Tag Archives: Experience
The Digital Workforce Experience: The Shift From HR Tools To Employee Tools
Workforce expectations for employers have evolved faster than organizations have evolved. A significant element of this is that the workforce expects digitalization in the workplace to reflect the consumer digital experience they are so familiar with outside work. We perform daily essential functions from our smartphones, such as banking, socializing, sharing photos, shopping, etc.
This consumer digital experience is what we’ve become accustomed to in our daily lives and has led to a harmonization of user expectations for technology. Quite reasonably, the workforce now expects a similar experience with the tools they use at work to manage their data, careers, performance, benefits, and collaboration with the speed, personalization, and interactivity they experience outside work.
To meet these expectations, HR needs to provide the workforce with tools that are Google fast, Apple cool, and Amazon simple. Imagine how this would change the world of work and the level of engagement, performance, and contribution. Imagine if employees were engaged to work like consumers are engaged to buy.
Critical to achieving this is a shift from deploying “HR tools” to “employee tools”; that is, from technology designed to support HR users to technology designed to also support, empower, and enable the workforce.
In the past, HR technology has focused primarily on improving back-office activities for HR users. Designed to support transactions, rather than interactions, this approach results in fragmented, siloed technology that conflicts with how people actually work. Now, the focus is on empowering business leaders, managers, and workers with mobile, intuitive, consumer-grade tools enabling them to connect and network, anytime, anywhere, from any device, and own their careers and development. This people-centric approach is based on workforce experiences, not transactional efficiency.
To achieve this shift to people-centric “employee tools” involves understanding the needs, preferences, and behaviors of the workforce (the consumers of HR services) and building these into HR technology requirements specifications.
Why, then, do so few organizations involve employees and managers when they are defining requirements for new HR technology? Why are employees and managers almost never involved in system selection activities and, once a solution has been selected, rarely seen in solution design workshops? Too often, HR defines technology requirements based on HR needs and what HR believes managers and the wider workforce need. This approach delivers solutions that meet HR requirements, not employee and manager requirements, and consequently fail to be fully adopted by the workforce, managers, and business leaders and fail to deliver the desired business outcomes and benefits. This is a huge missed opportunity to deploy tools that deliver value to the business, empower and engage the workforce, and improve workforce and business performance.
HR can gain this understanding of employee and manager priorities, drivers, and behaviors through interviews, workshops, and design thinking sessions, but to yield optimum benefits, the focus should include key “moments that matter” for employees, such as the first day at work, the onboarding experience, life-changing events like having a child, development events, and all other interactions. Through this approach, an understanding of the desired employee experience, rather than purely a transactional perspective, can be built up, and this will provide a deeper and richer picture of the solutions that will best engage and support the workforce, support performance improvement, and deliver value to the business.
Successful approaches typically involve the building of personas that represent the consumers of HR services. These could include a new hire, full-time employee, manager, HR business partner, etc. Once satisfied that the personas are representative of the organization’s population, they can be used to create solutions requirements that can be tested across the business to determine their validity and allow further refinement to both the personas and the solution requirements.
Ideally, an element of the system selection process would then involve employee and manager evaluation of potential solutions. This approach will lead to the selection of solutions that support the business and deliver business outcomes rather than solutions that primarily support the HR user.
Workforce expectations are changing, and it’s imperative that organizations progress from leveraging “HR tools” and invest in “employee tools” that empower, engage, and enable the workforce to work digitally and improve business performance. To do this requires a mindset change in HR and a laser focus on human experience management (HXM).
Read the IDC InfoBrief “A Fresh Vision for Human Capital Management” to explore how organizations do better with people at the heart of the business, covering areas such as evolving the employee ecosystem, personalized growth and talent strategy, and work experience management.
5 Musts for an Exceptional QSR Guest Experience
Posted by Brady Thomason, NetSuite Solution Manager, Restaurant & Hospitality
The quick service restaurant (QSR) segment has exploded in recent years, generating an estimated $ 273 billion in revenue in the U.S. for 2019. That number represents an increase of nearly $ 90 billion since 2009.
