Organizing Around the Customer Journey

With this post, I am continuing the conversation around how we organized ourselves around the customer journey. We always claim to be and strive to be a customer-centric organization and thus we believe this should be reflected in our organization. Below are now the highest-level org structures that we have recently implemented, described in order of how we see a joint journey with our customers. ?

1.????? Marketing – As a company that is going through massive transformation in terms of brand recognition and understanding, it all starts here. For many people their first introduction and experience with us is through our PR, and marketing efforts. We are active here on LinkedIn, however, our team is also traveling continuously to shows and conferences large and small across the USA.

2.????? Academics – The next step is solidifying the understanding of our Vision to lead through innovation. We know that our reputation has been established as a leading innovator, and in order to maintain and grow this reputation, we need to work closely with academic institutions. We have a team of very experienced PhD and MD experts who are charged with building partnerships for joint innovation.

3.????? Business Management and Strategy – Next on the journey with our customers is defining where we are headed with the deepening and broadening of our portfolio in the USA, developing our overall go to market strategy and innovating new business models. This group houses the primary critical mass of our technical and clinical expertise to engage our customers and work closely with them to define the future, and also includes the team that works on large strategic deals.

4.????? Sales – Next in line is the team that is chartered with building trusting relationships with customers and clarifying all of our differentiating value. It is this group that walks with our customers on the journey from familiarity to trust. They are spread across the country in more than 40 states, and are growing in number. They walk with the customer through the entire journey, but enlist the next two groups when it comes to implementation and support.

5.????? Commercial Operations – This is the group that engages with customers from the beginning of site planning, and continuously until the systems are delivered on site. They are the interface for order processing and billing, and they coordinate any orders and deliveries from third party suppliers of ancillary equipment.

6.????? Customer Success – Finally the customer journey lands with the group that takes over the primary operational relationships from a system’s delivery through the rest of its useful life. We adopted the name customer success at the outset of our company, and now see that name being adopted more readily in the industry. This group is built for that purpose, and helps ensure healthcare delivery to patients through proactive care and rapid response, always reaching for the maximum outcome – and success – for our customers.

Challenges in any organization, no matter how perfectly structured, are communication and role definition. By clarifying the roles and definitions around the life of the customer, we know who owns what, and we can identify any handoffs or communication issues more easily, because we and our customers understand who has ownership along the way, and who is handing off to whom.

Over the next weeks, I will take a deeper dive into each department, introducing the person who leads it, and discuss together with them how they see their priorities and top level objectives.