Customer hubs: bridging the digital gap in service By Martin name for Hill-Wilson NewVoiceMedia for NewVoiceMedia
Why customer hubs? Wherever you may have advanced to as a competent omni-channel service operation, there is always an Achilles heel. This shows up in the negative impact of internal silos and competing agendas.
Sell more. Serve better. Grow faster.
‘As is’ customer journey maps often show how these remain a strategic weakness in terms of delivering real time responsiveness to customers. While ‘intended’ customer journey maps show digitally empowered customers have already reset the bar on acceptable customer experience. Can this gap be narrowed with yet another effort to become more efficient? Unlikely.
They draw together a number of competencies into a new form of working relationship. This includes the front office (sales, marketing and service), analytics, change management and collaboration. Together they become a hub of innovation, improvement and competitive responsiveness for the rest of the organisation.
Improve
Journeys
Innovate
Products / Services
Analytics CRM Capture
Engage
Marketing Sales Service
Voice of the Customer
People / Situations
Plan & Transfer
Customer hubs provide a low risk evolutionary path towards that goal.
Customer Listening
Ignore
Filter & Prioritising
Whether we like it or not, this way of doing things remains a deeply embedded part of corporate DNA. As evidenced by the stories we read all too often in social customer service threads. Achieving market leadership now requires a fresh approach to continuous improvement and service innovation: re-energised through new partnerships with customers and employees.
R E S P O N S E FR A M E WO R K
Organisations intending to prosper in digital marketplaces will need to adopt a new mind-set and leadership capabilities. And here is the real issue. How do they escape the days of siloed customer service and the convenient idea that the solely the service organisation was responsible for customer experience?
Collaboration
Aligning the Organisation
Generating Actionable Insight
Change Management
Ensuring the Benefits
A quick history lesson sometimes explains a lot Organisational design has pretty much followed the same paradigm since Frederick Taylor introduced so called ‘scientific management’ early in the 20th century. In the emerging world of industrialisation his focus on efficiency worked. He showed creating highly prescriptive job profiles and segmenting outcomes into simplified tasks allowed productivity to be scaled as industrialisation spread. We are still operating, by and large, to this model today. The blueprint for scaling the call centre industry has pretty much followed these design principles over the last thirty years and we are still stuck under its historic shadow. Functional silos hinder customer responsiveness in a new era which is characterised by not merely the complicated (which Taylor’s approach worked well for) but now the complex. Complexity is the result of decades of technology innovation that has adorned our connected world. Its speed and interconnectedness make organisational life complex and their combined effect is greater unpredictability.
This shows up in a number of ways: nnThe shortened lifecycle of brands, sustained success is much harder nnThe sudden appearance of market disrupters such as Uber and Airbnb, every market should expect their own version to challenge them nnThe unpredictable behaviour of customers, empowered to know brands often better than their makers and who are now setting the pace on innovation. If there is a common theme in all this, it is that innovation and adaptability are now crucial competencies for survival in this new type of market place. While many ‘digital agendas’ are being waved around as evidence of ‘doing something’, little has really changed since Taylors’ day. His vision for ever increasing levels of efficiency remains the corporate instinct whenever there is a need to get things back on track. Yet those attempts to re-establish momentum are losing their effectiveness as greater unpredictability becomes the norm.
Why customer hubs are needed now If we still choose to believe greater efficiency is the only medicine needed to cure all types of corporate cold, we remain ill prepared as organisations for re-invention. Trying to do something differently does not come easily. The evidence suggests this is true. In our design of change initiatives, the instinct is to ‘bet the house’ on large scale, linear change. Unfortunately formal research and our own direct experiences as employees show a high casualty rate from this approach. According to Harvard Business School professor John Kotter, this has resulted in an average failure rate of 70% ever since the 1970s! You can probably reference some current examples also destined to fall short of expectation. The reason they fail is due to unpredictability. In other words, they are not designed to be resilient to unforeseen changes or be able to adapt as a project is brought to life. This ought to teach us attempting to become a digital organisation holds the same odds of failure.
