Insights2020 asked two questions: what the drivers of customer centricity are, and how to achieve it. The study compared overperforming organizations with underperforming ones and reported the gap between them on each driver.
It is described as the largest and most global insights and analytics study conducted at that point, covering 60 markets, 337 vision interviews, and 10,495 survey respondents, with LinkedIn behavioral analysis, Wharton crowd sourcing, and eight global research teams working across industries and functions.
Key findings
- Customer-centric growth is organized around three dimensions: total experience, customer obsession, and an insights engine.
- The widest gap between the two groups is on whether customer centricity is embraced by all functions, at 79 percent against 13 percent.
- Data-driven customization, meaning experiences created from data-driven insights, shows 73 percent against 31 percent.
- Experimentation is uncommon in both groups but still separates them, at 40 percent against 13 percent for embracing risk and experimentation. The reporting line of insights and analytics into the CEO is rarer still, at 29 percent against 12 percent.
- Three critical capabilities are measured: storytelling at 61 against 37 percent, business sense at 75 against 50 percent, and wholebrain thinking at 71 against 42 percent.
The ten drivers
The full list runs: leading role of insights and analytics, unlocking the power of data, critical capabilities, embraced by all, leadership priority, collaboration, experimentation, purpose-led, data-driven customization, and touch point consistency.
Collaboration is defined as working closely with customers, and shows 72 percent against 45 percent. It is the one driver where the underperforming group is closest to the leaders.
Where the opportunity is and what gets in the way
The opportunities named are getting insights into action across all touchpoints, behavioral data, personalization, and brand purpose. The deck marks these as especially true for overperformers.
The challenges are internal silos and bureaucracy, the legacy of structure and functions, making sense of data, and recruiting wholebrain people.
The data maturity path in the deck runs in five steps: know what data you have, link multiple data sources, integrate on and offline, treat data as a service to the customer, and become predictive and forward looking.
The coalition behind the study
The advisory board drew from advertisers, agencies, platforms, and academia, including Keith Weed of Unilever, Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP, Diego Scotti of Verizon, Julian Prynn of BAT, Jerry Wind of Wharton, Harish Bhat of Tata, Gayle Fuguitt of the ARF, Rob Norman of GroupM, Tony Fagan of Google, and Barbara Lamprecht of Volkswagen.
The study was structured as a coalition of founding partners and publishing partners, and the closing ask was to join a movement built on collaborating, experimenting, crowd sourcing, data collecting, publishing, sharing, and networking, with CMO and insights roundtables planned through 2016.
Scope and limitations
The percentages are reported as a contrast between two groups, overperformers and underperformers, rather than as a single population figure. The presentation gives the totals for markets, interviews, and respondents but does not break the sample down further.
Source
This page summarises DRIVING GROWTH THROUGH CUSTOMER CENTRICITY, by Millward Brown Vermeer, March 2016.