Opinions: Customer First

Customer-First / Customer-Centric / Customer-Led, or whatever Customer-something you want to call it, has become the only solution in marketing over the last decade.

A huge amount of effort and resource is behind the transformation to Customer-First.

I started to think about what that term actually means and what the transformation entails, and actually I think it’s largely meaningless in the way it is so often used.

I think the beginning of the issue is that ‘customer-first’ and ‘first party data’ have become synonymous.

As we became more digitally connected, created more information, and put more stress on attribution, ‘data’ took over and became, in some form or other, everyone’s number one objective.

Capturing it, understanding it, organising it, managing it, using it. We all have a huge focus on data, but particularly that valuable first party stuff.

And it changed the way that we organise ourselves (or try to) in marketing, and then consequently as businesses.

Customer-First started when we stopped making campaign selections based on what trading wanted. We were able to point towards evidence in the data that said the past behaviours of customers indicated what they would like to buy or view next. So we stopped managing our databases and CRM plans according to products and trading, and we started to organise ourselves around customer groups, we created models for Next Best Actions, and we put frequency caps in place.

And that was, and is, great! I love that! But you can see where ‘customer first’ and ‘first party data’ got tangled up together.

And because Data is King everywhere, all that so-called Customer-First thinking and language seeped out of campaign and database management, out of CRM, and into the wider world. And that is where is lost its meaning.

It stopped being about a data methodology and framework. And now everyone is trying to become Customer-First… Hmm.

I have several issues with it in the way it is applied and spoken about:

1. Customer does not mean data. They’ve become synonymous, but they are in fact very different. If you want to utilise data well, that does not mean you require a customer-first approach. Data is much broader, more complex, and more interesting, than simply customers and their first party data (read: email addresses, because I know it’s what everyone wants to collect). We risk losing valuable information by forgetting the equally useful sources of data that don’t have anything to do with customer and transaction files

2. ‘Customer-First’ creates friction with other disciplines which is a huge mistake. Because of it’s relationship to data and data’s perception of being the silver bullet, the phrase now unintentionally pits creativity and data against each other, which leaves many Creatives and Strategists feeling diminished and lost, which is just poor for collaboration, imagination, and productivity

3. Customers are idiots. And they’re chaotic. And changeable. Plus we limit ourselves if we focus this way because…

4. …Customer behaviours and actions are not even accurate indicators of opportunities. They are often responding to what we have offered them previously, so their actions are great for optimising, but not so great for innovation

So, please be customer-first in your efforts to organise your customer data.

But stop being ‘customer-first’ in other areas of marketing because the end result always seems to be the capture of thousands of email addresses with no reason to hold them.

Enjoy a healthy mix of data across customer transactions and engagement, research verbatims, the business landscape, cultural trends indicators, all sorts of things!

And then mix those into your wider marketing pot, with imaginative brand ideas, strong values, and respect for the expertise of all disciplines.

Consider the methodology that is right for the task at hand. And then… just do marketing. Let good marketing be your direction, not ‘customer first’ or some other buzz word.