It’s Like You’re My Mirror: Marketing and Change Management

In a previous blog, we highlighted similarities between marketing and change management and suggested six questions that can serve as a foundation for successful change management initiatives. Taking one step further, here we look at the similarities in the communication requirements of these two disciplines that will be increasingly critical in both the pandemic response and next phase of economic recovery.

In his hit song, Mirrors, Justin Timberlake sings of the way his love is  the other half of him, completes him, and supports him. The song is great, but its relevance here is in the way his words perfectly capture both the similarities between marketing and change management and the way that understanding those similarities can make each discipline better.

In change management, ADKAR is a widely known and respected methodology. The letters represent the journey through which change managers must guide their audiences in order to achieve the desired new state.

The value of a framework like this is that it identifies all of the moments in the journey that need to be accounted for and addressed through communications and training. It also enables a leader to think strategically about where the biggest risks and opportunities for influence lie. For example, if a company is introducing a new software application to replace a much despised legacy system, the opportunity to drive change may be greatest in the Knowledge and Ability stages: nobody needs convincing that the new system is better than the old but they may need extensive guidance on how to do their jobs under the new system. Conversely, the introduction of a new process for customer onboarding that is projected to save money and increase retention may require more emphasis on building Awareness and Desire if the current process, to those using it every day, doesn’t seem “broken.”

In marketing, the customer decision-making journey is often defined through the following stages: Problem Recognition, Information Gathering, Alternative Evaluation, Purchase Decision, and Post-Purchase Assessment. As with the ADKAR framework, this model enables leaders both to think carefully about each stage of the process and to identify the stages in which the flow is most at risk. For example, a new entrant to the CRM software market may need to invest heavily in the Information Gathering and Alternative Evaluation stage in order to gain consideration by prospective customers. On the other hand, a company selling a new kind of service connecting corporate art buyers and artists may need to focus on Problem Recognition to drive prospects to consider their solution.

Interestingly, when we line these two models up next to each other, it is, in the words of Justin Timberlake, like each is “lookin’ at the other half of” the other. More importantly, the alignment brings to light the key objective in each of the five stages.

A subsequent blog post will provide more guidance on how these objectives can provide a powerful foundation for devising more effective change management communications, but to illustrate the potential:

  • The objective to “highlight the need” drives home that the efforts to build awareness of the need for change must be from a credible source and be seen as empathetic.
  • The objective to “Envision a better world in which the need is resolved” makes it clear that any attempt to build knowledge of how to change requires that the “how” be seen as irresistibly simple and clearly puts the better, future state close at hand.
  • Focusing on the objective to “Make it happen” will ensure that assertions of the audience’s ability to implement will minimize friction and build confidence.

Customer Success Boston April Meeting Notes and Video

On April 29th, the Boston-area Customer Success community gathered at the offices of Crimson Hexagon. On the agenda was a discussion with Dana Miller, SVP Client Services at Crimson Hexagon, and Barry Daitch, Global Leader of Customer Success at Autodesk, on how they have steered their respective organizations to deliver results in environments in which “customers” aren’t always the same as buyers or even influencers and where many factors impact customer retention.

Because Autodesk and Crimson Hexagon serve very different markets and customers, and both deal with highly complex environments, their methods of achieving customer success varied. The discussion offered an interesting range of ideas across the following key areas:

  • Standardizing operations
  • Managing customer relationships
  • Hiring CSMs

Standardizing operations

  • At Autodesk, very large accounts with many users and many different products require standardized processes for nurturing, monitoring and growing customer relationships. A “Client Engagement Plan” developed by the CSM focuses on deepening relationships and delivering value while an Account Manager’s “Account Plan” sets growth goals and milestones, and an “Adoption Plan” defines opportunities for product cross-selling and usage. [view video clip]
  • At Crimson Hexagon, the company’s rapid growth and combination of large and small accounts has necessitated the development of “playbooks,” or standard processes for addressing frequently recurring customer situations, as a way to drive faster ramp-up and more consistency among CSMs. Additionally, because the company’s diverse customer base thwarts a “one size fits all” understanding of and approach to customers, the organization takes a disciplined approach to identifying drivers and mitigants of churn. [view video clip]

Managing customer relationships

  • For Autodesk, ensuring the health of their complicated customer relationships requires a combination of disciplined expectation-setting and risk-mitigation. The organization’s “governance model” defines the responsibilities of the Autodesk team and those of the customer team, as well as scopes and reinforces the boundaries of Customer Success and Professional Services. [view video clip] Because even satisfied customer relationships are threatened by the departure of key customer personnel, Autodesk also strives to strategically build bridges throughout the customer organization and to identify and capture customer success stories that can be used to highlight value delivered. [view video clip: 0:00-2:10, 5:50-]
  • Crimson Hexagon’s offering—delivering insights for brands on their social media presence—leads them into customer relationships with marketing agencies that can lose accounts and in-demand social media leaders [view video clip, 2:10-5:50]. As a result, they spend more time and effort on finding ways to identify churn risk outside of application usage, which isn’t strongly correlated to non-renewal [view video clip: 0:00-3:15], and are planning to invest in resources for building and leveraging customer advocates [view video clip: 1:21-].

