Chapter
01 Put the customer first: if you don’t, someone else will
The web changed everything, for ever
Always start with the customer. Otherwise, how can you possibly know what you need to do to be successful?
If you can’t beat them, join them: it’s okay to mimic successful businesses
Think of yourself as a customer service business that just happens to sell stuff
Think customer empowerment: what can you do at every step of the way to truly empower your customers?
Always empower your staff to deliver the right experience for customers
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
02 Marketplaces and disruptors are eating your lunch (taking your market share)
Let’s start with the threat element
How not to respond to the threat of Amazon and other marketplaces
FMCG and CPG brands find new routes to market
Exclusive products can help you to defend your position
Listen to the voice of the customer
Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face: marketplaces are an effective route to market
Deliver a seamless multichannel experience
Consider offering an Amazon Prime-type delivery proposition
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
03 Removing friction from the customer’s journey: getting the basics right in travel, retail, food and beverage, leisure and financial services
The pace of change and disruption is astonishing
Let’s start with the travel and holiday sector
Health and leisure sector
Newspaper and media sector
Utilities and telco sectors – the next to be disrupted?
Walk through the customer’s journey – regularly
Rethink your customer value proposition
Adopt customer-facing KPIs
Learn from other verticals
Train your colleagues to remove friction from the customer’s path to purchase
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
04 How to be disruptive in your own business
Always start with ensuring you get the basics right
Let customers help define how you might improve things for them
Leverage disruptive thinking to drive innovation
Create a culture of innovation
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
05 The role of the store and its new footprint
From Apple to M&S: instore experiences are polarizing
Stores: to be or not to be, that is the question
Think acquisition, conversion and retention
Continually review how you might remove friction for the customer through all channels and touchpoints
Think about how you merchandise and provide discovery and access to products
Leverage digital technology in the changing room to drive sales
Use mobile tills to remove friction and drive engagement at the point of sale
Capture Net Promoter Scores instore (and through all channels)
Drive product and brand immersion
Extend your range and offer through the endless aisle
Add more benefits to customers above simple points-based loyalty
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
06 We live in a hyper-local world where mobile is key
Always think mobile first
Balance the approach to apps versus mobile web
Leverage iBeacons and free Wi-Fi to drive engagement instore
Review our best-practice checklist for apps
Plan for conversational commerce
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
07 Organizational design to put the customer first
So, who actually owns the customer?
How embedded in the business does digital need to become?
Digital transformation of the organization
Prioritizing teams for digital upskilling
The roles required to drive change
Develop new roles that can help drive customer-centricity
Give someone ownership of the customer and their experience, and crucially the mandate to deliver the change required to become a customer-first business
Create a customer-first culture throughout the entire business
Create a cross-functional team with accountability for delivering customer first
Adopt a two-tier organizational structure in areas such as IT – one focused on BAU, one on the road map for new developments
Ensure you have a leader who understands what putting the customer first really means
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
08 Cultural change – must be top down and bottom up
The importance of culture
The cultural shift from a digital perspective
A truly customer-centric culture and ethos
Use the 6Vs framework to develop your customer-first business culture
Surprise and delight customers
Lead by example: culture comes from the top
Create a cross-functional team to ensure your culture is maintained
Always be fully transparent with customers
Develop a marketing plan to communicate your culture to both external and internal customers
Culture eats strategy for breakfast – never forget that
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
09 Less about corporate, more about social responsibility
Retailers must get their act together
Millennials’ priorities and how big brands are meeting them
It’s not all about profit
Create a long-term plan and clear objectives
Inauthenticity can destroy a brand
Drop the word corporate and focus on social responsibility
Implement a code of conduct for colleagues, suppliers and partners
Make purchasing decisions that put sustainable products first
Support your local community
Encourage your customers to take part in your CSR initiatives
Implement an EP&L – be clear about the value of being socially responsible
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
Why become a service provider?
Maintain your relevance by providing services
Subscription is delivering a service
Which service would work best for you?
Can you make customers’ lives easier by enabling them to pay a subscription or for auto-replenishment of big, bulky or frequently used products?
Enable customers to interact with a live chat service online
What services can you offer that enhance the experience of the customer buying from you? Can you help them build, install and maintain what they have purchased?
