The 10-Second Customer Journey

The customer changed. And marketers, advertisers and business owners are still playing catch-up in a world where buying decisions are made not in months or days, but in seconds. The enemy in today’s customer environment? FRICTION. And those who can minimize friction, guiding potential buyers rapidly through the ‘tornado funnel’ buying process, will win. But taming friction is no small feat. It takes the seamless integration of marketing, product, e-commerce and service into a cohesive, friction-free customer experience. And that’s something today’s siloed companies are still not set up to do, resulting in a bevy of new C-Suite leaders, including the Chief Experience Officer (CXO). The 10-Second Customer Journey provides the playbook for growing and retaining customers in a landscape transformed by digital. Todd Unger, CXO of the American Medical Association, provides a step-by-step guide based on three decades of consumer marketing, advertising, digital product and digital marketing and commerce experience. He’ll teach you how to become your own Chief Friction-Reduction Officer and reignite customer growth and engagement.

The customer changed. And marketers, advertisers and business owners are still playing catch-up in a world where buying decisions are made not in months or days, but in seconds. The enemy in today’s customer environment? FRICTION. And those who can minimize friction, guiding potential buyers rapidly through the ‘tornado funnel’ buying process, will win. But taming friction is no small feat. It takes the seamless integration of marketing, product, e-commerce and service into a cohesive, friction-free customer experience. And that’s something today’s siloed companies are still not set up to do, resulting in a bevy of new C-Suite leaders, including the Chief Experience Officer (CXO). The 10-Second Customer Journey provides the playbook for growing and retaining customers in a landscape transformed by digital. Todd Unger, CXO of the American Medical Association, provides a step-by-step guide based on three decades of consumer marketing, advertising, digital product and digital marketing and commerce experience. He’ll teach you how to become your own Chief Friction-Reduction Officer and reignite customer growth and engagement.

Introduction: A New ‘Experience’

This introduction provides and brief overview of the changed customer landscape and the need for a more clearly defined customer experience role and leader.

Part 1: Defining and Leading a New Era of Customer Experience

Chapter 1: The Accidental CXO

This chapter provides an overview of my ‘accidental’ progression into a CXO role and the key qualities and skills needed by today’s CXO.

Chapter 2: The 10-Second Customer Journey

Through illustrations of modern-day e-commerce, this chapter introduces the concept of the ‘10-second Customer Journey’ and the need to provide seamless integration across marketing, product, e-commerce and customer service.

Chapter 3: When Marketing Met Customer Experience

This chapter articulates what has become increasingly apparent: there is a tremendous overlap between Marketing and Customer Experience, so much so that the two fields have begun a much needed ‘merger,’ giving the CMO the tools s/he needs to grow customers and customer experience leaders the respect to demand resources.

Chapter 4: The Tornado Funnel

The marketing funnel is a classic paradigm that has been upended by digital transformation. While the shape remains the same, the speed with which customers can and need to move engenders a new name: The ‘Tornado Funnel.’

Chapter 5: From CMO to CXO

Using the framework of the ‘Tornado Funnel,’ this chapter illustrates the need to evolve the role of the CMO, focused on brand creation and demand building, to the role of the CXO—charged with both growth and reducing friction at all stages of the marketing funnel.

Part 2: Setting Up for Success

Chapter 6: Old Targeting Meets Digital Targeting

Defining the target audience remains the first and most important step in customer experience. This is even more important in a digital environment, where the right target inputs (behavior, attitudes and usage) are crucial to reaching the right audience and driving conversion.

Chapter 7: Rise of the ‘Enthusiast Economy’

Everyone is an enthusiast about something, and the internet as super-charged enthusiast behavior, aka the insatiable need to learn how to be and do better at their passion. The result: the end of ‘clutter.’

Chapter 8: Enter the Experience Ecosystem

In the digital world, once someone makes a tiny move—searches for something online, visits a site, even says something with a phone nearby—the digital ecosystem kicks into gear. This chapter is a quick primer on how to be ready once those ‘digital flares’ go up.

