Mens Et Opera - Reloaded

For readers who might be interested, I thought it would be useful to gather together in one place links to various posts on Omnichannel and customer-centricity. On to the posts. It's the customer, stupid! The "relational gap" in the Australian Retail sector  The misleading Omnichannel...thing Business as a Calling: How Catchoftheday and Tinyme fulfill their call Omnichannel doesn't necessarily mean customer happiness Does Product-Centricity conflic with Customer-Centricity? Drop Shipping: the competitive advantage of pure players over bricks and mortar What's customer experience, anyway? "The Company is like a verb whose subject is the customer" Enjoy!

Over my LinkedIn blog , I posted my point of view on the recent " Technology and Growth " round table held by The Australian Financial Review and KMPG . One of the things that I tried to illustrate was the transformational nature of business initiatives that put customer outcomes at the heart of every process. I lamented the excessive focus on data and technologies as if they were the silver bullets to cure the current sluggishness of the digital growth in Australia. The rational of identifying the core processes lies in their strategic contribution in achieving the organization's mission and vision by focusing on the critical business drivers.  Data and information are paramount in relevantly serving customers and stakeholders and they play a pivotal role in discovering and executing key business process. It's often said that data is a strategic asset of any organization. True. Very true. Similarly, and I believe more fundamentally, processes are a strategic as...

According to the authors, convergence is the key to reaching customers in the new world of digital communication. If you are like me interested in how digital innovation is transforming businesses at their core, this book is for you.    Convergence is all about breaking down silos to build a more cohesive organisation to respond to the exigencies of the new and empowered customer. The authors make a strong argument against the traditional way of structuring marketing, technology, and creativity.  They no longer must be separate worlds, speaking different languages, using different kinds of talent. For businesses to succeed today, this has to change. Their argument revolves around five fundamental principles: 1.   Customer centricity. Instead of paying lip service to it, the authors actually point out that customer-centricity inevitably lead to disruption. Most organizations are beholden to some age-old organizational chart and not structured around th...

I have noted that the (right) emphasis on customer-centricity is drawing attention away from the other fundamental constituent of most businesses: the product! This should not be the case. I had an engaging conversation with an industrial designer yesterday. It is amazing how much of their work is focused on customer expectations and product design to match those expectations. Retailers should learn a lesson here in a multi-disciplinary approach to break down silos, extend their market share and their share of customer. In her words: Product Centricity is your strategy to design, manufacture, distribute to people who needs your product. Customer Centricity is your strategy to satisfy individual customers by meeting as many of his/her needs as possible. End quote. This point has been greatly exemplified by Don Peppers , founder of Peppers&Rogers Group. Here is his take: [It] should be clear that customer centricity doesn’t actually conflict with product centricit...

Today consumer’s behavior is dictating the speed and efficiency with which retailers must meet their needs. Most retailers have been grappling with the so called ‘Omnichannel strategies’ – models to deal with the many critical moments when customers interact with the organization's channels and its offerings. This is how retailers want to play the game. However, I think that in trying to solve a real problem their antidote seems worse than the problem itself. For example, the narrow focus on maximizing satisfaction across all channels has diverted attention from a more important picture: the customer’s end-to-end journey. In other words, the focus is on the touch-point itself and not on the overall experience resulting in a less customer-centric strategies.   And this is the big question: how do you want customers to feel when they are in your store, on your website, reading your flyer, or just on the phone with customer reps? I have already pointed out that customers...

The digital age is here to stay and it’s making our world more hybrid than ever.  The line between digital and physical are being blurred by technology. After almost a couple of decades, you’d think that online would have relegated to the store to a secondary experience.  That’s not the case, not by a long shot.  Online AND Offline Granted, since its inception, eCommerce sales growth has been heady and will continue to be. However, the same technology that permits such success is transforming bricks and mortars inside out. To understand this, you need look no further than Burberry stores, whose retail model is becoming a gold standard for fashion retailers. To illustrate: clothing in the store is embedded with chips which can be read by screens and mirrors using radio-frequency identification technology. When a customer walks into a changing room holding a jacket, one of the mirrors might respond by turning into a screen showing images of how it was worn on the cat...