Beyond Marketing: The Value of Cross-Functional Teams in Building Customer Intimacy

Client

Teknor Apex

Opportunity

CMG partnered with Global Leading Partner of Custom Polymer Solutions, Teknor Apex, on its mission to continue to drive meaningful connections and customer-intimacy across every touchpoint in the customer journey.

Outcome

With its desire to look ahead and keen focus on prioritizing value to their customers, Teknor Apex adopted new tools and processes on key initiatives by integrating additional external insight to further evolve customer intimacy. The results were newly appointed “customer intimacy champions,” and a renewed focus within the organization expediting the delivery of customer value.

CMG and Teknor Apex partnered to build cross functional teams, focused on building Customer Intimacy, to drive the behaviors of being proactive, collaborative and accountable to our customers.

CI Strategy and Roadmap Development

The initial phase of our engagement included defining the customer’s journey then using an outside-in and inside-out approach to identify areas for optimization of customer intimacy at each stage. This helped inform the development of a customer intimacy roadmap, outlining 12 priority areas (or behaviors) that need to be addressed in order to align to the evolved customer expectation driving value delivery. ​

To effectively realize the customer intimacy strategy and roadmap, CMG activated a ”Navigator” team inclusive of leaders and stakeholders from both organizations to champion, guide, and support customer intimacy work across the organization. The Navigator team represented key business units, functions, and geographies to account for all unique needs and ensure an inclusive approach.​

Activating Cross-Functional Teams

In coordination with the Navigator team, CMG activated and coached a series of Micro Action Teams (MATs) that were focused on specific customer intimacy priorities and creating new organizational processes to bring those behaviors to life. Each team consisted of members from different departments, such as marketing, sales, technical, and customer service. These functions represented all the critical touchpoints with the customer. ​

Each MAT utilized Agile ways of working to establish focus on the customer, prioritize work based on value, and communicate more effectively. CMG coaches led the teams through 2-week sprints, facilitating Agile ceremonies and ensuring the teams remained aligned with their purpose. At the end of each sprint, the teams would participate in a joint sprint review with key business leaders to share work in progress and receive feedback. These sprint reviews allowed for better cross-team collaboration and helped identify areas of synergy or redundancy.

Examples of outputs from the various MATs included:

• Consultative selling training for sales team members

• More effective communication of lead times to customers

• Enhanced reporting capabilities on sales funnel velocity

• Optimized web presence and brand awareness

Coaching Transition and Sustainability

To set the client up for success, CMG trained internal team members to carry on the coaching responsibilities for the MATs post CMG’s involvement.

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“We are customer-centric - and our work with CMG allowed us to build new muscles of thinking from the customers perspective; driving customer intimacy even further into our culture.”

- Kelly Coutu, VP Supply Chain