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This CX Mini Masterclass explores the importance of marketing customer experience, both externally to customers, as well internally to employees. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, shares some practical tips and ideas for how you can leverage your customer promise as a marketing draw card, and how to foster awareness of customer experience within your organization. If you’ve been looking for practical ideas on how to market customer experience — both internally and externally — in your organization, then this episode is for you.
How to Market Customer Experience Externally
Most major brands spend loads of time and resources marketing their products and services, so shouldn’t this be enough to draw in customers? The short answer is no. Most marketing emphasizes the CVP, products and promotions. Few brands dedicate much of their marketing budget to helping consumers understand what kind of experiences they can expect. And to be honest, I’m not sure why. Perhaps they think it’s a waste of marketing spend or they’re afraid of putting a promise out there that the business won’t be able to deliver on. I see it as a huge missed opportunity. If you don’t help consumers know what they can expect, it sets the stage for a mismatch between expectations and reality…something that often ends up with an unhappy customer.
If your organization has established a customer promise or experience principles, these should be shared this with consumers. T Mobile in the US has focused quite a lot of external marketing on experiences, such as their unique Team of Experts support team.
Focus on the touchpoints
If your organization has already mapped the customer journey, you’ll know that there are many, many touchpoints. Each of these channels of interaction can become an avenue for marketing customer experience and sharing the good word about what sets your brand apart from the others. Marketing teams are normally very organized with messaging via traditional above the line advertising, newsletters, etc., but remember to look for opportunities to weave the customer promise into less obvious touchpoints like statements, contracts, and sales/support support teams.
If you are wanting to learn more about touchpoints and journeys, be sure to check out Episode 16.
Internal marketing of customer experience can rally employees
If customers know what kind of experiences they can expect, then naturally employees need to be rallied around the same mantra. This is where internal marketing of your CX program comes into play. Internal marketing of CX is important because it helps establish a cohesive understanding of your company’s customer experience ambitions.
Internal marketing of customer experience generally takes two forms:
- Consistent messaging about the long term vision of CX – Each organization needs to craft an enduring unified message about its customer-centric aspirations. Usually this takes the shape of customer experience principles or a customer promise. Like a vision, mission or purpose, this is something that should remain constant, with occasional refreshes as the business evolves. This message should feature in an organization’s cornerstone employee engagement and rituals like onboarding. Think of it as marketing for the long haul. Employees should know the customer promise like they know their favorite brand’s slogans.
- Short-term efforts to rally and energize teams – These are communications that are of the moment, often intended to encourage specific behaviors or change rather than act as a philosophical Northstar for CX. If an organization is looking to catalyze customer-centric change, they might investigate launching a branded campaign with an inspiring call to action. We can see a great example of this at Multichoice, the South African media company, where the CX team spearheaded a campaign called #99problems to engage all staff in helping resolve the top 99 customer pain points along the customer journey. Be sure to check out Episode 6, for an interview with the head of CX at Multichoice about #99problems. It’s a great case study on how to create and execute a branded internal CX engagement campaign.
Transcript
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Welcome to Decoding the Customer. A podcast about customer experience and how to realize customer-centric change in today’s dynamic business world. I’m Julia Ahlfeldt, certified customer experience professional, business advisor, and host of this program.
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you’re new to the show, welcome. If you’re a returning listener, thanks, and it’s great to have you back. This episode is part of my CX mini masterclass series here on Decoding the Customer.
These weekly episodes are published each Thursday and designed to be punchy, bite-sized overviews of key customer experience concepts… …and ideas for how you can help your organization thrive through customer centricity. Whether you’re new to the field of customer experience, are preparing for the CCXP exam, or are a seasoned professional looking to brush up on a few basics… …this series will help you improve your knowledge, skills, and performance to stand out as a CX professional.
This is episode 67, the second episode of January. 2020 has been slated as the year that customer experience will overtake price and product as the key competitive differentiator. So here we are in month one of a new decade, and CX professionals need to be ready to face the challenges of helping businesses become more customer-centric. Last week’s masterclass was a deep dive into the foundations of CX culture and the importance of aligning customer experience and HR strategies.
Today, I’m sticking with the topic of culture, exploring why it’s important to market your customer promise internally and externally… …as well as what it means to do this. Customer experience values, service principles, brand promise—all of these things are great, but only if your customers and employees know about them. If you’ve been looking for some ideas about internal and external marketing of your organization’s CX program, then this episode is for you.
