Silos are the enemy within for large brands. One department does this, the other that. And to complicate matters, each has a different SVP protecting their domain. The first time these groups meet is in the customer’s hand — which is rarely a good thing. A great divide is most evident in the the division of product and channel. Unfortunately, this union is also known as your customer experience.
Face it. People (consumers for the SVPs in the house) don’t care about corporate silos, or the executive rational behind them. What they do care about is having a great experience when they choose to interact with your brand. The iPod and iTunes are one in the same. UPS Tracking has a symbiotic relationship with UPS.com. The Digital World has removed all lines. Marketing, product usage and customer service are now part of a unified experience. Fail at one, and you fail at all. Or said another way — you have to succeed at all, to be a success.
This starts by breaking down the walls. Allowing and enabling people inside your corporation to collaborate. And if necessary, removing the old guard who refuses to change. Once you have a team passionate to work together, the focus shifts to the product-channel sync. A concept as old as time itself; the sync means you can’t force a square peg fit through a round hole.
Products must be designed and customized for the channel in which they live. Software should behave differently from a website. Kiosks are not the same as an IVR-based call center. An iPhone App can do so much more than a .mobi site. You get the point. Great products take advantage of the differentiated benefits of the channel, while also conforming to the best practices.
Obtaining the product-channel sync is not a difficult process. It’s simply a collaborative one. Make sure your product engineers and information architects work together. Ask marketing and IT to co-write business requirements. Bring in channel specialists to tailor-fit your brand to the medium. And above all, seek and integrate your customers’ voice into the development process.
Sure, you’ll have to ignore that policy and procedure manual you spent way too much time and money perfecting. But, the end result will be so much better than the same old connect-the-dots project… It’ll be a customer experience to remember (drive profits for SVPs still reading).
Turning advice into action:
- Remove every wall that stands in the way of customer experience
- Human factors experts are your friend — have them in every channel
- Every department combines to form one being — say hello to your brand
- Collaboration leads to satisfaction, innovation and the reversal of extinction
- The product-channel sync works even better when your customers are involved
You make a ship for the sea, and a plane for the sky. The same hold true in any business. If you design your products for the channel, your company will soar high…
