The Importance of Customer Voice

A quote that I heard the last 2 weeks resonated so much with me, that it kept me reflecting about it for a while.

“The distance between the C-suite leaders to the customers is perhaps the best metric of your company’s brand health” Kory Marchisotta – Global CMO from E.L.F cosmetics.

Kory shared her experience at the recent #Canneslionfestival and also on a podcast of #Uncensored CMO by Jon Evans.?

I find this so refreshing and hence this newsletter!????????

It reminds me a lot of my first 10 years in marketing and especially with my 2nd company which is privately owned where I under-studied different entrepreneurs. I remember because founders founded the company – we have an amazing, ingrained culture of customers first – we are always making market visits and there is almost no distance between us and the customers in the company. Visits by the CEO starts with market visits and then followed by reviews and action plan of how to tackle these opportunities and challenges in the board room. Everyone from the CEO, to the brand manager, to the sales team, always have the pulse of the customers at their fingertips. It was through this experience that I learnt how to operate between strategy and action seamlessly.

Kory shared in the podcast – how she champions the customer voice and led from the front. Her best story was she brought her CEO into a TikTok live and let him listen to the customers feedback and immediately after 2 weeks, a bronzer based on customer feedback was launched!

I started reflecting on how real this is? As we got into the later part of my career, did we let the bureaucracy and internal ways of working and meetings, forget about the core of what business should be doing. (??)????????

I am a firm believer of customer voice, and I am even a big believer of how the customer voice will impact business strategy. In all my key CMO roles, I always had a head of insight lead as my right-hand person and helped me co-create the marketing vision and strategy. ?As a result, I had the fantastic opportunity to work with many of the #best minds in insights, but also in marketing.

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1.????? ??Importance of customer voice in influencing multi-stakeholder enterprise- wide strategy. Perhaps – keep it close, not through reports but mechanism close to the customer.

I used to work for the 3rd generation of a very well-known founder led global MNC. He once said to me – “A great C-suite leader operates at the top and at the shopfront – the middle can be trusted and delegated to others”.? This really resonate with me.

?As leaders, we spend a lot of time developing multi-stakeholders’ enterprise- wide strategy and evaluation of performance towards the strategic plan- however, have we asked ourselves – how often do we put the ‘customer voice’ at the heart of the enterprise-wide strategy?

The other issue is when we get up the rank often, we start to rely on reports or what the insights team will do to interpret the information to insights vs listening to the customers and finding the ‘truths’ and ‘insights’ for the brand and business we represent. In fact, with the rise of technology / AI – now we can hear the customer voice on an ‘always- on’ motion with social media available at our fingertips – I think we should also measure our impact by starting to measure ourselves with the speed of insight to action.?

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2.????? ??CMO’s championing the customer voice will make them more successful.

I belong to the camp of optimists when people talk about the CMO role is in crisis. Yes, no doubt, it has become more challenging, but I am the firm believer that the CMO is in the best position to champion the customer voice. The customer voice will be the most impartial view with an outside in approach to really influence corporate strategies, identify macro growth opportunities, but also how the customer voice can help across the entire value chain – from product development, pricing, promotion to GTM. In fact, CMO is in the best position to utilise the insights represented by the customer voice to influence and integrate the 4Ps together to create value for the corporation.

Perhaps with this will help make CMOs more successful, more grounded and making them more strategic and successful ?and be perceived to have the ‘T-shaped’ skills to securing future board roles?

?3.????? ??The insights’ function and leaders need to feel prouder of their expertise and perhaps lead the evolution of the function

I had the unplanned opportunity last year to lead a global insights function. It was potentially the most unplanned career move, as I am not a research profession, nor am I an insight professional. However, as I embark on the transformational journey of reframing the insights function to strategic impact – I started to realise that the insights professional need to indeed feel prouder of their expertise and what their ‘craft’ can help with the marketing function driving more superior and faster growth.

Call me an optimist, but with AI coming on board – and research can be done almost with immediate TAT, insights function needs to redefine their purpose more as the strategic trusted partner to deliver business growth and through the discovery of penetrating ‘insights’. It is lesser about the research methodologies, but more about the outcome and the insights you will develop that will impact business decision, outcomes and growth.

?I feel that this is the time that the insights’ function needs to feel prouder of their profession and lead the charge with the CMO to redefine and let the customer voice be heart at the #heart of the enterprise strategy. No one is in the best position than them to lead the charge to reframe the insights function with the power of their storytelling and data analytics skill sets to ‘illuminate’ the insights for each business and human problem.

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I hope this newsletter will start the #movement of CMOs leading the charge of influencing enterprise-wide strategy by utilising the voice of customer and insights’ leaders feeling proud of their profession and lead from the front with the CMO to drive the transformation of the insights function in the era of AI.

?Anyone keen to join this movement???????????

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Siew Ting Foo is a future — focused, human- centric growth leader. She has delivered growth across diverse industries, through helping organizations re-imagining brands, businesses and organizations. Siew Ting is highly energetic, purpose-driven collaborator, who believes in harnessing people’s potential to build brands, business and people. She combines “art” and “science” in marketing and harness community to build powerful brands. She believes in the power of building business growth through building brands with #SOUL, with the customers voice at the core and through the powering of the people across corporation.

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