Eric Kintz shared how HP has transformed its organization to be more customer centric by focusing on three things:

  1. Integrating the customer to drive the business.
  2. Measuring and managing what matters to the customer.
  3. Inspiring employees to drive customer centricity.

These themes weave their way through all of today’s presentations, but HP’s added challenge of executing them in a B2B context shows that customer centricity is possible for all types of marketing organizations. They recognized a relationship between customer loyalty and business results, measured how they evolved over time, and focused investments on what mattered to customers. In addition to the relationship between customer loyalty and business results, HP also found a relationship with their sales partners and loyalty, so they established a closed-loop process to deal with customer feedback.  And they inspired employees by training all of them and building programs that allowed them to more easily share the customer feedback they received.

The focus on customers has paid dividends for HP.  In 2003, customer loyalty scores were abysmal and there were threats to sell HP’s PC business.  In Q3 06, employee passion for the customer, an HP-specific measure, increased 15% and both customer satisfaction and PC market share were #1.

So where does HP go from here?  They want to make B2B marketing even more personal.  One way they’re working it:  Change Artists, an online community for CIOs to learn and share.  Do you have more ideas about B2B marketing?  Eric invites folks to continue the conversation with him on his blog, Marketing Excellence.