A few months ago, I had a horrible customer experience around test-driving a new luxury car. The company's marketing department invested a lot of money on different campaigns to get me to make an appointment for a test drive. They succeeded, But once I got to the showroom for the appointment, the experience was a complete 180-degree turn from the red-carpet marketing experience. In fact, I was told they were too busy for a test drive and they requested I come back in two weeks. Needless to say, the experience was a #BIGFAIL on the part of the carmaker.

We see this all too often. Disconnected business processes, fragmented customer communications, and poorly thought-out execution around critical customer experiences. This lack of focus on process coordination around customer experiences robs companies of potential revenue and brand value. 

Contrast this with the experience I had while visiting a Tesla Motors store recently. While I was in the store browsing different car models and speaking with a Tesla spokesperson, a steady stream of existing Tesla owners popped into the store to rave about how great the brand was and how much they loved driving their cars. 

It's easy to see that brands like Tesla run their companies from a customer-obsessed operating model. And at the heart of this customer-obsessed operating model is a relentless focus on calibrating business processes to deliver seamless, connected experiences at each step of the customer journey. This shift to customer-obsessed operating models requires BT organizations to disrupt existing processes and focus efforts to:

  • Realign operational metrics to support customer emotional outcomes. Moving to a customer-obsessed operating model demands a radically different approach to process innovation. Instead of simply measuring process efficiency, BT organizations will also need to measure and track emotional metrics — such as anger, hate, and love — to evaluate how well a business process is performing for customers.
  • Re-engineer processes around the customer's moment of need. Customer-obsessed operating models must be optimized to anticipate and deliver on the customer's moments of need. In order to anticipate and deliver on the customer's moment of need, business processes must be re-engineered with greater empathy and contextual awareness for what the customer is trying to accomplish.
  • Adopt new platforms that drive rapid customer-centric innovation. The days of writing requirements, writing code, and then deploying software are dead. Customer-obsessed operating models demand "test and learn" approaches that prioritize digital experimentation to rapidly test out and validate new business ideas. BT organizations will need to adopt "low code" development platforms that can support this type of rapid experimentation, while also supporting rapid scale out in short timeframes.

No matter what industry you live in, expect to feel the impact of empowered customers that are willing to spend more money in exchange for great experiences that connect with them on an emotional level. The future of your company will depend on how quickly you're able to replace your existing operating model with a customer-obsessed operating model that puts the customer at the center of everything you do.