The role for ‘customer-backwards’ thinking in business transformation
From Glossier to Amazon, brands across the retail spectrum are adopting a ‘customer-backwards’ approach to developing new propositions which works back from the customer insight.
With so many organisations having embarked on digital transformation programmes and with rapidly changing competitive environments, the need for marketers to understand how to manage change and complexity has never been greater.
None of the interviewees taking part in the research for Econsultancy’s Change Management for Marketers’ Best Practice Guide believe that marketing should lead wider business and digital transformation programmes in isolation, but a number noted that marketing can often play a critical role.
As the ‘voice of the customer’, marketing can clearly play an important part in interpreting and conveying changing consumer behaviour and can ensure that customer needs are relayed back to the wider organisation.
Interviewees also noted however, that there has been a dramatic increase in both the complexity of how teams interface with consumers, understand patterns of behaviour and the interaction across a plethora of different touchpoints.