While restaurateurs build new units faster than you can say “we’re open!”, there are key areas of the business that field repeated calls for help. Nearly 50% of responding patrons in a Global Index survey said the No. 1 thing they’d like to see more of in quick service restaurants is better customer service.
Let’s face it: restaurants can offer great-tasting food that people want, but without a positive experience, they won’t come back. And those loyal customers who return over and over are the key to driving profitability and longevity for restaurants.
So what can QSRs do to differentiate themselves? By whipping up tasty, consistent dishes that patrons clamor for – that’s a given – and creating a positive, memorable customer experience that goes the extra mile. Here are a handful of ways to do it.
Make sure prospective guests can find everything they need quickly – before their visit.
Today’s consumers are quite digitally savvy, and they’re looking all over the web before making a visit to a restaurant. A quick Google search will tell them the restaurant’s location, hours, type of cuisine, online ordering platforms and maybe some recent reviews. They can also visit the restaurant’s website, Facebook or Instagram page, Yelp listing, or just go straight to Grubhub or Doordash.
In order to lower barriers to entry, QSR restaurants need to make sure prospective guests can get to all the information they need. That means not only knowing all the platforms guests are using, but making sure they are regularly updated and consistent across the board.
The location, hours and menu items must be the same across platforms. The menu (including any specials) should be well-organized and easy to read. Online ordering should be accessible from any platform. Take a look at Phonatic, an Austin-based Vietnamese restaurant.
Phonatic’s consistent details are easy to find, with the restaurant’s Google listing, website, Facebook page, and Yelp pages all coming up as top search results.
When guests arrive, make their experience easy and memorable before their food is ready.
When new patrons walk through the door, quick service restaurants have the opportunity to surprise and delight them – without waiting for them to taste their food. They can start by making the ordering process as straightforward as possible.
Many QSRs will have a giant menu board near where guests order, so everyone can see the menu. If you’ve got a crush of people who just walked in, it may not be ideal for them all to stand in the same spot and try to view the menu.
- Consider including laminated, hand-held menus that can be easily picked up for viewing – while guests wait, or just away from the crowd.
- Sometimes with that crush of people comes a long line to order. Take the pressure off your staff by offering guests a way to order with a staff member or on a tablet.
- When guests arrive for carryout orders, they are sometimes confused about where to go. If you have a dedicated carryout/delivery line or area, make sure to indicate exactly where it is.
Give guests something to do while they wait.
Once guests have completed their orders, there are even more opportunities to wow them with a great experience. Offer them as much self-service as you can handle. Start with the usual suspects – a beeper for their order pickup, utensils, napkins and any drinks in the soda fountain, for example. Then dig a little deeper.
Fast-casual chain The Kebab Shop provides not only the standard self-service items but also a wide variety of sauces to try with varying heat levels. Taco shops will have self-serve salsas; previously-mentioned Phonatic has all the accoutrements needed to dress your giant bowl of pho.
Blast & Brew, a California-based fast casual chain, has taken something that’s normally reserved for employee use only and given it to customers: the beer tap. Guests can access a wall of 40 craft-beer taps to easily try out new offerings.
Beyond picking up everything they need to enjoy a meal, consider how your QSR might entertain while guests wait. Open kitchens are sweeping the country, and they provide not only the transparency consumers are seeking today but a fun way to pass time. Games for kids and adults alike can provide a fun ritual to a regular visit.
Guests might enjoy listening to live music while they wait or choosing what they like from your selection of music. Remember those mini-jukeboxes that used to be on the tables at so many American diners? The modernized version is this: customers at Johnny Rockets can now go online and select upcoming music for the dining room.
Continue the positive experience while they eat.
Just because your staff has either served at the counter or dropped off at the table doesn’t mean the conversation is over. Service during the meal counts too, even for QSRs.
