Related services
In order to grow sustainably and remain relevant in today's dynamic market, changing customer needs and expectations must be central to every business decision. But merely responding to those needs is not enough. In this customer focused world in which every company is striving for a ‘Customer 360 view’ and an excellent customer experience, it can be tricky to know where you should start and how deep you should go. From a fragmented digital infrastructure and inadequate connection between sales, marketing and service functions to a range of customer journeys and channels: as a 21st-century company, it is difficult to offer a seamless, channel-consistent customer experience while promoting growth. And that's not the end of the story. Because if every company is aiming to be a customer-focused organisation, how do you set yourself apart towards your customers? How can your business differentiate itself in a customer focused world?
Connecting front office processes is essential
In a customer focused organisation, the front line is made up of marketing, sales and customer service and customer experience (CX). Together, their task is to provide an integrated and optimal customer experience. But how integrated are those departments in their operation? Have the silos been broken down? Are they working on the same, integrated CRM platform? Is there an integrated customer view that provides the basis for the way each individual department serves your customers? More than ever, the front office needs to be connected. Besides the right mindset, above all that calls for the right operating model, in which technology, processes, people and data & analytics are linked together based on a central customer view.
Developing the right strategy for serving customers
These issues are not new to us. We help businesses develop a strategy for serving customers and a distinctive customer experience that together achieve and accelerate the desired financial and operational results. We will support you in achieving the optimum design of the target operating model and the required, appropriate skills, always taking your customers as the reference point. In addition, we will work out the details of the customer strategy in a brand consistent way. As a result, every interaction will not only meet the functional needs of the customer, but will also help build a stronger and distinctive brand. Enabling the creation of higher economic value with a more positive, unique customer experience.
Our team can offer you expert and specialist support in:
Defining your strategy for serving customers so that it follows logically from the brand essence, customer vision and strategic focus. In this way, your objectives for growth, returns and efficiency will be in equilibrium. We take a data-driven approach in analysing outside-in and inside-out data in order to identify improvements for the benefit of a distinctive customer-focused organisation.
The brand is one of a company’s most important intangible assets. It is the lens through which the company looks at the world, but conversely it is also the lens through which customers view the company. It defines expectations, preferences and loyalty. We use advanced relevant data analyses to assess brands: we shape new brands or update existing ones. We work with you to flesh out the positioning of your brand, the architecture, the design of the proposition portfolio and the translation of the positioning into all critical front office activities. We also support you in bringing the brand to life internally and externally. In addition, we measure brand appreciation (including investment returns) in order to identify synergies and opportunities for growth.
Customer experience (CX) has been an integral part of the marketing operation for a long time. In KPMG’s Customer Experience Excellence survey, we have seen progress in performance over the past eleven years. At the same time, the differences between CX scores are growing smaller and it appears that the greatest growth in CX improvements, and with it growth in the overall appreciation of customer experiences, is behind us. Differentiation in CX is crucial for setting yourself apart from the competition – instead of digital uniformity, consistently creating personalised, brand-specific and differentiated customer experiences. How do you link the brand DNA with the design principles of your customer service and operating model? KPMG helps companies/marketing organisations achieve that connection and design the right facilitating operating model. Always starting from the CX perspective.
Marketing has never been so complex. Unceasing progress in technology and the importance of CX and data have revolutionised the marketing discipline, but they have also fragmented it. In addition, societal themes are forcing marketeers to make even more and faster changes. In the light of those forces, it is no surprise that ‘transforming the marketing function’ is the buzzword of the day. The marketing function needs to make a demonstrable contribution to the company's growth.
In order to achieve this, we follow our KPMG Powered Enterprise approach. This approach is focused on designing the optimum marketing function. Based on leading, innovative examples from practice, Powered consists of a ‘plug-and-play’ approach and solution in order to make your marketing function future-proof. From a 360° customer view to more personal engagement, from technological solutions for richer customer profiles and real-time customer data about all your channels to improving the management of your customer interactions. KPMG’s Powered Marketing approach will help deliver a smarter marketing function, supported by automation and insight, in order to better serve your customers.
The success of the sales function depends on the ability to be able to continually deliver in response to the fast changing needs of today's customers. That alone calls for changes to the sales and conversion process.
We will work with you to optimise and digitise the sales function and align it with evolved customer needs, category motivations and market dynamics. We will support you from strategy and digital/organisational design to implementation and change management, always with the aim of increasing conversion in your funnel. For this purpose, we use our KPMG Powered Enterprise approach. KPMG Powered Sales focuses on designing the optimum sales function. Based on leading, innovative examples from practice, Powered consists of a ‘plug-and-play’ approach and solution in order to improve your sales function. From a 360° prospect view to more personal engagement, from technological solutions for richer lead profiles and real-time customer data about all your channels to drawing up new sales roles able to focus on what they are good at: optimising the sales funnel and customer conversion. KPMG Powered Sales helps create a smarter sales function.
Firms that are capable of staying ahead of changing customer requirements will set the pace in the future. Together with you, we will work to configure the Customer Service function in a more customer focused way, to optimise it and digitise it where possible and necessary. In our approach, we look beyond best practice examples of sector leaders and achieving an omni-channel environment. We will inspire and accelerate your transformation with the help of our international cross-sector benchmarks, which are part of our KPMG Powered Customer Service approach. At the same time, we will map out your ambition, customer and organisational needs and use these as the point of departure for the design of the customer service function and supporting digital/other channels. In doing so, we will not only configure your Customer Service function to be future-proof, we will also focus on the commercial yield. With the help of KPMG Powered Sales, you can create a smarter and evolving customer service function.
Marketing has always represented the ‘voice of the customer’ and as such can generate substantial knowledge value, primarily through data. In addition, established activities for obtaining customer insights, such as sentiment tracking and customer research, remain important. But newer technologies offer even more opportunities. For example, AI-driven data analysis systems can increasingly expose the causal link between marketing investments and operating results, so improving marketing efficiency. The success of such initiatives depends on improving the creation and management of data, utilising market and customer information that is available across the organisation, promoting marketing and other analyses and translating them to hands-on recommendations. These are among the areas where KPMG can help you.
Good customer service calls for more than breaking down front office silos. Successfully responding to fast-changing customer wishes calls for a digital transformation that can only succeed if not only the operating processes and organisational structure but also the front, middle and back end of the IT infrastructure are connected. We will work with you to identify your CRM (Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics) needs and make sure they link in seamlessly with your processes, always taking the customer as our reference point.
Throughout our entire offering, we take a customer focused approach and employ KPMG's solutions, methodologies and tooling in order to align your customer and branding strategies with your company’s operating model. We will break down the existing organisational silos and link up your marketing, sales and service functions by defining and improving the overall organisational processes and technological infrastructure.
Customer Experience Excellence Best Practises
In this year's report, we explore how leading companies around the world are making these connections. We investigate the two areas of coordination of resources within and between customer journeys alongside the progress that companies are making on innovating their market approaches and commencing a new era of growth.
We evaluate upcoming best practices in 26 countries, regions and territories, with more than 88,000 customers evaluating their experiences with around 2,900 businesses, and we identify the companies who are leading the way.
Simplicity is important where complexity rules. In our report you can read how leading companies around the world are managing to make the right connection with their customers.
