CONSUMER&COMMERCE

Our approach

Growth holds when its foundation does.

Early growth often comes from a niche that gets you without being told.

To reach the next level, you need a broader base: customers who fit, but won't decipher the brand on their own. That takes a promise clear enough to win them over, and a company built to keep it.

Our point of view

4 common misconceptions about customer centricity

Much of what is written about customer centricity is touchy-feely, and it leaves you with no idea what to actually do. That's why so many efforts fail.

Customer centricity isn't a score to track, a customer to hug or a list of requests to fulfill. It's an operating system: practical, and built step by step.

  1. "The customer is always right."

    The right customers are. The work is choosing them.

  2. "Give customers what they want."

    Connect with the people your offer resonates with, and give it meaning for them.

  3. "Know your customer and the brand will follow."

    If the brand isn't clear, the right customer never shows up. You can't fix the customer side without the brand side.

  4. "Marketing owns the customer."

    The customer belongs to the whole organization. You can build a brand, but you can't govern by it. You govern where value is created: the decisions your customers make. Their lifecycle tells you how well the brand is doing, and every team has a part in it.

The Promise Trifecta

Brand and customers first have to match. The promise is where they meet, and the organization is built to keep it. This is what we work out at each corner.

Brand
What it stands for and for whom, and whether that shows up the same way in your product, your symbols and your organization.
Customers
Who they really are, which ones come first, and what they want from you that nobody else gives them.
The promise
The one thing only you can offer them, said simply enough that everyone in the company can repeat it.
Organization
Whether targets, budgets, calendars and incentives make keeping the promise the easy choice.
Promise Brand with depth and meaning Customers the right ones, understood Organization built to keep the promise THE PROMISE TRIFECTA The promise sets you apart. The organization is built to keep it.

The C(EO)X method

Every engagement follows the same method, sized to your needs.

First, we help you put into words what has never been written down. Then we build the foundation with you, and we do most of the heavy lifting. From there, your team comes in step by step until they own the work and run it.

We're not here to stay. Our goal is that you don't need us anymore.

SET THE FOUNDATION BUILD IT IN brand, customers, the promise, the plan · we lead the organization, to every touchpoint · your teams lead each year, the cycle returns to Chart 1 2 3 4 5 6 OrientArchitectChartMobilize Where you are,where you want to go The manifestosand the promise The plan,locked in The roadshowto the whole company Connect Every touchpoint Evolve Keep it holding

Set the foundation

We do most of the heavy lifting, with you.

  1. Orient

    Where you are, and where you want to go

    We start with what's in your head, because the most important things are often so obvious to you that they never got written down: your product, how you imagine your brand, who you picture as your customer and who actually buys, and what you're building toward. Then we look outside, at the market, its growth and competition, and fuller profiles of your customers. That's where the first provocations come from.

  2. Architect

    What must be true for the promise to hold

    The provocations turn into 2 portraits, the brand and the customer, written as if they were 2 people. The promise is the common ground between them. It anchors the constitution, the North Star that stays fixed while things like style change with the times.

  3. Chart

    What you're committing to

    With your priority customers set, we work backwards from where you want to be: over what horizon, what the plan is, and what it means for each area of the business. Then we go back and forth with you and your key people until every plan is locked in, with the blockers named up front.

Build it in

Your teams take over, step by step, with us beside them.

  1. Mobilize

    From your plan to everyone's

    Your key people have been part of this since Orient. Now it goes to the whole company: a roadshow that brings the promise and the plan to the people who'll carry them out.

  2. Connect

    The promise, down to every touchpoint

    Your teams keep doing their work. Together we map each priority customer's journey, touchpoint by touchpoint, with the people who own them. Each team sees what the promise asks of them. The gaps become the roadmap, and each team gets the guidelines it works from, the brand book among them.

  3. Evolve

    Keep it holding

    Runs alongside Connect. The first time around, it sets who's accountable, how progress gets measured, and which roadmap projects come first. After each cycle we look back: did we get where we set out to go, and is the company becoming one that keeps its promise? Each year, the cycle returns to Chart.

How the work is packaged

Questions we get

What is customer centricity?
Making decisions around the customers who drive your business, not around channels, functions or last year's plan. We agree with it. We just don't think it's enough on its own.
How is it different from customer experience?
Customer experience is what the customer lives at each touchpoint. Customer centricity is how the company decides what to do. Both depend on knowing which customers come first and what you've promised them, which is where we start.
How do you measure it?
Not with a single score. We look at whether your priority customers are growing in value, whether the brand means the same thing inside the company and outside it, and whether targets, budgets and incentives reward keeping the promise.

See where your Promise Trifecta stands.

A 25-minute conversation, no obligation. You'll get a short note afterward with where brand, customer and organization don't line up.

Book an Imaginary Customer Call