Noesium | Integrative Digital Thinking

This is #1 post of the “Social Communication Ecosystem” series.
As a starter, I am focusing on “Communication Ecosystem”, without the “Social” element.

Customers interact with a company in a variety of ways -
an organization’s different functional units must work together to
deliver a synchronized brand experience.

When it comes to communication, it is common for companies to have separate teams/people who handle website, print, phone, email, events, and the latest addition, Social Media.  All these work together to support core business activities including R &D, product development, sales, customer service and more.

Such functional structure and the corresponding roles, responsibilities and accountability, are pivotal for operational efficiency and resource management. If you are a small company, one person may wear a few hats; if you are a corporation, you have teams plus third party suppliers on a larger scale. Regardless, functional units make up the engine and connect the company with their customers via various channels, both online and offline.

Unfortunately, this siloed structure can also translate into a broken experience in the eyes of customers. Think of the frustration of being bounced from one department to the next during a customer support call, floor sales assistants who are unaware of web-based promotions, or product feedback that fell on deaf ears….and you get the idea of how a broken Social Communication Ecosystem can instantly result in a negative customer experience (I’d like to call this “schizophrenic brand experience”.

So how to balance the need for silo-based efficiency and the “holistic” experience demanded by the audience?  How to string together different pieces across the ecosystem?

It starts with a Collaborative Customer-Centric Culture
Would an assembly line work if units compete to produce the largest volume of their individual parts?  Of course not. When functional units are designed or encouraged to work separately and in competition, customers know, customers suffer and customers leave.

Successful leaders understand that businesses are fundamentally a value exchange between a company and its customers, and the company culture is reflected in the communication ecosystem as experienced by the customers. Let’s face it, customers don’t care where a brand is, as long as they receive values, get what they want and benefit from the interactions.

To sum up this very broad topic in a sentence: customer-centricity is founded on a collective mindset that constantly asks, especially at decision-making points, “Are we delivering the values customers need, want and expect? What can we do together to build, nurture and thereby benefit from our relationships with our customers?”.

Cliché?  True, as I have yet met a company who does not say they are “customer-centric” and have “collaborative spirit”. The reality? Many are paying lip service, lost in what it actually means, or, with good intention, do a few “customer-focused” things with little results.

As a company’s bottom line ultimately based on this – can anyone afford not to pay attention?

Developing the Culture
It is easy to talk about having the right culture, it is difficult – make it very difficult – to build, grow and encourage one that supports, motivates and rewards collaboration. The larger and older the organization, or the higher the turnover rate, the more likely units operate in silos, hence the more difficult to turn the culture around. A common employee sentiment? “I will worry about collaboration and being customer-focused and what not…if it affects my job, my pay, and my promotion”.

Top executive support matters. It is the leader’s responsibility to instill the right mindset till it becomes the norm across the board. But don’t confuse it with scare tactics or “orders from the big boss” – it is really about steering a clear vision, establishing a mandate and implementing the right tools, thereby ensuring employees see beyond what’s in front of their own desks.

Mobilizing the culture
Employees need to be shown the joint efforts of their work as experienced by the final customers; they need to be proud of their individual contributions to the bigger picture. Successful leaders ensure individuals see why their area of work is instrumental in the overall success.  One common mistake, from my observation, is to congratulate the “obvious” but forget those who play “smaller” roles.  It hurts, it deepens inter-silo gaps, it creates a toxic environment where no one will win in the long run.

Leaders are busy, you say, and they cannot be there 24/7 to cheerlead. That’s where evangelists come in. Some people have the evangelist genes and you are very lucky to have them in an organization. Evangelists are strategic, creative and hardworking trail-blazers who take the collaborative customer-centric vision into actions from top down, across and then back up. They can come from any department and they may not even need a  job description to guide their passion.

Empower them, please.

Operationalizing the Culture
Without the proper tools, collaboration remains a “neat concept”. A carefully engineered process put the Who, When, What, How cross-silos engine in motion. Poor processes create red tapes  but Smart processes add to speed, accuracy and results.

The point is, this ecosystem is not about a collection of departments or channels;
it is a whole experience that is far bigger than the sum of its parts.

Coming up next, why “Social” is key to the customer-centric ecosystem.