{"id":5197,"date":"2019-07-18T07:10:45","date_gmt":"2019-07-18T12:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/?p=5197"},"modified":"2020-12-18T22:50:38","modified_gmt":"2020-12-19T03:50:38","slug":"youre-building-a-customer-centric-organization-so-wheres-the-customer-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/youre-building-a-customer-centric-organization-so-wheres-the-customer-department\/","title":{"rendered":"You’re Building a Customer-centric Organization, So Where’s the Customer Department?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Transforming a product-driven firm to a customer-driven enterprise is inevitable today in order to stay ahead in today\u2019s extremely competitive market.\u00a0 The days of mass marketing, mass media communications, and little-to-none direct interface with customers are long gone.\u00a0 The emphasis now should be on maximizing customer relationships and becoming customer-driven organizations rather than merely selling products.\u00a0 The technological advancements today offer potent tools for organizations to utilize in order to engage with the customers directly; gather and mine information; and tailor their products and services appropriately.<\/p>\n

Leading organizations are making huge investments in data analytics and transforming their strategies to focus on the customers\u2019 evolving needs. \u00a0They are striving hard to improve their customer retention and deepen their relationships utilizing rich customer insights, tailoring products according to the personalized needs of the customers, and presenting the offerings in a variety of store formats.<\/p>\n

The Customer Department<\/strong><\/h2>\n

To become customer-centric organizations<\/a>, companies need to transform their traditional marketing function into a new unit called the \u201cCustomer Department.\u201d\u00a0 The Customer Department<\/a> should be created to deliver maximum profits to the customers and nurturing customer relationships instead of pushing products.<\/p>\n

This necessitates transforming the organizational structure, culture, strategy, and reward programs in line with the shift in focus from managing transactions to cultivating customer relationships. \u00a0Specifically, there is a need to add the position of Chief Customer Officer (CCO)<\/a>\u2014under the CEO\u2014and various Customer Managers underneath the CCO.\u00a0 The roles and responsibilities of these positions should be:<\/p>\n

Chief Customer Officer (CCO)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The most prominent shift in a customer-centric organization is replacing the traditional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) role with the Chief Customer Officer (CCO) role. \u00a0Reporting to the CEO, the CCO is primarily responsible for devising and executing the customer relationship strategy, directing all the client-facing roles, and fostering a customer-driven culture in the organization. \u00a0The main tasks of the CCO position include ensuring smooth flow of customer information, increasing productivity utilizing various metrics, and regularly interacting with the customers to understand their concerns.<\/p>\n

Customer Managers<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In a customer-centric organization, the Customer Managers (CMs) are in charge of various customer segments.\u00a0 They are accountable for enhancing the value of a customer relationship by ascertaining customers\u2019 product needs.\u00a0 To make this role effective, there is a need to realign resources\u2014people, budgets, authority\u2014from product managers to the CMs.<\/p>\n

The main tasks of the CM position include defining customer needs, extracting and interpreting customer insights utilizing various sources\u2014e.g., mining customer forums, blogs, and online purchasing data\u2014, and striving to improve the lives of the customers.<\/p>\n

Additional Responsibilities of the Customer Department <\/strong><\/h2>\n

Customer-centric organizations make the Customer Department<\/a> accountable for some of the critical customer-facing functions which were once considered an integral part of the marketing department.\u00a0 These functions include:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)<\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Market Research<\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. Research & Development (R&D)<\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. Customer Service<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Customer Relationship Management (CRM)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    Traditionally, the CRM<\/a> function belongs to the Information Technology department owing to the technicalities involved in managing the CRM systems.\u00a0 The function demands evaluating the customer requirements and behaviors\u2014which is a core function of the Customer department alongside gathering and analyzing data necessary to execute a customer-development strategy.<\/p>\n

    Market Research <\/strong><\/h3>\n

    In customer-centric organizations, the Market Research function goes all the way from the marketing unit to other units that deal with customers\u2014e.g., Finance for payments, Distribution for delivery.\u00a0 These organizations take a more granular view of customers\u2019 behaviors, and gather and incorporate clients\u2019 feedback to further improve customer lifetime value and equity.<\/p>\n

    Research & Development (R&D)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    The R&D<\/a> function should also report to the Customer department, as, nowadays, the traditional R&D-driven new product development models are conceding to creative collaboration between the client (users) and producers.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a good idea anymore to pack tons of features into a product and cause feature fatigue to customers.\u00a0 What\u2019s more appropriate is to seek and incorporate customers\u2019 input into product features by involving them into the product design process.<\/p>\n

    Customer Service (CS)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    CS is another function that should be handled by the Customer department to guarantee quality of service and to nurture long-term relationships.\u00a0 This important function isn\u2019t worth outsourcing overseas as this often causes negative impact to the clients and organizations alike, due to poor customer service.<\/p>\n

    Interested in learning more about Customer Metrics, Customer Department, and Customer-centric Organizations<\/a>?\u00a0 You can download an editable PowerPoint on Customer-centric Organizations: The Customer Department here<\/strong><\/u><\/a> on the Flevy documents marketplace<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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    \u2013 Omar Hern\u00e1n Montes Parra, CEO at Quantum SFE<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Transforming a product-driven firm to a customer-driven enterprise is inevitable today in order to stay ahead in today\u2019s extremely competitive market.\u00a0 The days of mass marketing, mass media communications, and little-to-none direct interface with customers are long gone.\u00a0 The emphasis now should be on maximizing customer relationships and becoming customer-driven organizations rather than merely selling… You’re Building a Customer-centric Organization, So Where’s the Customer Department?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":5049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[114,1,408,81],"tags":[1680,1679,1678,1478,455,1677,824],"class_list":["post-5197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corporate-communications","category-general","category-management-leadership","category-strategy","tag-chief-customer-officer","tag-customer-department","tag-customer-metrics","tag-customer-relationship-management","tag-customer-service","tag-customer-centric-organization","tag-transformation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5197"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7883,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5197\/revisions\/7883"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}