Ensure that there is clear ‘shop my way’ messaging in all channels and touchpoints
Use the service framework created
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
11 Winning the hearts and minds of customers in international markets
Consumers are happy to buy across borders
What are the opportunities offered up by internationalization?
Current approaches to internationalization
US brands need to travel better
The 11Cs of internationalization
Choose the right country to expand into
Understand local market consumer behaviour
Localize customer communication
Localize for culture and climate
Offer localized customer service
Understand the value chain and proposition of your competitors
Offer the appropriate currency and payment types
Know what good conversion looks like and how to deliver it
Consider the most appropriate channels to market
Crew: consider staff resourcing and structure for internationalization
Determine how you will gain trust in new markets
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
12 Customer-centric marketing communications
Growth hacking in more detail
Capabilities and skills required in modern-day marketing
Don’t underestimate the value of viral marketing
Proximity marketing: get closer to your customers at the ‘moment of intent’
‘See now, buy now’ fuels instant gratification
Attribution should lead to integration of teams and activity
Ensure you have the right mix of digital and brand-building and awareness activity
Drive the attribution of all marketing activity: ensure that you have the right mix of skills, and ideally in a more integrated and less siloed structure
Make sure to focus on customer retention as well as acquisition
Be clear about the customer’s journey and where the owned, bought and earned touchpoints with the customer come into play and what your approach will be for each
Think about growth hacking and how you can leverage viral marketing to more cost-effectively spread the word
Look at leveraging proximity marketing to provide a better instore experience for customers
Focus on experiential marketing as this will drive the engagement and involvement with your brand, products and services
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
13 A new framework for the marketing mix: the Customer Mix or 6Ws
Is the Marketing Mix still meaningful?
Be a victim or a victor – you decide
Introducing the Customer Mix
Adopt the Customer Mix – live it, breathe it, integrate its approach into all that you do
Throw away the Marketing Mix, it is 20 years past its sell-by date
Focus on ‘what’s next’ for the customer
Understand this: if you don’t look after your customers, someone else will – it’s a battlefield out there. Do you have a plan to win the war?
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
14 Strategic social media and its importance to the whole organization
PR and influencer marketing
Innovation and product development
Know the channels that serve you best
Treat social media as a strategic driver of opportunity for your business – it is not only a promotional vehicle
Resource social media effectively – don’t just give it to the youngest person in the room to look after!
Ensure that levels of service and response times are appropriate
Don’t be anti-social – social commerce is a tangible opportunity
Think of the opportunities and the potential threats you are not currently addressing as a result of still treating social media as a tactical promotional tool
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
15 The impact of AI, augmented virtual reality, machine learning and voice on customer experience
AI is the fourth industrial revolution
AI drives multichannel engagement and supply chain efficiencies
AI delivers deeply personalized product recommendations
Think about where AI can improve your value chain
Leverage AI to improve customer service
Use AI to deliver more personalized experiences
Don’t ever forget that you need a fall-back position when AI cannot answer the customer’s question!
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
16 The rise of the ‘ations’ in driving differentiation
Me-ization/personalization
Retailers are slowly starting to get personal
Deliver personalized experiences for core customer segments
Provide the ability for customers to customize their products
Consider the opportunity to create more premiumized products or services
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
17 Understanding customer behaviour: turning data into actionable insight and the key drivers for customer relationship management
Clean up your act, or at least your data
GDPR: General Data Protection Regulation
ROI = return on involvement
Move from customer transactional management (CTM) to CRM
All consumer sectors should leverage customer sentiment
Build a relationship with customers, don’t pay lip service
Understand the hierarchy of CRM and how it helps customers
Segment your customer base – there is no such thing as ‘the customer’
Measure and work towards the lifetime value of your customers
Build a list of what is important to your business as actionable insight in order to improve performance
Test and learn: fail fast, learn what works best and continue to improve it. Learn what doesn’t work and don’t do it again!
Loyalty is not a given, it has to be earned
Over to Professor Malcolm McDonald
18 So where do you start to transform your business?
Customer-centric transformation journey framework
100 practical ways to improve customer experience
100 Practical Ways to Improve Customer Experience
：Achieve End-to-End Customer Engagement in a Multichannel World
Disclaimer: Any content in publications that violate the sovereignty, the constitution or regulations of the PRC is not accepted or approved by CNPIEC.
