Your passion for your mission and your customers can turn you into a hero

You have a passion for your mission. You want to do the right thing for your customers. You believe in a better customer experience. You are on a journey. This is a world that brings about radical change for your company. Your journey will require that you master “change management”. “Change management” is your primary role as a visionary who truly believes your company can end up in a better place with more reach for your mission and with an improved bottom line to fund it.

You are a champion of transformation and innovation in your company. You will face a lot of challenges. It will require hard work, perseverance and support from many. You will discover many allies and a few enemies.

Part of your work is about discovery. Much of it is about communication and formulation of strategy. A focus on going from strategy to a few actionable next steps is critical. This is definitely hard work. If you are up to it, which is precisely why it is interesting. Not everyone can lead the way.

All the hard work will lead to the reward. Unparalleled growth is the promise of an enriched customer experience. (Yes, there is data to support this.)

Too often, the customer’s experience of your brand is an afterthought. Your main focus is to become intentional about everything you can. To bring the issues front and center, you and others need to champion internal transformation. It doesn’t matter that you are unclear where to begin right now. Getting started will help you figure it out. You are going to need lots of helpers. And you probably need at least one mentor.

Acknowledging that the world is changing may be a wonderful place to start. We know consumer behavior is changing rapidly. It is impacting how customers view your company. Documenting how it is impacting your company is another key focus area. It is already impacting your bottom line.

Another focus of the journey may be to break a few deadly habits. We all have habits. One company habit is seeing customers from the view of a single transaction. This is called direct response. This habit can cause you to miss the customer (they are a millionaire) who has recently made a series of small transactions. What experience did they just have with you? As a result that experience, are they on a journey with you to engagement with your mission? Moving from a transaction mindset to a relational and engagement mindset can remarkably impact the experience the customer has. This has huge rippling effects into loyalty and total sales.

And so … it is a journey. Customer behavior is changing and changing fast. As a hero leading the journey internally, it is your role to help leaders see the impact to your bottom line and help everyone keep up.

Focus your changes on engagement and not technology

We all know it. We all hear it. Leadership loves to talk about change. Employees love to ignore it. Talk is very cheap. If we are honest however, we all know it is true. Change is inevitable. The real question is what we will do about it. Will we lead it or will we be a victim?

The biggest challenge is knowing the right time to change. Often, by the time we realize we need to change, the moment has passed us by. The worst possible scenario is that others' realize it before us and beat us to the punch. Rather than being strategic, we are impulsive and reactionary. Our perceived competitor builds a website that does X and we have to do it to. Why? Maybe they have just wasted a ton of money. Mimicking others is not a strategy.

Are you inspired by technology or overwhelmed? Are you keeping up with technology or are you getting left behind? Have you seen what a three-year-old can do with an iPhone? Does that intimidate you? This is all very disruptive. You know it and your customers know it. The difference could be that our customers are embracing it.

As a company, is someone else about to displace you in the marketplace? Are you staying up with the pace of change with technology or are you about to get left behind? Do you have strategies, systems, processes, and protocols in place that will recognize that this is disruption? We need to assess opportunity, and we will need to facilitate the testing of Ideas. Is this your job? How much time and resources that you control are you devoting to it quarterly?

These are very serious questions. They need to be answered now. From the point of view of your mission, is this a case of only the strongest surviving? What will happen if the pace of change is so fast that your customers adapt and change before you can? This is the reality we all need to face. We all know the role that technology plays in our personal lives. Do our digital properties at work match up to our personal experiences?

This might be a time for humility. Is the economy really our problem? If your company did well before the downturn of 2009 during bad economic times, why didn't they do well during the downturn turn of 2009?

All companies are facing disruption. Have you been displaced in the marketplace and simply don't know it yet? There are companies who are thriving and growing.

Over 40% of the companies that were at the top of the Fortune 500, in 2000 were no longer there in 2010. Who are some of the top companies today that weren’t on the list 10 or 20 years ago? I talked with a company leader recently that illustrates this perfectly I think. They probably aren’t on anybody’s list of top companies. They are a $5 billion dollar international company. They have a laser focus on the digital world. Their marketing is absolutely unified. Why doesn’t anyone know about them as a leader in their sector?

So as a company, you have established a presence on Facebook and Twitter. And so? Is the customer experience and relationship any better than it was before? Perhaps so or perhaps not. Do you know?

This may be about survival. It could take more than a presence in new channels to improve the overall experience and relationship with those who can support us the best. It may take more courage than you think. It will certainly take more persistence to break through the resistance. In the end, it could be about how you work with your leaders and we're back to you about how you personally lead.

Are you leading a movement towards empowered and customer – centric culture? Are you setting in motion real business transformation?

You have a special path you can follow. You can set in motion the change that opens the door to an improved experience both inside and outside your company. You can lead the change you need your company to experience!