Harvard Business Review Feature On Creating A Customer-Centered Organization
Harvard Business Review (HBR) is currently running a month-long feature on its blog called Creating a Customer-Centered Organization. We’re thrilled that HBR is focusing on this topic, as it indicates that customer experience is finally rising to the attention of top business executives.
The HBR editors asked Forrester to contribute a couple of pieces to this feature based on our recent research, and we happily obliged.
My post, Focus on Your Customer’s Customer, looks at how B2B companies can be successful by taking a B2B2C approach. Here’s an excerpt: “Often, the best way for B2B companies to satisfy the multitude of business customers is to focus on the needs of their customers’ customers. That’s exactly what Portuguese airport operator ANA Aeroportos de Portugal did in its quest to attract more major airlines and connecting routes. To understand the work, first you need to understand an airport’s business model: Its real customer isn’t travelers, but the airlines that rent the gates and terminals, much like a mall owner leases space to retailers.”
My colleague Paul Hagen contributed a piece called The Rise of the Chief Customer Officer. Here’s an excerpt: “The customer's voice has a new champion sitting at the highest levels of power in companies. Whether firms call the position Chief Customer Officer (CCO) or some other label, these individuals serve as top executives with the mandate and power to design, orchestrate, and improve customer experiences across the ever-more-complex range of customer interactions. The role exists in B2B and B2C firms as diverse as Allstate, Dunkin' Brands, USAA, Philips Electronics, FedEx, the Cleveland Clinic, and SAP. Who are these new customer experience executives — and why do companies appoint them?”
Please take a few minutes to check out all of the posts on customer-centricity over at blogs.hbr.org.