By Scott Draeger, M-EDP, Customer Communication Strategist, HP Exstream
A very smart colleague from one of my past lives, used to refer to a wonderful quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” I think of this when I hear how many businesses approach their multi-channel customer communication strategy.
It often begins with an important person pounding on a desk, accompanied by the command, “We need an app ASAP!” It often ends with confused customers and a lot of wasted time, money, and effort. I have heard many stories on this topic from many different points of view, and it is good to share some of the anecdotes so they can put our challenges into sharper focus.
“We need an app ASAP!”
With the smartphone explosion of 2009, I’ve seen so many businesses make the leap into a new channel without considering other aspects of the customer experience. Sometimes a great project team is put together and given some precious resources. They often met their predefined project goals and succeeded. This might have started right up in 2007 with an early iPhone app. Then, the same thing might have happened at the dawn of the Android Market. It probably happened a few more times with other “post-PC devices.” But as these projects became more specific, they often drifted away from the rest of the customer communication applications, living in a world that moves at a different pace with different constraints.
As a result of these limited-scope projects, the enterprise’s web, print, and app teams are probably not very well aligned. Think about your communication projects, and then think of the apps and websites that are also generated by the company. Do you know who owns the data, the hardware, or the objectives? If you don’t, it’s time to break through some barriers and meet some new people.
Project culture favours tactics over strategy
While project-based business is the state-of-the-art way to manage a complex enterprise, it also has negative side effects. One that affects us in the customer communications and HVTO area is that much of our project work has well established goals that are in conflict with a larger strategic view of customer relationships.
Direct mail projects are conceived, designed, priced, and produced in a vacuum. Statement projects are run as a cost centre with constant pressure from the COO to reduce costs. Even great transpromo projects can have a limited scope and misaligned ownership. When you add up all of these projects, even if they are all individually successful, did the company improve the way it engages customers?
Creating a unified strategy
Recently, the best businesses have been going through exercises that map every single customer contact, not just HVTO projects, or even customer communications, but every single way that a customer can potentially interact with the business. These points of contact include billboards, QR codes in magazines, salespeople, branches, brochures, twitter feeds, internet advertisements, as well as every communication that is sent to customers throughout the customer lifecycle.
After these businesses truly understand the various ways that the customer will experience the business, it becomes clear that a strategy is needed. This world moves too fast for a series of disconnected projects to self-organize into a competition-crushing strategy. Any customer touching project must be planned with an understanding of the project’s part within a larger mix of other potential touch points.
Any customer contact contributes to the customer’s total experience with the company, and all of the touch points should be cohesive. It can be done. I’ve encountered wonderful case studies and inspirational teams around the globe at Humana, North Shore Credit Union, E. ON, Telmex, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Principal Financial Group, HSBC, and JP Morgan Chase. These teams work hard to embrace new challenges and they are developing integrated strategies. More importantly, they are executing on these strategies and delivering results.
When we think of how separate web, mobile and print projects could work better as part of a unified strategy, I am reminded of another Antoine de Saint-Exupery quote: “Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” For us, that means that we can team up with the other project teams. We can learn more about our projects’ place in the larger organization. If they do not contribute to a larger strategy, then it’s up to us to convince the business to create one, and then roll it out. So, take a chance and try to meet the other people, who are involved in parallel projects that deliver to different channels.
To learn more about HP Exstream >>>.
Scott Draeger, M-EDP recently moved to Sydney to become HP Exstream’s Customer Communication Strategist for the Asia Pacific region. This move immediately follows the completion of the HP Exstream’s Design & Production version 8.0. He graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has worked in the digital document industry for 15 years. In 2007, he earned an International MBA from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, and joined HP Exstream as the Product Manager for the HP Exstream Design & Production product during the 7.0 Development cycle. In 2009, he became the Manger of Product Strategy for the entire HP Exstream software portfolio. This included the definition, development and release of the 8.0 portfolio. In 2010, Scott earned his M-EDP (Master Electronic Document Professional) designation from Xplor International. In 2011, Scott earned Xplor’s coveted “Chairman’s Award” for participation in the organizations efforts to deliver vendor-neutral continuing education in the customer communications and electronic document industries globally.