As a CEO or C-suite executive, it is critical that you think about one simple fact: Today, your prospects and customers have unlimited access to your business. Their experience spans more people, processes and technologies than ever before. This has resulted in an explosion in the number of ways prospects and customers interact with your company. The greatest impact of this explosion has been felt in three key areas:

Organizational structure: There are more individuals and teams that have customer-facing communication ownership and responsibility within the enterprise than ever before. Think about all the customer-facing areas of your business and the interactions they have directly or indirectly (via technology) with your customers every day.

Communication channels: Never before has there been more channels through which companies communicate with customers and through which customers communicate with companies. From websites to social channels, customer portals, online chat and email, the list goes on and on.

Partner ecosystem: Technology has had a dramatic impact on the number of sales and marketing partners companies must manage. A few years ago, a single agency may have handled the majority of how, when and where the company story was told in the marketplace. Today, companies have dozens of partners developing and delivering messages at distinct points in the customer experience.

These changes become more difficult to contend with when you add barriers that have been constructed throughout your organization:

Distributed ownership: the number of individuals, teams, partners that are responsible for developing and / or delivering the corporate story throughout the customer experience has dramatically increased.

Functional silos: the independent functions / roles within departments, business units, divisions and partner ecosystem that communicate and engage with customers has grown significantly.

Multi-channel integration: the sheer number of channels and communication vehicles used to communicate and interact with customers has exploded. The complexity of integrating and synchronizing all these channels can be daunting.

All of these changes, combined with barriers that have been formed over time, have had a tremendous impact on how companies develop and deliver their story.

Visualize How Your Story Is Told Today.

Take a moment to paint a customer-facing picture of your organizational structure, communication channels and partner ecosystem. Look at each of these through the lens of how your corporate story is developed and delivered throughout the customer experience. Which areas of your organization interact with the customer? How many communication channels are being utilized to connect with prospects and customers? Which partners play a role in each dimension of the customer experience? If you are like most CEOs, the picture you see includes:

  • Highly distributed ownership of messaging development and delivery internally and externally.
  • Functional silos across the business that interact with customers on a consistent basis.
  • Limited connectivity between a wide range of technologies and communication channels used in each phase of the customer experience.

Regain Control Over the Story You are Delivering.
Ultimately, this picture illustrates the very real and growing complexity that you must contend with if you want to develop and deliver a consistent corporate story throughout the customer journey. Ask yourself …

“Do I really have disciplined, enterprise-wide processes in place that will ensure our organization delivers a consistent story throughout the customer experience?”

If you are honest, the answer is probably no. And that’s OK. Most executive teams don’t have the disciplined processes in place to break down these barriers and ensure that a consistent story is told throughout the customer experience. However, those executives who address these barriers and deliver a consistent story reap significant rewards.

In fact, a recent McKinsey study revealed the No. 1 trait of companies that succeed in delivering a superior customer experience is the ability to develop and deliver a clear, consistent corporate message. That’s why, if CEOs want to establish competitive differentiation based on customer experience, they must deliver a consistent story across all three phases of the customer experience (self-service, sales, post-purchase).

The Story Your Customer Consumes Can No Longer Be Ignored.
The simple truth is, CEOs and C-suite executives can no longer ignore the enterprise-wide messaging development and delivery problem that exists within their companies. If you are serious about organizational clarity, alignment and performance, and if customer experience is a true priority for your executive team … then it’s time to apply the discipline, energy and resources required to break down these barriers. It’s time to put intentional processes in place that will ensure your company is well-positioned to deliver a clear, compelling and consistent story throughout the entire customer experience.