Christopher Brown

Christopher Brown

MarketCulture Strategies Inc
Chris Brown is the blog editor and is CEO of MarketCulture Strategies, the global leader in assessing the market-centricity of an organization and its degree of Cultural Sense-Ability to customers, competitors and environmental conditions that impact business flow. MCS works closely with the C-Suite and other consulting groups to focus and adjust corporate vision and values around the right set of beliefs, behaviors and processes to engender more dynamic organizations, predictable growth, and customer lifetime value.
  • 0 comments 769 reads
    Posted on 2012-02-23



    Image from John Kotter's Great Book on the Subject of Buy-in

    One of the greatest challenges for customer experience executives is gaining buy-in for investments in improving the customer experience.

    Customer experience can seem like a never ending intangible problem that is too hard to deal with given the necessity to focus on driving quarterly numbers.

    Unfortunately the result is like driving a car as fast as you can until its empty, at some point the car runs out of fuel and it is crisis time. For a business this means losing customers and losing the ability to attract them back to the business without significant price concession leading to lower profitability.

    Creating a customer centric culture is a capability building process for the organization; it is the ongoing...

  • 0 comments 432 reads
    Posted on 2012-02-15

    15 seconds of feedback!

    1. Feedback ready or not

    In the past we spent a lot of time talking with clients about the need to draw out feedback from customers. Complaints were a gift, an opportunity to improve and beat the competition.

    These days for most businesses there is more than enough feedback from sites like yelp and a multitude of other industry specific sites.

    Whether you want to hear what customers think or not, they want to share their experiences and do on a massive scale.

    2. It takes 15 seconds or less...

  • 0 comments 689 reads
    Posted on 2012-02-08

    A recent survey commissioned by Harris Interactive found that 86% of consumers quit doing business with a company because of one bad customer experience, up from 59% 4 years ago.

    Image

    *Source: Harris Interactive:

    Customer Experience Impact Report 2011


    86%! And growing, this is clearly showing an increasing gap between customer expectations of their experience and what companies are delivering.

    Why is this happening?

    Rationally it does not make a lot of sense. One would think that switching costs and the time already invested by the customer in doing business would preclude them from...

  • 0 comments 1,296 reads
    Posted on 2012-02-06

    Being a business that is focused on real value for customers is often talked about by CEOs but in our experience only sincerely acted upon by a few.

    Its not enough to just believe in an idea, one must act to make it happen. A key reason for this failure to act is the lack of understanding of the economics behind customer centricity.

    Fundamentally customer centricity is about building a sustainable profit generating capability for the organization but there is also a downside of not acting to create this type of culture.

    Here are 7 ways of calculating the cost of a lack of customer focus:

    1. The CEO loses touch with the marketplace.

    As businesses grow on the back of an original powerful value proposition, success can disconnect a company with the marketplace.

    A recent example is Netflix’s decision to raise the price without a perceived increase in value for their customers. The result was the loss of...

  • 0 comments 940 reads
    Posted on 2012-01-25

    One of the reasons companies struggle in their quest for enhanced levels of customer focus is employees don’t buy the fact that their leadership is serious about making the change. They are looking for signs that this is not just the flavor of the month and it to will pass soon.

    Here are 7 ways you can send that message:

    1. Define what a customer centric culture means to your organization. What are the values of the organization and how do these translate into how you will treat customers? Even in businesses with very thin margins there are ways to create value that allow companies to differentiate. Take Ingram Micro for example, the world’s largest distributor of computer products. Ingram Micro were the first company to provide their smaller retailers a drop ship capability where they could opt to have products ship directly to customers. This service reduced handling costs for the retailers and added...

  • 0 comments 551 reads
    Posted on 2011-12-14

    The logical rationale for being customer focused is very hard to argue with.

    We know that if we can make great products and create an awesome customer experience we will be more successful.

    And yet we often find we get stuck in a short sighted web of fear and self interest that results in us not acting in a manner that will get us and our businesses the best results. In short culture stops us from making things happen.

    At MarketCulture we have found that rationale arguments are not enough, people must emotionally buy-in to the idea of improving their own and therefore their organization’s customer focus.

    When we can trigger both the rationale and emotion drivers we see change happen.

    I have embedded a short video that describes the type of change we are looking to help our clients undertake, would love you feedback on if you think it is an effective way to communicate the message.

    ...

  • 0 comments 606 reads
    Posted on 2011-11-24

    It’s a strange irony that the very actions many companies take in an attempt to grow often stops them from growing.

    The most obvious recent example is Netflix. Once a darling of customer focus and innovation it has been faced with some difficult growth decisions recently, the result of which has seen 810,000 customer leave.

    Here is how Reed Hasting’s their CEO explained things:

    “Although we dramatically improved our $7.99 unlimited streaming service by embracing new platforms, simplifying our user interface, and more than doubling domestic spending on streaming content over 2010, we greatly upset many domestic Netflix customers with our significant DVD-related...

  • 1 comments 870 reads
    Posted on 2011-11-09

    Source: Genesys Research: "The cost of poor customer service"


    Genesys conducted research to determine some of the...

  • 0 comments 897 reads
    Posted on 2011-11-02

    We so often hear the negative customer experiences, they are the ones that grab attention, we are shocked!, appalled!  but riveted by hearing about how companies stuff up!

    What were they thinking? How could they do something like that? Why Why Why?

    So for a change I thought I would relay  a great experience I had with Comcast recently. That’s right Comcast, the company with websites dedicated to a hatred of their customer service….

    Don’t get me wrong I have had a number of bad comcast experiences in the past… for now however I have been turned around and feel a tremendous sense of loyalty… so what happened?

  • 0 comments 723 reads
    Posted on 2011-10-30

    Congratulations to John Stanhope, recognized as this year’s CFO of the Year in Australia at the CFO Dealbook Awards for 2011 , an event sponsored by Australia’s professional accounting body, CPA Australia.

    The CFO Awards recognize the achievements of the very best in Australian finance over the past 12 months.

    There are a broad range of categories and specific criteria, with entries judged at a finalist...