Deep Customer Collaboration Explained

Deep customer collaboration builds on the deep collaboration concept that productivity and collaboration applications are on a collision course—an output of the evolution of the way people work.  Originally explained by Jake Saper, Partner at Emergence Capital, deep collaboration recognizes that a person doing a specific task shouldn’t have to leave a single piece of software to get that job done.  All the productivity and collaboration (internal and external) features needed to accomplish a task should live in the same place.

“Deep Collaboration… the term refers to software that combines productivity and collaboration functionality in one place to get a specific job done.” - Jake Saper, Partner, Emergence Capital

Deep customer collaboration is the confluence of information, data, and assets that are used to productively manage a customer relationship alongside the strategies, activities, and conversations that create effective alignment between a company and its customers.

The idea of deep customer collaboration highlights that it is increasingly necessary for organizations to consider how they are navigating the crossroads of productivity and collaboration in order to effectively manage customers across the lifecycle. More specifically, it dictates that customer management should have the ultimate goal of value creation and delivery.  If a company is going to bring deep customer collaboration to life, it has to build systems and use technology that ensures customer management teams are put in the best position to align with customers to deliver real business impact.

Across the spectrum of customer management responsibilities, there are various strategies for customer engagement and collaboration.  On one side, tech-touch models have been deployed to empower suppliers to manage the customer journey with minimal direct conversation.  On the other side, high-touch models exist where the customer/supplier relationship is very strategic and hands-on—where strong collaboration is paramount to developing successful, long-term relationships.

As sales and customer success strategies become more centered around the creation and delivery of value, the customer management tech stack must be enhanced to support this evolution across all customer segments. Deep customer collaboration is at the core of this enhancement.

Learn how to facilitate deep customer collaboration in your organization by downloading our ebook, The Ultimate Tech Stack for Deep Customer Collaboration.