To build on the short description of what this blog is about in the “About Me” box to the left I wanted to answer three key questions for prospective followers and readers of this blog. Who am I? Why I care so much about this topic and why you should bother reading this blog. So without further ado…
1) Who am I?
I am a business consultant and have
been for all my working career. I started at IBM as a graduate after gaining my
degree in Business and Management from Aston University before moving onto Accenture
where I spent 4-5 years in their Marketing Sciences division focused on sales
and marketing analytics and RoI improvement. At that time Accenture was increasingly
focusing on systems integration which is definitely not my bag so I went
looking for a new home and after a short stint in PA Consulting’s Strategy
& Marketing Practice I found it. EY came calling with a very intriguing
offer to be part of the team to form a leading Customer Advisory business. I
liked what they had to offer so I joined back in January 2008 and haven’t
looked back.
Throughout my career I have been predominately
cross sector, working across many industries to help my clients deliver
customer centric growth strategies and improve their commercial performance. In
the past few years I have however focused almost entirely on Life Sciences. For
me this represents one of the most exciting areas to do customer work. The
sector is years behind in the ‘customer centricity’ movement and has some
serious catching up to do. The current climate along with the drive towards a
health outcomes model makes tackling related customer issues the number focus
for Life Sciences in the future.
Finally, it is important to define
what I mean by ‘customer’? We all know what an actual ‘customer’ is (although
even this often gets confused looks in Life Sciences) but this is not a blog
about how lovely Mrs Jones was who brought a 2 for 1 on Persil at Tesco’s last
week. This is the related strategies, tactics and operations of delivering a better
customer serve, selling more, and improving marketing effectiveness to drive
profitable growth. There are many elements to this but I think it is best
described by EY’s view of the world in terms of customer.
2) Why care?
My passion has always been, and still remains, anything in business that touches the customer. I get excited when I see or experience examples of great customer service, innovative customer strategies or clever sales and marketing and equally frustrated when companies (far too often) get this horribly wrong. I can’t really explain why, I have just been wired that way. It is probably down to my early realisation that the customer is by far the most important thing in business. Without them there is no business so you had better be damn good at attracting and retaining them. Lucky for me there are lots of companies who fall short of the mark of this.
So I decided to start this blog to share my views on the good, the bad and the ugly (but with more emphasis on the good). If this blog succeeds in helping even one company do something differently to improve their customer experience I will consider it well worth the effort.
3) Why bother?
So what is my value proposition to attract and then successfully retain prospective readers? (see what I did there?). I would like to share my three key principles of this blog that will hopefully resonate with you.
i) Make it interesting and thought provoking - I will do my best here to keep articles short, sharp and engaging. I’ll even try to add a bit of wit here and there although no promises on this one (and not through lack of trying)
ii) Consistent themes – You don’t want a collection of random articles based on whatever piqued my interest on the tube this morning. I will focus on the themes of customer strategy and experience, sales and marketing effectiveness and commercial improvement.
iii) Regular, current and relevant – there is never enough time in the day but I will do my best to provide regular updates and keep the content current and relevant.
Thanks for visiting the blog – please bookmark it and come back soon.
Aaron
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