McKinsey and Company: Customer Marketing Performance (Part 1)

Posted by: Santi Chacon
Business Coach

Margo Georgiadis
Katrina Lane

Turbo-charging Customer Marketing Performance

Stronger customer relationships have grown increasingly vital to the strategy of companies vying for competitive advantage in today’s complex multi-channel marketplace. Many proactive players, acknowledging the need for a greater focus on strengthening customer relationships, have invested millions of dollars in the databases and technology required to support a customer-centric approach. And they have been quick to launch pilot programs in many product areas. In spite of their efforts, many of these marketers have failed to elevate CRM performance to their targeted level.

Clearly, the challenges are daunting. Many of these marketers – lacking the customer centered talent and skills to bring about significant change – have struggled to get their programs off the ground. They have found it challenging to work beyond their traditional business silos and to inspire managers to “embed the customer” in the fundamentals of how they run their businesses. Even after successful pilots in several product areas, they become deadlocked over how to pursue cross business opportunities that might offer even greater potential.

What then, is the missing piece of the puzzle needed to support companies in establishing more powerful CRM programs?

CRM programs that create substantial value require four integrated elements:

• a strategy for managing customer relationships that is tied to business economics;
• compelling, well-executed programs that can drive customer value levers;
• technology to support key activities, both data management and customer experience;
• the organization that underpins the ability to deliver and sustain the first three elements over time.

Our research has shown that organization is a critical and often overlooked factor in driving CRM initiatives to better performance. We talked to marketers at four distinct performance levels and identified 10 specific organizational characteristics of marketers who are achieving their performance goals. All of our interviewees placed organization among their top three critical challenges and over 60 percent cited organization as one of their top two challenges. One marketing executive was particularly emphatic. “Building the organization to develop and execute ideas,” he said, “is the real showstopper.”

These 10 organizational characteristics fall into three distinct categories – structure,skills, and processes. And high performers have the structure, skills, and processes that enable them to leverage existing assets like customer data and successful pilots, mitigate conflict over customer “ownership,” and create the insights and programs to serve customers more effectively within and across products and channels.

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