Customer Experience Is the New CRM
CRM is becoming a dead topic, asserts RightNow Technologies CMO Jason Mittelstaedt. "The moniker and category are dated and tired," he said when we spoke about customer strategy trends during the Gartner CRM Summit. Customer experience and social media are two growing areas executives are and should be focused on today. "Customer experience is the higher calling," Mittelstaedt said.
According to Mittelstaedt, the big challenge is the question of customer experience ownership: Should it be one person or a group? The answer: It depends on the industry and a company's organizational structure. In B2C often the CEO is the strongest champion of customer experience. In B2B often "the COO is mostly commonly chartered to deliver on customer experience, and has the resources to deliver on it," he said. "Also, it tends to be that customer service and marketing report to the COO." He also noted that the CIO is involved more and more as a key enabler of the customer experience.
Marketers may be designing the customer experience, but they're ill-equipped to deliver on it, Mittelstaedt said. First, they're not responsible for many parts of the experience. Second, they're taking a piecemeal approach to customer experience by working on it as a set of distinct initiatives instead of taking a more holistic approach. More forwarding-thinking companies are linking marketing and service to deliver on the customer experience, he said. "We're moving out of the era where the brand is advertising," he said. "Classic marketing is now just one piece of the pie. With the Internet and social media, the number one way to drive brand today is through customer experience."
Mittelstaedt warned, however, that executives should keep in mind Maslow's hierarchy when considering the customer experience. First and foremost, the product or service needs to deliver on its promise or nothing else matters, he said. Once excellence in that area is standard, companies can move up the hierarchy towards other elements of the customer experience.
"Ultimately," he said, "service becomes the sales and marketing strategy."
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