Today, the power of shaping brand experiences has shifted to the customer — they drive the sales process and dictate when, where, and on which channels to interact with your brand. Leadership needs to shift with this change, as digital disruption and increasing customer expectations are forcing organizations to compete on the basis of customer engagement to scale. If companies want to accelerate growth and achieve business outcomes, they need to know their customers as people, not transactions, and work to develop a culture that empowers employees to drive deeper engagement.

This means that companies must make the most of the “moments” that occur between the organization and its customers across all channels. It's not just understanding the customer persona; it’s understanding how they progress through a company's buying journey from beginning to end, and empowering employees and providing solutions that make their lives easier and allow them to focus on optimizing customer moments. Companies have to be “customer-obsessed” of focused specifically on the digital experience your customers have with your brand so they walk away with a positive experience every single time.

The first wave of customer service and CRM technology focused on automating customers and providing a single view of customers — in some ways reducing them to transactions. But the new wave of customer engagement and digital experience has evolved the process, to the point where technology must now enable a personal, direct connection.

Here are a several warning signs that your company is mired in a transaction-based mentality and approaches a company can take to correct it:

You think your customer service department owns the customer relationship.

In reality, no one department “owns” the customer. Organizations need to reorganize around the idea that all employees share ownership of a series of customer moments. With each customer interaction, or moment, customers are forming an opinion about your brand, and companies need to capitalize on those moments to create satisfaction and further engagement.

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