As always, if you’re out and about while listening to this and hear something that you’d like to remember later, don’t worry about writing it down. You can find an overview of the key concepts that we’ve covered today in the show notes for this episode, which are on my website… …julia-ahlfeldt.com or decodingthecustomer.com. Let’s start with a quick minute on why this topic is even worth focusing on.
Most major brands spend loads of time and resources marketing their products and services. So shouldn’t this be enough? The short answer is no. Most brands focus their marketing around their CVP or their customer value proposition… …along with their products and promotions.
Far fewer brands dedicate much of their marketing budget to helping consumers understand the kinds of experiences that they can expect. There are definitely some exceptions out there. For example, T-Mobile in the US is a brand that focuses quite a lot of external marketing on experiences, such as their unique team of experts support team. But most brands out there just miss the boat on this, and to be honest, I’m not really sure why.
Perhaps they think it’s a waste of marketing spend or maybe they’re afraid they’ll be putting a promise out there that the business won’t be able to deliver on. In either case, I see this as a huge missed opportunity. If you don’t help consumers know what they can expect from you, you’re just setting yourself up for a mismatch between expectations and reality. Something that usually ends up with an unhappy customer.
So what does it mean to externally market your customer experience? If your organization has established a customer promise or experience principles, it means intentionally sharing this with consumers. You can achieve this by weaving this messaging into traditional above-the-line marketing—things like billboards and TV advertisements… …as well as through integrated messaging into other touchpoints.
If you’ve already gone through the exercise of mapping the customer journey, then take another look at this and review it through the perspective… …of when and where your customer experience values are communicated. But an important first step in all of this is defining what your experience principles or your customer promise or your customer experience values are. If you haven’t done this yet, make sure that you have clarity on the message before you go around worrying about how to market it.
If your customers know what kinds of experiences they can expect, naturally your employees need to be rallied around similar messaging. This is where internal marketing of your CX program comes into play. Internal marketing of customer experience is important… …because it helps establish a cohesive understanding of your company’s customer experience ambitions. I see this as taking two different forms.
One being consistent messaging about the long-term vision of customer experience… …and two, short-term efforts to rally and energize teams. It’s important to craft an enduring, cohesive message about an organization’s customer-centric aspirations. Usually, this takes the shape of customer experience principles or a customer promise, as mentioned before. Like a vision, mission, or purpose, these are things that should remain relatively constant, maybe with occasional refreshes as the business or brand evolves.
It’s important to share these messages with teams and make sure that they feature in the organization’s cornerstone employee engagement… …and rituals like onboarding. Things that everybody experiences that remain fairly constant. Think of this as marketing and awareness for the long haul. You want everyone to know your customer promise or your customer experience principles or your customer experience values…
…like they know their favorite brand’s slogans. Then we have shorter-term employee engagement and internal marketing. These communications and engagements are of the moment… …often intended to encourage specific behaviors or catalyze change.
Rather than act as kind of a philosophical North Star for customer experience. If an organization is looking to drive customer-centric change… …they might investigate launching a branded campaign with an inspiring call to action. One of my favorite examples of this is at MultiChoice, the South African media company, where the customer experience team spearheaded a campaign… …called hashtag 99problems.
To engage all staff in helping to resolve the top 99 customer pain points within the customer journey. +Theirs was a great case study on how to create and execute a branded internal CX engagement campaign. And they won several international awards for their work. I happened to interview their head of customer experience, Clint Payne, in episode six of the podcast.
If you’re interested in checking that out, I’ll include a link to that episode in the show notes for this one. In sum, if customer experience professionals want to see their organizations leverage customer experience as a selling point… …and effectively rally teams around the cause, they need to remember to put their marketing hats on… …and get the message out there, both internally and externally.
If you’re looking for help strengthening brand engagement with customers or rallying teams around customer experience, please get in touch. I’d be happy to explore how I can help. You can reach me via email, tweet, or LinkedIn message. My handle is @juliaahlfeldt and my full contact details…
…are also listed on my website, julia-ahlfeldt.com or decodingthecustomer.com. I hope you’re enjoying the show. Please share it with others who might be interested, or head on over to iTunes and rate the podcast. I’ll be back next week with another CX mini masterclass.
See you then!
Want to keep learning about CX?
If you’d like to checkout more of these CX Mini Masterclasses or listen to my longer format CX expert interviews, check out the full listing of episodes for this CX podcast.
Decoding the Customer is a series of customer experience podcasts created and produced by Julia Ahlfeldt, CCXP. Julia is a customer experience strategist, speaker and business advisor. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and one of the top experts in customer experience management. To find out more about how Julia can help your business achieve its CX goals, check out her customer experience advisory consulting services (including CX culture change) or get in touch via email.
