The goal of customer experience is always to make customers’ lives easier and better. And a huge part of achieving that goal is solving problems for your customers and their communities.
But taking a stance and getting involved in the community to solve problems is challenging for some brands. Kofi Amoo-Gottfried, DoorDash’s first-ever CMO, says the key is to find what is authentic to your brand. You can’t speak out on everything happening in the world, but you can get involved with issues that impact your customers and business.
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DoorDash has seen incredible growth in the past few years and had opportunities to be there for its customers and help their communities. For the brand, it’s not just about getting people their food quickly; it’s about supporting local businesses, providing access to food, and helping people throughout the neighborhood.
Amoo-Gottfried calls it the flywheel effect–when someone orders food on DoorDash, they end up getting a great meal. But it goes beyond that to help the local restaurant grow their business and the Dasher to earn money from the delivery. The community ripple effect boosts local economies to create opportunities with lasting impact.
With so many changes and so much uncertainty in the world, brands can easily get distracted or be unsure of their main focus. But Amoo-Gottfried and his team focus by asking simple questions: How can we help right now? What do customers, merchants, and Dashers care about? Amoo-Gottfried says that bringing it back to customer needs helps brands find the right answer for where to focus and how to help customers.
Today, customer experience is a differentiator more than price or product. And central to that experience is how well the brand serves customers, understands their needs, and solves problems. It isn’t enough to be in business just to make money; those companies don’t survive. But solving problems for customers and their communities improves the world and resonates with customers. As Amoo-Gottfried puts it, marketing exists to drive business outcomes. But how you choose to do it and how you choose to show up matters greatly.
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Blake Morgan is a customer experience futurist and the bestselling author of The Customer of the Future. For regular updates on customer experience, sign up for her weekly newsletter here.