Has Coles just made the retail CMO an endangered species?
The appointment by Coles of its very first chief customer officer – replacing the position of chief marketing officer – reveals something quite interesting is happening at the major retailer, Lexer’s David Chinn write.
Coles recently appointed its first chief customer officer (CCO), Amanda McVay, to replace the position of CMO.
The expanded remit may seem like a move away from marketing-driven customer acquisition to retention tactics, however it speaks more to an industry-wide repositioning in the future of retail strategy – and the growing importance of knowing, not presuming to know, your customer.
It’s not that marketers, ads, and promotional campaigns no longer have an important role to play.
Rather, brands are empowering teams to think and act more holistically, reframing marketing as just one aspect of the end-to-end customer journey. Bringing together a greater understanding of what customers want, what they say they want and how you engage them, will allow you to create a better experience, which the new Coles CEO, Leah Weckert, clearly sees significant value in.
Improving experiences along the customer journey boosts revenue by up to 15% and increases customer satisfaction by 20%. Having a CCO at the top of a company will reduce any potential friction between marketing and CX.
When investment decisions can be funnelled in a way that makes the customer journey smoother, it will deliver against your bottom line.
Keeping promises shapes your brand.
A brand isn’t just shaped by the promises it makes, but the promises it keeps. Marketers and C-suite leaders have long recognised that they must build trust for customers to want to engage with their brand.
However, to maintain this trust over time, senior leaders across the organisation have to consistently deliver on the brand promise so that it is understood and appreciated by the customer.
To achieve this marketing and CX teams need to engage in a continuous feedback loop. If a brand isn’t delivering on its promise, or the promise isn’t resonating, customers will act with their wallets, 54% of us will move to a competitor.
Without a swift recovery, many brands run the risk of losing market share. A CCO can see in both directions and has the power to pull the appropriate levers.
Consistency is the secret ingredient to making customers happy and achieving brand growth. Customers have started interacting with brands more frequently, on more channels, with a greater variety of distinct needs.
Given that the customer journey can span all elements of a company – from the awareness, research, consideration, purchase or post-sale service phase – it’s not enough to make customers happy with each individual interaction. The cumulative experience is what matters – and that’s why the entire customer journey is now commanding top-leadership attention.
Delivering good vibes at scale with tech
Our associations with brands are influenced by how they make us feel, and how customers feel has been at the heart of good CX since its inception.
Given that consumers are feeling the pressure of the rising cost of living every time they purchase their essentials, it’s never been more important for a brand like Coles to continue delivering on its mission – “giving Aussie families the products they need for a happy, healthy home life, at prices they can afford.”
Technology and automation can now also be used to deliver good vibes, at scale. Email flows, chatbots, text messages, and delivery experiences all work together to make customers feel good about their experiences with brands.
With a deep knowledge of the customer, informed by both marketing and CX data, a CCO is in the right position to guide the engineering of all of these elements consistently, sincerely, and empathetically.
Data insights inform decision making
By constantly evaluating CX data, a CCO can focus on customer satisfaction first, then work backward to determine what can be improved to create a better brand-customer reality and drive revenue.
For example, if a brand can see that it is receiving too many customer complaints or disproportionately high churn at a particular stage, it can work to improve experiences throughout the customer journey, reduce the cost to serve customers, foster more positive word of mouth, and make it easier to drive conversions and boost loyalty.
If a CCO can measure these metrics accurately and get all systems working together, they can combine the forces of CX and marketing more effectively. To stay competitive, brands need to chase this 1+1=3 effect.
CX is more influential than advertising.
Some 65% of US customers find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising. We remember how people, and also brands, made us feel, not what they said. So marketing messages, without the positive customer experience to cement it, will likely go wasted.
Bringing together all elements of your operations, to deliver consistent experiences, will help. Using data which informs the decisions about what is and isn’t working, will allow brands like Coles to better know their customer, not just reinforce what they think they know.
Going a little deeper to inform the entire customer journey. What’s more: bringing in personalised loyalty, which we haven’t even skimmed the surface of here, will no doubt help with the power of the Coles loyalty program, FlyBuys.
Relying on customer data and data-driven CX rather than some innate gut-feel is where the best insights can be found, and this move from Coles, signals that they recognise this as well.
It’s a bold and choice move from new CEO Weckert, and we expect we’ll see more retailers moving in this direction to prioritise customer insights and experience, especially with disposable incomes shrinking the first Tuesday of every month when the RBA reconvenes.
David Chinn is Lexer’s CEO.
David Chinn is the chief executive officer of retail customer data platform Lexer
Coles at Bayswater desperately needs to be upgraded. I am a regular customer of 8 years. I can no longer get everything I need at this store and regularly must go either to the local Woolworths or a larger Coles as my Coles no longer stock it, or have a smaller range. Staff keep telling me that it is a small store, but our population in Bayswater, vic must have at least doubled with all the town houses and large apartment complexes that have been built here in recent years. They have upgraded the shopping centre but not Coles that is in the centre. I hope this gets to someone who can actually do something about it.
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But what about the 4 Ps?
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Maybe I’m out of the loop here, but CX is marketing. All marketing and advertising should be driven by data, strategy and understanding the wants and needs of the consumer. When did we take the CX out of marketing? Which CMOs aren’t looking at CX? :/
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So 65% of Americans are more influenced by good experience with a brand than by great advertising. Er, what do you suppose led them to the brand in the first place…? Once the brand is experienced the advertising has done its most important work.
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Probably price.
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sometimes you change the title of the role for more basic and functional reasons
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