I first came across the problem of internal silos being a barrier to customer experience when trying to implement marketing automation within the organisation I was working in 2013.
The promise of marketing automation was creating personalised email journeys for customers by using behavioural triggers. Our business case was that we would use marketing automation to increase customer acquisition, retention, and growth. We would increase customer acquisition by designing personalised nurture streams that would identify when someone was ready to receive marketing messages and sales messages. Existing customers would also receive personalised journeys that we expected would result in higher engagement and increase lifetime value by using data to inform when they were ready to donate again. The vision was to eventually use a next best offer model to further optimise customer growth.
Everybody agreed this was a strong business and aligned with the organisation's strategy. Then things became more complicated. Someone from ICT asked about the software and how this didn’t fit within their roadmap. Then the communications team asked about how marketing automation would be used to deliver messages from their teams. Marketing supported the business case but also asserted their control over the project as their team leads owned acquisition, retention and growth. Our digital team didn’t disagree with any of this and assumed we’d collaborate with other departments but felt we were best placed to lead the project. The result was the business case was put aside and it would take a few more years to develop marketing automation as a capability.
How silos impact customer experience
Despite all agreeing marketing automation would offer a superior customer experience, developing this capability required new systems, processes, and skills. The silos that once helped us operate efficiently meant we didn’t know how to work together on this new type of project.
The challenge is each department works towards their agreed priorities, lacking the capacity and capability to collaborate on new opportunities. This is a critical issue when a business decides to become customer centric.
Every customer experience has two components:
- Front of house: things the customer directly interacts with such as a retail space, website, or staff member.
- Back of house: things the customer doesn’t see or interact with but enable the front of house interactions, such as technology, processes, or policies.
It’s hard to improve the front of house experience without also improving the things that enable that experience. Doing so successfully means having departments working together to improve a specific customer experience.
In the decade since first coming across this problem when trying to create personalised customer journeys using marketing automation, I’ve since seen the same problem time and time again when working with organisations trying to improve their customer experience.
Without a whole business approach it’s impossible to get serious about offering a seamless customer experience.
A whole of business approach to customer experience
The bad news is that there’s no silver bullet to breaking down silos and becoming a customer centric organisation. The good news is there are enough examples of leading practice to help inform the best approach for your organisation.
Start with strategy
The decision to become customer centric needs to be a key––if not central––component of the business strategy. If it’s not then there’s no mandate for teams to change. Customer facing teams can still do what they can to improve the customer experience but efforts will be limited by their ability to influence enablers.
I believe that when people are given the choice we choose to do business with the brands that offer the best experience. Those who commit to customer centricity share this belief and see experience as the ultimate differentiator and driver of business success.
A good local example of this is Telstra, which was once the pinup child for a terrible experience. This sentiment was summed up in The Age back in 2007 in their article, Why we all hate Telstra. “To most Australians, Telstra seems like a big, unelected government.” Telstra undertook a sustained transformation focused on improving its customer experience and are now widely seen as experience leaders within their category. The net-promoter-score is up in most areas and their share price has outperformed the market.
Making such a significant change is hard, especially in such a large organisation with the added pressure that comes with being publicly listed. But it has to start with strategy.
Manage change
Managing change that comes with a new strategy should go without saying but I’ve found this isn’t always the case. In recent years I’ve seen department leaders each tasked with implementing a new strategy without consideration for change management. It’s common for staff to support the new strategy in principle but are left asking what the business wants them to do differently. Each leader does what they think is best but the result is often people working the way they’ve always worked (but we all say customer centric more in meetings).
Being customer centric means breaking through old silos by implementing new ways of working. This change needs to be managed well. From communicating new behaviours–– specific changes the organisation wants to see––and then reinforce the new behaviours until they’re just the way we work.
Employee experience is a lynchpin
When implementing a customer centric strategy, it’s important to start with the employee experience. In plain terms, this usually means making sure everyone knows what the objective is, what they need to do to contribute to this, and having what they need to deliver. Leaders should be clear about what customer centricity means for their teams, including what skills, processes, and systems will support the shift. In nothing else, being clear about how, when, and where customers are asked for input.
Know when to ignore your customers
Many organisations mistakenly believe that being customer centric means always deferring to customer preferences. I worked with an organisation beginning their customer-centric journey where staff supported the strategy, but were unclear about its practical implementation. Their default response was to consult their newly formed customer panel about every planned activity.
Understanding your customers is essential, as is co-designing products and services with end-users. However, seeking customer input on every decision is misguided and commercially risky.
Being customer-centric means understanding and delivering on higher-order goals and intentions—not seeking customer approval for every organisational action.
Customer experience priorities are business priorities
Where customer experience programs work best is when customer journeys are mapped and the organisation addresses priority opportunities (often pain points) as a whole of business priority. When the first is addressed the journey map is updated and the next priority selected. Teams build momentum over time and eventually start planning experiences forwards.
The journey mapping stage also allows the organisation to get a sense for what back of house enablers will be needed and have the chance to sequence these. A new CRM for example might take a year or more to deliver. It might however need to be sequenced early to unlock significant improvements in the customer experience.
Structure is the last problem to solve
People, resources, incentives, and measures are all more important than organisational structure when it comes to customer experience. Good processes and ways of working also mean you might not need to change structure. But you might…
Each structure option has its pros and cons and there’s no single best approach for a business. When planning the implementation of a customer centric strategy, it’s best to look at the options and decide what’s best for your operational context.
Some examples might be organising around Scaled Agile for Enterprise (SAFE) principles, using a centre of excellence model and adding a CX department or team, perhaps a hybrid solution best suited for your team. My best advice is to change your structure as little as possible and as much as necessary.