The innovation a Customer Hub introduces lies in the way these competencies are encouraged to interact and develop interdependent teamwork. This is in stark contrast to the more typical lack of co-ordination seen between functional teams.
This is where the customer hub comes in.
This is caused by the historic impact Taylorism has had on annual planning, budget allocation and KPIs. These are typically formed and validated within the context of functional remits. As opposed to a holistic view of the customer lifecycle or overall market trends which are best responded to in a co-ordinated way.
The operating model of a customer hub is not so much an investment in new technology as a re-organisation of the existing competencies an organisation possesses relating to customer engagement. As previously mentioned this can include marketing, sales, customer service, analytics, change management and collaboration.
‘As you goal them so they behave’ goes the saying. Customer hubs drive the quick wins available once motivation and focus are aligned across relevant teams. How does this work?
But what do you do? Previous experience tells you the chances are not good. However there is a need to sanction some kind of strategic response to all those changes now affecting ‘business as usual’ as described earlier. You still have to make that decision.
In a customer hub environment, teams (e.g. sales, marketing, service and analytics) keep producing their usual outcomes. However these efforts are combined. This means capitalising on opportunities while reducing duplication and wasted effort from previously siloed responsiveness to customers and competitors. As such customer hubs are immediately smarter and more productive than their functional equivalents. One of the reasons for the lack of alignment in organisations is the lack of proximity in working together. There is compelling research showing increased responsiveness and higher productivity through co-locating teams in the same environment.
How they work Customer hubs act as small scale incubators to encourage cross-department behaviours for the rest of the organisation to learn from. Functional teams send recruits to work within a customer hub where they are then trained to operate with a ‘digital’ mindset and skills before returning to their original teams. During that time they will have provided a point of contact with their old teams to strengthen the flow of ideas and activity between the hub and other lines of business. Customer hubs are designed as showcase environments in which everyone works together. A common theme is developed via daily briefings, dashboards and visibility of the ‘bigger picture’ introduced by the initial induction and then reinforced through daily coaching. Voice of the customer wallboards and customer journey maps are used to provide an ‘outside-in’ view to both hub members and visitors. They are then encouraged to engage with the hub as a source of live market feedback. In their most mature phase, a customer hub will be engaging across the whole customer lifecycle using sales, marketing and service competencies. Campaigns are co-ordinated whenever it makes sense to do so. Real time analysis and team based feedback provide the basis of a daily commentary between all teams, where opportunities and challenges are collectively explored. Analysts and change management teams augment the core focus on engagement with insight and change initiatives derived from the analysis. Thus failure demand is tackled, customer journeys are improved and fresh product and service innovation is developed.
Around all this activity is ongoing communication between the hub and the rest of the organisation. The hub therefore functions as a source of live insight into customer and competitor activity. In effect it enables an organisation to become truly customer focussed. Customer hubs become a ‘live theatre’ of customer engagement and a place in which constant innovation thrives. This means controlled experimentation on new channel mixes and new ways of engaging, as customers keep evolving their own digital behaviour. It is the place to discover your own version of Uber before a competitor does. However, the beauty of the customer hub model is that organisation can start with a more stripped down version. One that is realistic for them based on current competencies and priorities. This allows them to harness whatever existing assets are available and begin their journey without the time and effort involved in extended investment cases and the like. While cloud infrastructure is a natural partner for the duties of a customer hub it is possible to start with whatever is at hand and evolve over time to a more mature capability. The great news is anyone can start a hub tomorrow as part of their existing customer service operation.
About the Author Martin Hill-Wilson is a long standing member of the UK customer service community. He currently works as an independently under the Brainfood brand with a range of clients focussing on customer related strategy assignments. He also participates as conference speaker, workshop facilitator and blogger in his role of passing on best practice and next generation thinking. Current topics include social customer service and the broader issues involved in becoming a social business.
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