CUSTOMER-CENTRICITY: The Present PANDEMIA That Must Be “ADOPTED” Part II - The Service Ecosystem

By María Paula Calvo with special thanks to Ana O. Ramirez, Cecilia Hidalgo, Vilma Barreras, Marco Arellano and Lucas F. Zocco for their support and feedback during the editing process.

All of your customers are partners

in your mission.

Shep Hyken

On the first article of this series I provided a general overview of present most common beliefs and aspects about the "Customer Centricity" philosophy that are being used by the majority of companies to try to seduce and gain loyalty from existing and potential customers. It is now the time to start exploring one by one all the components that should be addressed by all the firms to make this philosophy their true style of living, thinking of and acting for the customers. In this issue, I will develop the idea of the "service ecosystem".

?The Service Ecosystem

When we put ourselves in the customer′s shoes we can easily understand that a customer starts visualizing in its mind the service or the experience he/she can get from our company from the very first moment he/she becomes aware of our existence. Either by listening the name of our brand for the first time, looking at an ad on social media, passing by one of our stores. And he/she will continue to think about that service or experience when a sales agent introduces him/her to our products or services, when he/she decides to buy or hire those products or services, when he/she evaluates the performance of the product or service received, when he/she contacts us to manifest his/her happiness with them as well as any kind of inconformity or deviation to their expectations.

Keeping this in mind, when we look internally to the organization we will identify, for sure, that even those members of the organization that don′t have a direct interaction with the customer are holding specific responsibility for some part of the perception of the service or experience of that customer: the design of the web portal or the content of a marketing ad, the way that a legal document that supports the product acquisition or service is written, the variables used in the technical algorithms for decision making on acceptance or pricing are some examples of basic product or service development, communication, sales and support that are normally under responsibility of teams that do not chat one-to-one with the customer, but that provoke an impact in his/her perception. If surfing in the portal is less than intuitive, if the product contract cannot be understood by a non-legal savvy, if the algorithms are deemed extremely complex and biased, customers′ “dissatisfaction” is guaranteed. And, of course, that will also be the result if a transaction is not processed correctly by the corresponding Operations area or if the service rep does not provide accurate information or is not respectful when interacting with the customer.

On the other side, there is a clear inter-dependency among the internal teams when you reach the end - point of contact with the customer and the service rep needs to provide the customer with a complete response or effective solution or adequate information.

In this context, it is crucial to create awareness on any employee about the place where its present role in the organization is impacting the quality of the delivery to the customer, everyone needs to be conscious of its location within the path of the “customer journey” and how, missing or disregarding its responsibilities, will jeopardize the way in which the customer may enjoy that full journey. And that impact can happen immediately, bringing customer attrition and potentially hurting the business′ reputation and capacity to meet its strategic plans and goals. In this truly realistic scenario, every employee, every person in the organization is truly important and meaningful regardless of the technicalities or intellectual capabilities needed to perform their roles or how close the role is for directly or indirectly interact with the customer.

Following the most literal meaning of the “customer centricity” philosophy we can then declare that modern organizations need no longer pyramidal structures with a high level of isolation among the boxes flowing down the top but, instead, they have to become major ecosystems* where everything turns around the customer, the center of the ecosystem. And for the ecosystem to exist and remain alive, all the components of that ecosystem need to maintain the adequate balance: if one piece -even a very minor one- deviates from the customer′s orbit, the entire ecosystem is put at risk of failing unless it can be rebalanced fast and effectively enough. For this rebalancing exercise to occur satisfactorily, the old-fashioned hierarchical communications and decision-power concentration at the highest ranks is not sustainable, since the time for reacting and rectifying the customer experience is very limited to pursue those formulas. Collaboration and empowerment of every individual in the company are now basic pillars for the rebalancing process.

*ecosystem: Infrastructure for realizing service engineering, delivery & governance from “product ideation” through “keeping the promises” made / framework for managing features

This article is the second of a series of 6 issues that will be published on a weekly frequency. #CustomerCentricity has become a hot topic in all the markets around the world. We need to identify how we are part of an #ecosystem that needs to remain in balance to impact #CustomerExperiences in a positive and consistent way making them validate we truly live by this value: Our #Customer is at the #Center of everything we do, plan, think and deliver.