Jodie Monger

When it comes to growing your business, the ingredients are straightforward:  have a good product/service, understand your customers’ needs, have good, clean customer data, and deliver an exemplary customer experience every time.  Do those four things better than everyone else and your company always lands on the top of the heap.  Fail to do any one of these things and you end up being mediocre at best and maybe do not survive.

Have you had an experience like one of my recent ones where I was pitched by a reputable company that had not done the research about me as a customer?  The pitch was so far off-base that it was actually insulting to me.  Sure, they had a good product, but because they didn’t understand my needs as a customer and battered me so much on the phone, I was left with only a poor customer experience.  It’s likely that I’ll never do business with...

Top companies are those that revolve their business models around their customers.  Those that not only consider their customers in the design and marketing of their products, but involve them throughout their products’ development and introduction into the marketplace are the companies that lead their competitors.

But you know that talking about being customer centric and being customer centric are two different things.  Changing your corporate culture can be a daunting and complicated process.  Some of the top barriers to becoming a successful customer-centric organization include getting buy-in at all levels, linking your metrics to KPIs and ROI, and creating a customer-centric culture from the inside out.  Again, haven’t we been talking about this for two decades?

So your company has a big data problem and after much research you find CRM software (BI or Analytics Software included) you believe will solve all your issues.  A few months after the install you find you’re no where closer to solving your big data problem and you’re ready to throw out the proverbial software baby with the bath water.  Your team blames the software for not meeting their expectations.  The software company tells you to take advantage of more training to use the software to its full potential.  Thousands of dollars down the drain and zero progress.  Does this sound familiar?

Anyone that’s successful in business can tell you that what sets them apart from their competition is excellent customer service.  We all know this but the challenge is execution.  I recently made a purchase from what I thought was a small, local business only to find out they are the biggest distributor in my state.  I thought they were small because someone always answered the phone when I called and my orders were filled and...