If you are not working on dismantling the walls of separation then you are wasting your time
One picture can say more than a shelf full of books. When it comes to forging a mutually beneficial relationship between companies and customers here is the picture that says it all – at least to me.
This picture was put together by David Armano and is part of his visual archive on his Logic + Emotion blog. It is a blog that I rate highly and have listed under my “Worth Checking Out” links.
Why am I drawing attention to these walls of separation today?
Too much of what passes for Customer Experience is simply customer interaction management (the engineering mindset) or customer interaction design (the digital design mindset). If the Customer Experience movement is to make any impact then the people working in it, leading it, have to rise several levels above interaction and deal with the stuff that really stands in the way of organisations and their customers: the deeply ingrained, taken for granted, walls of separation.
Put differently, if you are not willing to dismantle the walls of separation then you are wasting time, effort and money on Customer Experience, CRM and Social Media. If you disagree then please do write and share your point of view and the reasoning behind it.
Posted on February 26, 2011, in Customer Experience and tagged CRM, customer, customer experience, customer interaction, customer interation management, David Armano, Logic+Emotion, relationship, social media, Walls, Walls of Separation. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
David Armano provides a clear picture of the barriers to a good customer/supplier relationship. However, there are other factors that need to be taken into account, such as fear of the unknown, responsibility for purchasing, supplier approval policies, key decision-making, etc.
Unless these barriers are toppled, the relationship will not work effectively.
Hello Anthony, I thank you for dropping by and sharing your thoughts.
What can I say except that you make a valid observation and I am in agreement with you. I suspect we can come up with lots and lots of barriers. The key point I liked about David Armano’s visual diagram is that the business is in the main isolated from customer. And in the main it is the company that puts up the barriers and thus the task of dismantling the barriers falls to the company.