It's Time for the Chief MarComCustomer Officer

This week's Business Week focuses on customer service with a cover story on "Customer Vigilantes." That particular story focuses on the horror stories from the likely suspects - telco and cable. We really should make distinctions about how different business types handle customer service. Comcast features highly in the article for pissing off Mona Shaw and Bob Garfield yet they have a very popular ad campaign - "it's Comcastic" - which is, no doubt, partly responsible for drawing in new customers.

How can a business' customer service effort be so out of sync with its marketing effort? In the case of the telcos and the cable businesses, it's easy. They have resigned themselves to measure success via new customer acquisition. Churn takes a back seat. Now in the same issue, they profile Sprint's recent attempt to get beyond that old model into actually valuing customer service (and therefore customers).

What is a Chief MarComCustomer Officer?
The marcom world (marketing and communications; advertising and public relations) continues to remain a siloed one. Once in a while the two disciplines are brought together around a campaign. In some rare cases, the functions are combined under the same reporting structure.

Now every business is a little different. Still, the world has changed enough that it is probably time for most major businesses to consider merging their marketing and communications function under one savvy team - a team that understands the value of each of those two disciplines. As the supremacy of advertising fades a bit and public relations continues to grow something else is happening: complexity. Our experience as consumers is growing increasingly complex - messages coming from everywhere, marketers creating content and conversations with us, our online behavior affecting what marketing content is delivered to us. Communicating and building relationships is not as easy as crafting the best media plan. PR and advertising (not to mention direct, retail marketing, pure digital, etc...) must play off each other to succeed. And they must share a measurement dashboard to guide the CMCCO.

Combining the CMO and CCO (or EVP of Communications or whatever the top PR job is) would help solve another little discrepancy - who owns word of mouth marketing (WOMM). This new discipline jockey's for position within organizations without a clear understanding of how powerful it can be especially when combined with the other disciplines.

Which brings us back to the "Customer" part.

Customers can be a brand's most powerful marketing force. That is the promise behind word of mouth marketing. And many brands have seen this promise come true. Maybe the overall stewardship of the company's marcom efforts should be combined with the customer relations function. That way, companies who believe in their customer - their power and their value to their business - can have a holistic way of reaching out and engaging them.

Elsewhere in the issue, Jeff Jarvis seems to sum it up well:
So when you reach out to that kvetching blogger you found online, you're engaged in customer service as well as PR, market research, marketing, sales, and product development. You are reinventing your company—and, if you get there before your competitors, your industry. That is why you shouldn't relegate this vital task to one department or some interns or consultants. You should reorganize the company around this new relationship with your customer, finally putting that customer at the center of everything you do because—thanks to the Web—you can. If you don't, well, someone will you say you "suck." "

Comments

[ShapingYouth]

Nice post, heartily concur. As one who's not wild about having been dragged into the spotlight as the poster person for Target’s customer service gaffes, (nor branded a customer vigilante for our org) I’d safely say solid attention to a hybrid CMO/CCO/EVP could’ve prevented same on all counts.

I’m not sure this is a ‘one person’ job, but more of a dept. head notion due to all the tentacles and reach of the extended digital sphere.

Also strongly believe in applauding the ‘first strike’ forward-thinking execs for positive yields in customer service/positioning, as this ABC news article points to Walgreens for same. http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=4272981&page=1

You can bet those of us seeking positive change in the corporate social responsibility arena will ballyhoo the heck outta this one w/kudos, as we’ve already seen the viral buzz extend onto YouTube with ‘Walgreens Rocks!’ to champion same.

Moral of the story? Do the right thing the first time…Corps shouldn’t attempt to greenwash/pinkwash or blogwash or they’ll quickly be ‘outed’ as hogwash.

In an ever-increasingly erudite crowd of deconstructionists and social change agents, ‘it’s not my table’ customer service just won’t cut it anymore. And as Rapaport said in Ad Age last week about the CMO/snarky/snide advertising, those tactics have seen their day and are bound to taper off soon (hopefully) too...

[Bob Batchelor]

Hi John,

You hit the nail on the head on a number of points. What I found most compelling is your description of the current state of "integrated communications:"

"The marcom world (marketing and communications; advertising and public relations) continues to remain a siloed one. Once in a while the two disciplines are brought together around a campaign. In some rare cases, the functions are combined under the same reporting structure."

I do not understand why we can't change this, considering that at this point, everybody knows the siloed nature of marcom depts. is a nightmare. Can it really be that marcom leaders have too much to lose in their own little fiefdoms, even if reinventing the dept. meant better service to the organization?

I also like your analysis:

"Maybe the overall stewardship of the company's marcom efforts should be combined with the customer relations function. That way, companies who believe in their customer - their power and their value to their business - can have a holistic way of reaching out and engaging them."

Want a real-world example? Look at the overwhelming number of companies that start press releases with the company name. "XYZ Introduces..." Instead, the release should be about the customer.

Years ago, a friend and I started writing all the releases for one of the world's largest financial institutions by making it about the benefit to customers. We didn't ask permission or get approval, we just did it. Suddenly, people started talking about the "value" our team brought to marcom. No one ever figured out exactly what we were doing, but it worked.

Thanks for the insight on this important issue. Hail, hail the Chief MarComCustomer Officer!

--Bob Batchelor
School of Mass Communications
University of South Florida

[Pete Blackshaw]

Totally agree, although I still think the hardest piece of the "integration" mix -- the path of most resistance -- is baking the "consumer affairs" group into the broader MarCom vision. They still sit on an island, even though they technically own the "conversation." Great post, though.