Part 3: Building Demand

Chapter 9: Digital Fishing

If customers are the ‘fish,’ then what’s the right bait in the digital world? This chapter provides an overview of the key principles of digital fishing, including search, content marketing and storytelling on social platforms.

Chapter 10: Creating a Digital-Ready Brand Proposition

Creating a compelling brand proposition or positioning has always been a centerpiece of marketing. But in the digital world, there are both new opportunities and pitfalls reaching a customer who might literally only spend a second or two on what you stand for. Marketers need to ‘think like a landing page,’ the DNA building block of the digital-ready brand proposition.

Part 4: Closing (and Keeping) the Deal

Chapter 11: Reducing Commerce Friction

Amazon, Shopify and many others have set the bar for removing e-commerce friction. But that’s just the cost of entry. This chapter outlines some of the key ‘do’s and don’ts’ of modern day e-commerce and outlines how to diagnose a broken e-commerce experience.

Chapter 12: Experience Subscriptions

How do you create an experience before and after a purchase? Today’s digital world offers marketers myriad ways of maintaining engagement and interest that cement the customer relationship and engender loyalty. Once again, digital content plays a key role in going beyond the typical purchase-focused emails that any online transaction typically unleashes.

Chapter 13: The Chief Friction-Reduction Officer

Customer service doesn’t just occur at the end of the journey—it plays an important role throughout the funnel. In the new world, transitioning customer service into customer experience means predicting and avoiding friction, not just fixing it at the end. And who better to take the reins of this operation than the Chief Friction-Reduction Officer?

Part 5: The New CX Organization

Chapter 14: Why Is This So Hard?

This chapter covers the reality that most marketing and experience executives face: today’s companies are just not built or led to deliver superior customer experience. Key causes of that friction? Organization siloes, a patchwork of agencies, and the absence on a cohesive friction reduction program or leader. The AMA’s experience provides a good template for busting through this paradigm.

Chapter 15: Building Your CX Strategy

How do you build an impactful CX strategy? This chapter provides advice for building a powerful, measurable approach that lines up with your overall brand strategy and lining up support and wins across the organization.

Chapter 16: Measuring Experience

Customer Experience has been mired in the world of ‘feelings’ for too long. While NPS (Net Promoter Score) has ruled the day for large companies, it doesn’t provide the insight or actionability required to make change fast. This chapter guides the reader to create their own homegrown measures that emphasize friction-reduction and speed.

Chapter 17: The CXO and the C-suite

What’s the future of the CXO and the C-suite? The answer is that someone needs operational authority to knit marketing, product, e-commerce and service together, and it’s likely not the CEO (too high-level) or COO (more finance and administratively focused). A CXO with the right skills and operating authority is an essential addition to the C-Suite of the future.

Appendix: Recommended Reading and Resources Useful resources for:

• understanding consumer needs in the digital world
• getting a historical perspective on customer experience
• developing your customer experience strategy
• measuring customer experience
• connecting with others in the CX community.

FORMAT / ISBN / PUBLICATION DATE / RRP

Paperback / 9781788605038 / April 9, 2024 / £16.99

Ebook / 9781788605052 / April 8, 2024 / £9.99

Todd Unger

Todd Unger is Chief Experience Officer (CXO) of the American Medical Association, where he has driven record growth and gained international recognition for the AMA CX program.

A transformational marketing and digital executive, Unger’s experience places him at the nexus of e-commerce, content, technology, product development and marketing—the building blocks of today’s customer experience.

Unger spent a decade at marketing powerhouses Procter & Gamble and Leo Burnett (where he helped invent GladWare Containers) before he leapt into the exploding digital world as a product manager in the early days of America Online, leading the $100 million AOL Local business and pioneering a predecessor to today’s Yelp. As a Chief Digital Officer and CMO, he’s led digital and marketing teams across large and small media companies, including Lifetime Television, Time4Media and the Daily Racing Form.

A frequent speaker and podcast guest on CX, Unger also hosts the AMA’s award-winning video/podcast series, The AMA Update. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.