Chapter 4: How You Work
Uniting disparate departments is an important part of customer centricity. But it's only part of it. Technology generates the reach and scale you need to make customer centricity an act of business. In fact, all businesses are becoming technology companies, using digital platforms to enable more personalised customer experiences at scale.
Let’s be honest, though. How much of your current IT spend is focused on keeping the lights on, compared to investing in and delivering this vision? Is it 50%, 60%, or even 70%?
You’re not alone. Most IT organisations are on a journey to flip the cost pyramid from keeping the lights on to investing in bigger-picture innovation.
For most businesses, this flip starts with replatforming in the cloud, typically with global, hyperscale providers. Here, leaders develop modular architectures with reusable, modular data sets and processes. The next layer of digitisation is around business practices. An API strategy that enables an application network with massive reuse becomes a powerful part of this future-fit, lean technology stack. This is where Salesforce focuses with a complete strategy around customer relationship management (CRM), integration, and data.
Moving away from legacy technology debt has never been more important. The role of IT is quickly evolving from managing backlogs and dealing with frustrated business partners to enabling business teams to compose low- and no-code apps in service of customer outcomes. IT leverages this leaner technology stack to experiment faster and deliver more effectively on the ever-changing needs of the business.
- Ensure everyone believes in a customer-centric vision.
- Work across functions to collaboratively define a clear vision and strategy.
- Ensure that everyone within the organisation can communicate the vision, inspire action, and align projects to the outlined strategy.
- Help employees reach their full potential.
- Equally invest in employee experiences to allow for cross-team collaboration from anywhere that improves the customer experience.
- Apply incentives to individual behaviors that drive the business goals.
- Encourage groups with different expertises to solve customer problems together.
- Empower teams to act in the customer’s best interest.
- Define your brand values and company culture in order to empower all employees to suggest improvements and better the company.
- Give teams the authority to act in the customer’s best interest. Include partners to help you drive connected customer experiences and increase value to customers and employees.
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State of the Connected Customer
Create your Customer 360 in two simple steps.