Look no further than Luby’s, one of the most established cafeteria chains in the country. Whether you like their food or not, you’ll always remember interacting with Luby’s staff. After paying for your order and choosing a seat, a Luby’s employee will stop by and introduce him or herself and offer to bring anything you need. You’ll be checked on throughout the meal, giving you the feel of more full-service dining in a quick-service establishment.
And what if a guest would like to order more food, but doesn’t want to jump back in line? Fast casuals like HopDoddy Burger Bar offer the option to add on to the order right at the table.
When it’s time, have an exit strategy for your guests.
Now that your guests are finishing up, they might have some leftovers they’d like to take home. Or they’re not sure whether to bus their own table or leave dishes where they are. And maybe they loved the food so much that they want to learn more.
Equip your guests when they’re ready to leave and give them a reason to come back. Takeout containers with self-serve items save time, so guests don’t have to wait in line or flag someone down. If you’d like guests to bus their own table, make it obvious with tubs or clearly-defined areas to place dishes and baskets.
And consider what you might do to bring them back. Maybe there’s a rewards program they can enroll in, a coupon for a free dessert, or a trivia night coming up that they’d love to join. Another option is to give them something else to do while they’re still inside your doors.
Austin-based Quality Seafood is both a fast-casual seafood restaurant and a fish market – and offers cooking classes. Guests can come in to eat before class or grab something from the fish counter after a meal.
Central Market is a Texas-based grocery chain with a quick service restaurant, giant patio, and playground. Guests can come in for a meal and let their kids burn off some energy before grocery shopping or grab an easy outdoor meal and listen to live music in the evenings while the kids play.
QSRs have a wealth of opportunities to improve guest experience.
For QSRs, all touchpoints with guests are places to improve upon the existing customer experience. Whether it’s pre-meal research, walking in the door, taking a seat, enjoying the meal, or planning to leave, there are countless times to interaction. Stand out from the crowd by carefully planning them all.
Get more information on NetSuite’s software for restaurants.
by NetSuite filed under
Customer Experience: How Data Empowers Exceptional CX
Tech Unknown | Episode 2 | Season 2
Featuring guests Stephanie Thum, Jeannie Walters, and Mortiz Zimmerman and host Tamara McCleary
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts|Stitcher|Google Play
Customer experience (CX) has always played a part in gaining and retaining customers. But businesses used to have other differentiators as well, from physical location to price of the product. Now, CX is the last best hope for businesses to build ongoing relationships with customers.
But what does customer experience really mean, both for customers who demand it and businesses who are trying to meet that demand? And how can businesses use their existing data to consistently exceed customer expectations?
That’s not an idle question. Eighty percent of CEOs believe they’re delivering great customer experience. But only 8% of consumers agree. That’s a sizable gap that we have to first acknowledge, then work to close.
In this episode, our customer experience journey goes from the howling void of the experience gap, to a high-octane race track, all the way to a bustling international airport. Tamara McCleary interviews CX experts Jeannie Walters, Stephanie Thum, and SAP’s Moritz Zimmerman to get at the heart of how businesses can improve their customer experience.
Listen to learn:
- How data analysis can identify CX issues and opportunities throughout an organization
- How businesses can make CX part of their philosophy of operation
- How to turn a data-driven insight into a human-to-human customer experience
Interested in learning more? Found out how to Make Every Moment Matter.
About Our Guests:
Stephanie Thum, CCXP, is the founding principal at Practical CX. She is a consultant, public speaker, blogger, and panel presenter.
Jeannie Walters, CCXP, is a global customer experience and patient experience keynote speaker, trainer, and workshop leader with over a decade of experience. She regularly publishes on the Experience Investigators blog.
Moritz Zimmerman is the CTO of SAP Customer Experience, a thought leader, and blogger.
Did you miss our last episode?
Check out our previous episode with Ronald Van Loon and Richard Howells: The Secret Weapon For CX And More. Click here to listen.
