Change can make for strange bedfellows. Ten years ago, process was concerned with manufacturing and marketing was building brands and trying to acquire new customers. Then came the customer revolution.
Today, companies are focusing more and more on improving the customer experience, rather than customer acquisition – and increasingly, they’re turning to process design as the most powerful approach to elevating customer experience. But where does that leave marketing?
Marketing’s traditional roles are diminishing in importance. Customers are too empowered today to be persuaded and cajoled much. And they’re too informed, thanks to web interactions, to be easily fooled (sorry, but I dislike the “social media” term which has already been gummed to death). And promotional communication, no matter how creative, is tangential to customer experience. So where does marketing fit in new, customer-centric organizations where “sell this stuff” is no longer the point.
Are process and marketing going to merge? What types of new organization constructs to you see coming down the pike?
