By Mark Kersteen - May 23rd, 2014
Three top marketers, three huge brands, three very different sets of customers. They've all faced unique challenges, but they've also each found ingenious ways to get their organizations to put customers first.
SAP CMO, Jonathan Becher, along with Yahoo! SVP of Brand Creative Bob Stohrer and Align Technology CMO John Graham, sat down last week at Incite Summit West to talk about the ways they're fostering customer-centricity.
Don’t they have like 100,000 employees? How did you talk to all of them?
SAP, the multinational business software company, is in the process of completely changing how they interact with their customers.
“I remember when I showed up for my first big marketing meeting, someone said, ‘I talked to Large Company, and here’s what they want.’ I asked, ‘Don’t they have like 100,000 employees? How did you talk to all of them?’”
“We came from the mentality that talking to the CIO or the CEO, or whoever purchases the software, was more important than talking to whoever ended up using it.”
“Because so much of our software is for front of office use—things people like us use every day—we had to change our definition of customer. We recognized that big glass buildings don’t buy software, people do.”
For Align Technology, creators of Invisalign, it’s also been a matter of shifting perspective. John: “I’d say product is what we’re best at, but I think the exciting part for me has been watching and really seeing the customer infuse its way into every part of the conversation.”
And for Yahoo!, it’s all about personalization: “For us, we really think about three things. Building great products and making great content are two, but at the end of the day, making that content and product experience personalized is the third and most important thing we focus on.”
When marketing talks, nobody has any idea what they’re saying.
Now, each company is trying different strategies:
“At SAP, it really started with the language we used. A couple years ago, we called our most successful product set ‘Business User Solutions’. I can remember the campaign that launched right before I got my job, it was called ‘Get on the B.U.S.’ I know, very creative.”
“Nobody self-identifies as a business user. That’s an internal term. [...] So, to get people to think differently, we abolished acronyms.”
“At one point, we brought a number of customers in, and had them sit in the corner at one of our staff meetings. Every ten-minutes, we’d say ‘What did we just talk about?’ and they’d go, ‘No idea.’ It was eye-opening.”
John at Align had a similar story.
“We did a survey within our company, and the results were essentially: ‘When marketing talks, nobody has any idea what they’re saying.’ It was really powerful, and it’s one of the things I coach my team on when they’re going to outside audiences. When you leave the safe zone of the marketing department, you have to get rid of the Align talk. You have to talk simply, like you would to your parents.”
I’m worried about some of the language I hear around customer decision journey.
In order to improve customer experience, Bob Stohrer at Yahoo! has been paying special attention to every exchange they have with their customers:
“One of the things we talk about at Yahoo! is how every interaction elicits a reaction. Meaning, we have to know that, anything we do, no matter how small it may seem, could be incredibly meaningful to our consumer.”
It comes before everything else, even if it means making changes that might seem backwards.
“We now take 90 percent of our inbound customer care requests by phone. Having online tools wasn’t working; we weren’t getting a feedback loop off that, and we weren’t satisfying our customers. With that shift, what we’re getting is better intelligence. When you combine that with all the research and data you’re seeing, you start to paint a more convincing picture.
But he warned marketers about how to use that information.
“You can get so nuanced in your marketing that, all of the sudden, you’ve lost the conversation. You really have to balance narrowcasting with consumers with your overall brand’s trajectory and what you want consumers to think about your brand, because at the end of the day you don’t want to be too fragmented.”
Jonathan Becher also raised some reservations about the way marketers are approaching customer experience.
“I’m worried about some of the language I hear around customer decision journey. It’s great for all of us to acknowledge the funnel isn’t linear, but everything I hear still feels like it’s oriented around the transaction. As if the one time event is still the thing we all care about. I thought we learned our lesson a decade ago, that it’s not about the transaction, it’s about the lifetime relationship.”
We’re marketers, and we’re supposed to be good at storytelling.
They all agreed that a less transactional experience was necessary to put into place in your organization, and even had tips on selling it to your CEO.
“I stop talking, and play the tapes,” said John from Align, “Then you watch the boardroom, and you ask if this is the company you want to be. You’d be amazed how that awakens people to say ‘You know, we have to do something’.”
If all else fails, it comes down to old-fashioned storytelling.
“I remember that we’re marketers, and we’re supposed to be good at storytelling.” Said Jonathan Becher, “If you can’t get the customer to tell your story for you, and if the people you’re talking to aren’t analytic, tell better stories.”
Three top marketers, three big brands, and three very different ways to make customers the axis on which the rest of your organization turns.
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