Customer-Centric Marketing: Build Relationships, Create Advocates, and Influence Your Customers

CHAPTER SIX

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE STRATEGY

Building a Customer Experience Organization

ON JULY 20, 1969, A HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT EVENT TOOK place that changed for me what I believed were humanity's boundaries and abilities. Though I was only 10 years old, this historic moment fully opened my eyes to what we are able to accomplish when we set a goal and put our mind to it. That event was the NASA space program and Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon.

Later on in life I was to learn a second lesson from that same profound event—one which continues to guide me to this day. I believe the journey to the moon, and not the event itself, provides us with insights into how we can steer ourselves through these turbulent times of hyper-speed change.

Even with a clear strategy and objective—land a man on the moon—and massive amounts of research and testing, the percentage of time that the space capsule was precisely on target during its flight was a mere 3 percent. In other words, that means the capsule was off course for 97 percent of the flight. Can you imagine what Neil Armstrong thought when NASA told him that he would be off target 97 percent of the time after liftoff? However, astronauts are trained to manage through adversity, so accepting that course correction is the norm helped to focus and guide Neil and company during their voyage to achieve their goal.

I like to use the 97 ...