Transcript:
Tamara: Welcome to Tech Unknown, a podcast to prepare your organization for the tech-centered future of business. I’m Tamara McCleary, CEO of Thulium.
Our big umbrella topic this season is data: Operational data from the inner workings of your business, plus experience data from the customer-facing side. When you can share this data across your organization — collect, process and analyze it — you can make operations more efficient, reduce costs, improve your customer service, and much, much more.
This time around we’re taking on a massive topic, one that affects every single business in any industry: Customer experience.
It’s hard to overstate just how powerful customer experience can be. It’s almost magic, the way a great experience can create value and… you know wait. speaking of experiences, allow me to show you instead of tell you. Come with me to my favorite restaurant… Sorry, Francoise. We’ll keep it down. This is a very swanky place, I just love it. The waiters are in tuxedos, and they treat you like royalty. The chandeliers are crystal, the tablecloths are linen, the plates fine china. There is even a live string quartet in the corner to set the perfect mood.
All of this ambiance does something magical: It adds value for the customer. The lighting, the music, the crisp white tablecloths and beautiful plating… these things don’t change the way the food tastes, but they all contribute to an unforgettable meal.
Of course, the quality of the food is part of the experience. The chef works a brilliant kind of magic in the kitchen. I, no amount of ambiance would keep customers coming if the food wasn’t deliciously satisfying to the pallet.
But at the heart of it, people pay a premium to dine at Le Canard because of how eating there makes them feel. And what’s more? They’re happy to do it. They leave satisfied, and not just because their bellies are full.
If that’s not enough to convince you, here’s Moritz Zimmerman, CTO of SAP Customer Experience, on why every modern business should be obsessed with CX.
Moritz: Experience is really the differentiator out there. We live in a world where, literally, anybody can get any kind of goods and services anywhere these days with the click of a button. So, that’s not a differentiator anymore. It used to be if you had a store in town, you could sell to this audience. But now, everybody can buy online, even if there’s no stores there.
So, it tends to be that there’s a dividing line between those companies that are doing well, that are on the winner side, and those that don’t, which is really, they deliver a fantastic experience. And you can see this in stock market performance. You can see this in customer satisfaction. You could see this like in all those kind of cases. And it’s really, that is becoming really the dividing line and the thing that matters. That’s what we call the experience economy, where really delivering a fantastic experience is the most important thing, actually, for companies now.
Tamara: Well, I’m convinced. Let’s go get some of that exceptional customer experience for OUR business! We can just pull into the drive-through of Customer Experience Mart, here….
[Static voice: Welcome to Customer Experience Mart, can I help you?]
Yes, I’ll take the ultra-grande CX combo, please, with extra positive reviews and super-sized customer loyalty. Does that come with a drink?
[Static voice: Uh, sorry, no, that’s extra.]
Well, THAT isn’t a great customer experience, is it?
[Static voice: Ummm… let me get my manager.]
Never mind. It’s clear there’s more to providing a great customer experience than just placing an order. But, like every business buzzword, CX seems to mean a lot of different things to different people, depending on who’s buying… and what’s being sold. Let’s start by breaking it down from the customer perspective and the business perspective. Here’s Jeannie Walters.
Jeannie: Hi, it’s Jeannie Walters. And I am the CEO of Experience Investigators. I’m also a keynote speaker, trainer, and workshop leader and a LinkedIn learning instructor for many customer experience courses.
CRM, customer relationship management, customer experience management tools, those are great. That is not customer experience. Customer experience is actually what the customer experiences. And so the only way to really understand that is to look at it from that customer perspective. So saying that you have a robust CRM program is not enough to say that you have a robust and really powerful customer experience for your customers.
Tamara: That makes sense for the customer side – but how do businesses go about driving great customer experience? Stephanie Thum says you can’t do it a la carte.
Stephanie: This is Stephanie Thum, I’m a certified customer experience professional. I’m the founder of a company called Practical CX. And I have about 15 years of experience as a practitioner and a consultant in the field and practice of customer experience.
