Are you considering all the customer touch points?

Social media and the customer

As social media outlets such as Twitter have recently hit mainstream, a lot of attention has been given to using these new marketing channels for staying informed or finding new ways to send messages to people.  But social media is much more powerful than most of what we’re hearing–it enables conversations with new people in new ways and has the potential to transform how we perceive “customer experience”.  And, more importantly to you, this new media might transform what have become traditional IT roles and our approach to software projects.

Do these ideas interest you? If so, I recommend reading Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae (published way back in 2007 ). Seth calls out 12 trends of “New Marketing”. He challenges organizations to forego the common question of ‘how do we use the new marketing to support our business?’ for ‘how do we transform our business so that it thrives because of the New Marketing?’. As Seth writes “growth comes from an integrated approach, one that combines New Marketing tactics with fundamentally different products and services”.

What are the customer touch points?

Instead of thinking (as we traditionally do) about marketing as an extension of the business or the “customer-facing” part of the business, marketing can (and should) become integrated into the organization’s entire business model. If you try to simply take the new marketing tactics and use them on top of your current business model you’ve got a rather unattractive “meatball sundae.”  In contrast, one of the trends in New Marketing is the need for an authentic story.  You no longer control the conversation and with all the eyes and ears on your organization from a multitude of directions, your voice will only ring through if it’s authentic, shared throughout your organization, and, therefore, believable.

As I read this book I kept thinking over and over again about how an organization that encompasses this new set of values would approach software projects differently. And how organizations that fail to think differently are going to build a lot of meatball sundaes.  I see projects continuing to get smaller in scope, as services become more targeted and specific, serving niche markets.  But I also see projects getting larger in that the scope cuts right through the organization. So a new service might start on the front-end but cut right through your organization to the “back-end” processes like accounting and customer support.

In fact, Seth’s whole point is that back-end functions can no longer be thought of as such. Anyone in the organization can potentially have contact with the customer and it must be authentic. New media comes with new tools for integrating all these customer experiences. The nature of bridging itself could change (or at least expand) as the New Media puts us in direct contact with customers through blogs and Twitter streams and our projects touch all aspects of our organization’s interaction with the customer.

Envisioning an integrated customer experience

As someone who has one foot in the business and one foot in IT, these types of changes present leadership opportunities.  Most likely you’ve worked on segmented IT projects that touch each function of your organization. Or, if you work on a larger team, as a collection of individuals you have the insight to see how knowledge, information, and data flow through your business.  If so, you are sitting in an ideal place to help your organization transform itself around the New Marketing and avoid the meatball sundaes.

You can start to ask questions like:

• Does this project provide an integrated, authentic service? How could we extend the change through our organization to make this possible?
• Are we building a meatball sundae? If so, what would a truly integrated change look like?
• Who all will touch the customer? What will that interaction look like? What tools do they need to make it the best possible experience?
• How can we connect the people within our own organization so our customer’s experience with us is more consistent and therefore authentic?
• What capabilities does our organization already have that we could integrate with the New Marketing?

These are just some ideas.  I fully buy into the idea that the proliferation of online communication and, more importantly, conversations will change how we do business. And this will be one more way to get a step ahead in your organization and accelerate your career.

By Laura Brandenburg. Laura Brandenburg is passionate about business analysis. She's found her niche helping aspiring business analysts find transferable skills and position themselves in the BA job market. To stay up-to-date on the latest from Bridging the Gap be sure to sign-up for our free email course and weekly eNewsletter. View more blog posts by Laura Brandenburg

Related posts:

1. To truly help a customer, one must hear what they need
2. How your organization can use Twitter to improve customer relationships and build better products
3. Thinking outside the project: implied responsibilities of an agile product owner