer service, employee satisfaction and the company culture, which reflects seamlessly and uniformly across multiple customer interaction channels. The customer today does not want just good service, but also wants to be the influencer and advocate for their favourite brands. Organizations which take cognizance of all these aspects are more likely to prosper in this century.

Karan Puri
Corporate Vice President & Global Head Consumer
& Commercial Services, HCL Technologies