One Small Step For Insights, One Giant Leap For Customer-Centricity

Have you heard the story about the healthcare company that transformed their organization and experienced double-digit growth based on just ONE insight?

Yes, and that one insight, which took the company by surprise, was embraced and actualized throughout the entire organization and led to an enormous “leap” in financial returns but most importantly, improved customer experience.

I’ll explain more and how you can surface and utilize such a powerful insight as part of a deliberate and well-constructed plan while covering strategy, analytics, and execution.

Back to the story though…

The company, a billion dollar healthcare organization with multiple products and services, was really big on the latest technologies. Any new technology out there was immediately purchased and introduced to the company. What that created was siloed and inconsistent organizational data, inefficient processes, expensive yet unused technologies, overlapping and politically-opposed departments, and numerous other issues.

So what was done to trigger the powerful insight?

Senior management decided to conduct a “look in the mirror from the outside” assessment – meaning:

• What kind of data, collateral, processes, and technologies exists internally within the commercial organization?
• How can we compare against the competition across multiple areas – marketing, sales, IT, etc. (external perspective)?
• What can we learn from other industries (external perspective)?
• How are we servicing our customers and what do they think?

A comprehensive analysis was done – looking across the organization, and guess what popped up as the most important? It should have been obvious, but how this company serviced their customers and what those customers thought of the company proved most important.

You see, the most critical factor was not the best technology or the department with the most data or the most efficient process, the most important factor was better customer service. Simple huh? Yet easier said than done.

What came next was that ‘Back to Basics’ became the theme and customer-centricity became more than just words. It became a part of their business model, including but not limited to:

Marketing & Sales –

• Partnered to improve better customer service and customer-centricity by focusing on strategy, relevant and effective messaging / campaign development, and differentiation meaningful to the customer.
• Developed engaging dialogue with customers through “edutainment” and content streams highlighting prioritized and realistic customer journey touchpoints
• Increased rate of message success through higher quality, consultative sales visits and by leveraging digital and marketing automation to compliment field force and increase reach/frequency
• Partnered with internal Centers of Excellence (instead of going elsewhere) focused on analytics, digital innovation, sales and marketing operations and execution, etc.

Centers of Excellence (CoE) including IT

• Streamlined technologies, data, and processes to focus on customer need
• Partnered with Marketing and Sales to provide impactful & unbiased analytics, digital innovation, sales and marketing operations and execution, etc.
• Partner with third-party experts to bring in key core competencies and help the CoE remain at the forefront of innovation yet focused on the customer

While we all assume we are always keeping our customers front and center in our strategic plans, as this example shows, customer centricity can get lost. Sometimes, in order to transform your organization, all you need is one insight.

Vladimir Castillo is the Chief Marketing Officer for The Encima Group. Vladimir’s unique background includes over 15 years of strong brand marketing strategy, analytics, operations, multichannel, and digital experience. As CMO, Vlad is responsible for leading Encima’s Business Development, Brand Marketing Strategy, and Product/Service Offering Development areas. His focus is on making clients happy by helping them succeed.

To contact Vladimir, email him at [email protected]

 Additional posts can be found at The Encima Group Blog.