This is a great piece on leadership and customer experience CX #igetdigital
Don’t give your customers/clients/students a reason to choose #disruption
http://issue.by/which50/customer-experience/leadership/ CX – Customer Experience
Customer Experience Leadership
Atlassian Values – easy to grasp and empowering
When I picked up this graphic from the #atlassian IPO docs, I was inspired as to the potential of organisations in the current environment, when, if you work for a large traditional organisation, its likely to be all about policy, procedure, restructure/ re-engineering and a narrow funnel to the perceived best positions in the organisation !
While we could go on about that, everyone is far more interested in today and the future. Atlassian, Tesla, Uber and airbnb are all great examples of what customer understanding and clarity around organisational purpose, brings to all stakeholders.
This is the core purpose of strategic marketing and I doubt that these organisations have paid specific attention to marketing, but instead it has been ingrained across their growing organisational worlds, from the start up, its everywhere ! Other great examples of this philosophy include Richard Bransons’ Virgin businesses and Anita Roddicks’ Bodyshop.
All have a vision, clearly communicated, all look to leverage resources (owned or not) in unique and innovative ways, all have transparency with customers through staff blogs, apps with usable rating / engagement tools, all are doing cool customer engaging service/product upgrades/experiences as part of the deal, and all have a lack of respect for the status quo.
I don’t work for these organisations, but I’m already intrigued and while it wont be for everyone, I’ll bet they get the best people for their mission through the door. This further disadvantages those other organisations who talk a big game but are caught up in unclear priorities and lack of customer focus.
I don’t think this exciting world is out of reach for any organisation, but you have to give up some traditions and look to your customers and understand their needs and what value you could possibly represent for them. You also have to empower your people to contribute to the customer journey in a transparent way. In every organisation I’ve worked in or consulted with, there has been a massive capability for unique problem solving solutions internally but its rarely tapped – unleash the good work your brand has already achieved ! The digital environment is a major facilitator of these opportunities and its very cost effective and scale-able, so there’s no excuse for not to be part of this rewarding way to do business !
Finally as an owner or manager, quoting Atlassian “be the change you seek”.
Digital Marketing is all around us, specifically the tools for Digital Marketing impact our lives daily through many of the devices we carry and through old school media asking us to follow or like !
From August 18th in conjunction with Charles Sturt University and ITMasters 
I’m running a 5 week free online course with 4 live sessions to decode digital and discuss how you need to be thinking about digital as part of your customer communication strategy, given that if you are not, your competitors probably are !
We’ll discuss what the tools for digital are and how to use them to interact with your consumers across a range of digital devices including wearables to develop a workable digital marketing plan. We’ll also discuss integration of digital and analogue media so you can reach customers (B2B or B2C) across their media day.
You need to enroll to access the live and recorded content and any other resources we make available, sign up @ https://www.itmasters.edu.au/free-short-course-digital-marketing/
Non Marketers Contributing to Marketing
We’ve just finished a conference key note for around 130 non marketers talking about marketing, and while we’ve done a number of sessions like this over the past few years I’m always excited at the feedback we get. While if you work in marketing, its your daily thing but for non marketers to have an insight into what actually happens behind the scenes to drive the front end comms and new products/services is a bit of an eye opener and even reassuring for them.
While our sessions are always fast paced and motivating, the knowledge shared, understanding gained can only help the organisation and the marketers as they recruit and retain clients, because more people are onboard for what needs to be done.
Certainly when you empower the PEOPLE part of your marketing mix, its a distinct bonus as employee advocates are highly trusted sources of information, also processes permitting, you might find more problems are solved for customers and opportunities realised for customers and stakeholders at the point of contact. This makes your brand really sing to all those inside and outside of the organisation.
A business/organisation with empowered, marketing orientated people can cope with changing conditions and customer demands far better than those who haven’t invested in this internal opportunity.
You need to expose more of your people to marketing ideals and this can start by the marketing department doing more internal presentations and launches and being open to feedback and buy-in from across the organisation.