Customer experience is a business discipline or it’s a way of doing things. It’s really a mindset. And it’s an approach that you interweave into the fabric of your company culture. And customer experience actually carries with it a range of competencies and skills that you need to operationalize into every corner of your business. That is to say, CX is not an add-on to your business.
Tamara: And there’s the problem. If we think of customer experience as this thing we can just graft onto the top of the business, we’re likely not delivering it as well as we think we are. That leaves businesses and customers on opposite sides of… The customer experience gap!
Moritz: I think 93% of company CEO’s, when you ask them, “Do you think your business is delivering a great experience?” they would say, “Hell yeah, of course.” Now, if you ask the customers on the other side, then only 8% would agree. So that’s this gap between self-perception and then all the perception from a customer’s perspective. And hence, that’s the experience gap where there’s a lot to improve, and listening to what your customers really want, and acting on that.
Tamara: So how do we get across the experience gap? If only we had… oh, I don’t know…. wings? Or at least an energy drink that makes you FEEL like you have wings?
Moritz: So, a great example is our customer, Red Bull. Most customers might know them from the energy drinks. But they’re also, now, a pretty big media company. They sponsor a lot of action sports, from all kinds of crazy things. You know, there was this one athlete that jumped from space down to the Earth that was filmed. They do crazy airline races, where airplanes fly under bridges. They do Formula 1, and many other extreme action sports as well. But they also have, for example, a lot of web properties, for example, online stores and so on. So, they use personalization to really get to an understanding of what I’m interested in as a consumer.
So I might be interested in airplanes flying under bridges, I might like Formula 1, but the guy jumping out of space, really not what I’m into. And then they use that to really understand my interest by my behavior of what I watch on their website, for example. And then they optimize the following experience, how they engage with me when it comes to invitations to events, when it comes to going to their merchandising store.
Which is important because nowadays, the screen we all use the most is the smallest screen we have, which is our phone. You don’t have that much real estate there and I don’t want to see 40 different things. I don’t have the time to click through all that. So if they can, like, literally optimize the experience to what I’m interested in right now, that can be really a good service to me and then make my experience more enjoyable.
Tamara: At the heart of it, then, it takes smart use of data to drive a great customer experience. It’s that combination of experience data and operational data, consolidated on a platform, to generate insight.
Moritz: Yeah. So, the O data, the operational data, has been around for a long, long time already. And then if you try to analyze that through this is intelligence and so on, and it’s always been about the “what.” You know, what was going on.
Tamara: For example, let’s say you have a fashion company and you’re seeing a spike in return rates for a specific product. That’s the operation side – you’re noticing a trend going above normal levels. But the big question, the WHY? That’s the experience.
Moritz: That’s the experience, that, “How was the experience?” And then maybe, this case, it turns out that customers didn’t like the fit. Maybe the product turned out to be a little bit smaller than you think with the regular sizing.
And if you correlate these two things, then you realize, “Okay, first of all, was this a one-off or did you see a pattern? Did it happen multiple times?” And then you can draw a conclusion from that, which is, you can then, for example, optimize your product description in your web store, and say, “Look, this product actually ends up on the smaller side in the fit. So that’s one example. And of course, it involves a lot of technology underneath. Like, for example, key learning to analyze the customer’s response, that, you know, there’s a fit issue, you know, correlating the data, is this an abnormal thing or is it just an exception? And then giving business users the tools to visualize that reaction on whether they’ve discovered something that’s worthwhile.
So building out a place like a customer data platform to collect that data and make sense of it, harmonize it, and then use it to drive a better experience, I think is a key strategy that we’re seeing, that enterprises are adopting these days.