Hiring CSMs

  • At Autodesk, CSMs play the role of a business consultant to customers—advising them on best practices and opportunities for efficiency gains. As a result, Daitch places significant weight on candidates’ industry knowledge to ensure they will be credible with demanding customers. [view video clip: 0:00-4:48]
  • At Crimson Hexagon, application complexity, lack of clearly established ways to quantify the value of social media monitoring and rapid growth all drive an emphasis on customer-centricity (the ability to see things from the customer’s perspective) and project management capabilities among candidates. [view video clip: 4:49-]

Taken together, Barry Daitch’s and Dana Miller’s discussion [access all the clips] offered disparate but valuable examples that organizations could apply to their own CS teams as well as be part of a blueprint for the questions to ask and issues to address.

Five Strategies to Adapt Bank Branches to The New Normal

There is a wealth of evidence that consumers are using online and mobile channels as the primary channels for their everyday banking needs:

  • Having reached critical mass in online banking penetration, the largest U.S. banks continue to report strong growth in active mobile banking customers (Chase +23% y/y to 17.2 million; Bank of America up 17% to 15.5 million; and Wells Fargo +22% to 13.1 million)
  • Regional bank customers are also growing their usage of non-branch channels.  45% of PNC customers use non-branch channels for a majority of banking transactions.  Fifth Third reports that ATM and mobile channels’ share of deposit volume rose from 12% to 31% over the past two years. KeyBank claims that online and mobile transactions are growing by 9% annually, while branch transactions are declining by 3%.

The rise of self-service channels for everyday banking transactions is leading banks to re-assess their investment in their branch networks.  For example, banks are changing traditional assumptions as to what constitutes optimal branch density within markets.  In a recent presentation, KeyBank claimed that branch density is now less relevant as long as a bank can pair branches with a good mobile offering. In addition, in a low-revenue-growth environment, banks are under pressure to cut costs in order to meet earnings expectations. As a result of these factors, banks are cutting branch numbers.

  • Bank of America is expected to cut branches to below 5,000 by the end of 2014, compared to more than 5,700 in the second quarter of 2011.  It recently announced the sale of branch clusters in North Carolina and Michigan.
  • Over the past six months Citibank sold all of its branches in Texas, as it focuses its energies on a select number of large metro markets.
  • KeyBank has closed or sold 8% of its branches over the past two years, and plans to cut its network further, by about 2-3% per year.

However, banks remain strongly committed to their branch networks.  This is largely due to the fact that consumers continue to value the branch channel, even if usage has declined.  A recent ABA survey found that 21% of consumers named the branch as their preferred banking channel, up from 18% in 2013. In addition, banks recognize the benefits in encouraging customers to use multiple channels.  Wells Fargo found that customers using its stores as well as online and mobile channels have a 70% higher purchase rate than customers who only use online and mobile. With in this mind, the following are five branch strategies that banks should follow, with examples of banks that have already implemented these approaches:

  1. Deploy new branch formats.  Given lower traffic and transaction volumes in branches, banks should launch branch prototypes with smaller footprints, so that they can maintain their physical presence, but at a lower cost.
    • PNC has converted 200 of its branches to a smaller format, with 100 more to follow by the end of 2014.
  2. Launch flagship branches in selected markets.  With changing ideas around branch density, bank can consolidate multiple branches into a large flagship store.  These flagship stores act as a brand beacon for the bank in specific markets, as well as providing space for the bank to showcase new innovations
  3. Reconfigure branch staff.  As branch activity is switching from transaction processing to sales and advice, and branches switch to smaller format, bank can reduce the average number of staff per branch, but should also change the functional balance, with fewer tellers and more sales specialists.
    • In the 18 months to June 2014, Fifth Third cut 22% of its branch service staff, but increased sales staff by 6%.
    • Over the past year, PNC has grown its number of investment professionals in branches by 4%.
  4. Incorporate technology into branches. As consumers become more accustomed with using technology for their everyday financial needs, banks should showcase customer-facing technology in branches.  This can enhance the user experience and capture sales opportunities
    • Regions is installing two-way video to enable customers communicate directly with bankers via an ATM.
  5. Open branches outside of footprint.  As having a critical mass of branches in a market is no longer a prerequisite for success, banks can open branches beyond their traditional retail footprint, to target specific consumer or business clusters.
    • City National has established branches in New York City, Atlanta and Nashville, dedicated to targeting entertainment firms that are clustered within these markets.