A Wide Range of Perspectives, Best Practices and Practical Lessons for All

Recently at CRMA Atlanta (founding chapter of CRMA), we held a panel discussion on "Creating a Customer-Focused Culture through Process Improvements" featuring three Atlanta-based practitioners representing a cross section of industries and sectors. 

The three panelists were:

Joe Doyle, Administrator of the Governor's Office of Consumer Affairs for the state of Georgia

Michael La Kier, Director of My Coke Rewards at The Coca-Cola Company; and

Terry Trout, Vice President Customer Experience at Cbeyond

As you might imagine, there was a wide range of perspectives given the differing nature of these organizations and the customers they serve.  Being customer centric means different things for different companies, underscoring the idea that a company's customer strategy should be tailored specifically to that company, its customers, operations, economics and its competition.

For Cbeyond, it means refining and further developing its core competency of listening to its customers.  Cbeyond's business of serving small businesses and providing advanced telecommunications solutions is wrought with technical challenges.  

Listening to customers has enabled Cbeyond to create a culture of referrals, making it no surprise that their net customer growth was well over 20% last year.  After all, how many companies try to actually listen to customers as opposed to telling them what they "should" do? (Answer to that rhetorical question:  some do, most don't; social media makes this easier yet even then, most companies still don't actually listen.)

At The Coca-Cola Company, My Coke Rewards "is about putting a smile on customers' faces"...and being a "consumer's intuitive friend."  A brand wanting to be friends with consumers?  Smells like relationship marketing.

Part of the Coke customer strategy is, obviously, mass:  it's not about awareness it's about impressions and lots of them.  They deliver 2 billion (yes, with a B) consumer impressions on a daily basis.  If you're skeptical about that, think trucks, vending machines, signs, cups and, of course, advertising.  All of these impressions translate into customer opportunities, which is part of the company's current and ongoing challenge.

If there was a surprise during the discussion, however, it was the story that Joe Doyle told about the work he's led with the State of Georgia.  For all the hoopla about what President Obama is trying to do about making the federal government more transparent and "constituent-friendly," the real success story is right here in Georgia.

Joe Doyle, at the request of Governor Sonny Perdue, has transformed everything from the DMV to voter registration and made it all consumer friendly.  And easy.  He has taken the previously impossible task of getting a live human being on the phone to answer a question related to the State of GA and made it work to the point where Georgia's service quality is approaching levels seen by Nordstrom.

Importantly, he did this with a fairly simple strategy, starting with a top-down mandate from the Governor, illustrating the importance of top-down leadership in making progress on customer centricity.  With this mandate, Joe focused on three priorities, including being:

1. Principle centered
2. Customer focused
3. Results driven

For each of these, his approach was inside out, recognizing that it takes employees, and the right ones, to lead the effort to make things happen.  One of the common fallacies about customer loyalty is that it's not connected with employee loyalty.  WRONG.  Read Reicheld's The Loyalty Effect or Danny Meyer's Setting the Table and you'll see the clear, powerful correlation.   

Last, perhaps the most interesting anecdote came from Joe, who shared that before they got started with their work, employees at the DMV did not want to go out to lunch in their uniforms.  These employees were afraid of other diners knowing they worked at the DMV and what they might think (or do!).  This shows how acute the problem, and the opportunity were.

If you (or your employees) worry about running into your customers in a Waffle House, you'd better get to work.

While many managers and executives find the idea of CRM, customer loyalty and customer centricity a daunting challenge, the takeaways from this discussion were invaluable, if nothing else, because of their simplistic nature.  Putting customers at the proverbial "center of the page" is not rocket science.  As we learned from these successful practitioners, it starts with the basics and builds from there.

tags: best customers  blog entry  brands  customer loyalty measurement  customer marketing strategy  loyalty marketing  performance metrics  rdialogue  crm  crma  cocacola  coke  cbeyond  state of georgia  joe doyle  michael lakier  terry trout  my coke rewards  governor so  

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