Tamara: Of course, the final piece here is not just identifying a problem or opportunity. Technology is incredibly good at helping you spot these intervention points, like Moritz says. But the data isn’t going to create the experience all by itself. That’s why we have to talk about the process and the people involved, too. Here’s Stephanie again:
Stephanie: To really win in the experience economy, specifically, I recommend customer experience governance. Governance is not sexy. It’s really hard work. It demands a rhythm and cadence to be successful. You need cross-disciplinary teams of people, like a CX executive committee, to set up the strategy, to review data, to assign resources, and make decisions. And you need an operations review committee, for example, as part of your governance structure to review data and ensure that you’re doing what you need to do to identify the root causes of some of the problems that the data may be showing you that you’re having. You need project teams to actually do things, not just look at the data, but actually do things.
Tamara: Actually doing the things! What a concept, right? But actually getting it done takes strong leadership. Jeannie, who do you think should be in charge of customer experience? Where are they on the org chart?
Jeannie: I like to think of a fictional creature, like a wizard.
No. Really, it has to come from the top, and I know that’s such a cliché answer, but it’s so true. The CEO and the C-level has to believe in this as just a way of doing business. Because if you basically give somebody a crown and say, “You’re the king of CX in this organization,” but you give them no power, you give them no accountability, you don’t empower them to tell other groups what to do, then there’s no way they can actually lead CX. CX is not separate. It’s not finite. It’s something that should be woven through the entire organization DNA. And so the only way to do that is if you’re really living it at the top by both example and accountability.
Tamara: Okay, let’s bring it all together, then. When you have an organizational commitment to customer experience, AND the technology to collect and activate data, AND you’re ready to act on the insights you’re getting out of the data… what does it all look like when it really takes flight?
Here we are in the Philadelphia International Airport to talk about how one airline is driving better customer experience… yawn… woof, I could use a cup of coffee.
[Voice: Here you go!]
Thanks, what do I owe you?
[Voice: Free of charge, courtesy of JetBlue]
Well, thank you. Wait a minute…Moritz, what was that about?
Moritz: There’s this company called JetBlue Airlines in the U.S. And they measured customer feedback through qualitative surveys, but also through things like the promoter score. And they found that in the Philadelphia metro area, in their airports there, there was dissatisfaction on the passengers’ side … for early morning flights, that there were no offers around coffee or drinks. And that’s kinda like… when I want an early morning flight, the most important thing, other than making it on time to the plane, is where do I get a coffee? Yeah? It wakes me up. And so then, there was nothing open. Flights were just too early for shops to be open. So then they reacted on that.
Tamara: Okay, but how did they figure out that was the problem? I mean, besides coming down to the airport and seeing people yawning…
Moritz: They use Qualtrics for reaching out to their customers. Like getting sort of like their opinion on, and then basically localizing that with their operator. That’s the experience data, the X data, and then they correlate that with their operational data they have. Let’s say, the flight departure times, for example in this case, to make it very simple. And then realizing that, “We have an issue around early morning flights in that area.” And then you double-click on that, and figure out, “What can we do?”
They basically put out a small fence and, you know, handed out juice and coffee, and really drove a significant increase in customer satisfaction. It’s those little things, if you do it right, that really create loyalty on your customer base. And then no wonder that JetBlue is probably one of the airlines that U.S. travelers love the most.
Tamara: See that, to me, is a perfect example of a customer experience story. It started with collecting and observing data, but it ends with someone handing me a hot cup of coffee. All stories should end that way, by the way. But it’s a worthwhile reminder that customer experience can be data-driven without being robotic and impersonal. Do you not agree, Jeannie?
Jeannie: I think that when we talk about data, we often think about it as this hard, cold math-driven thing, and people kind of shy away from that. And when we think about customer experience, we think of how human everybody is, and how, when we have a bad customer experience, we relate to that on such a core emotional level. And data actually helps us find those moments of emotion and react to them. However, we have to actually know what we’re looking for. We have to understand our customers enough so that we can really apply what we learn from the data in the right moments on their journey. That’s where you can see the magic happen. That’s where, when you walk into a restaurant and they recognize you – even though you haven’t been there a while – but they know that on your reservation you said it was your anniversary, and they treat you really well. Those little moments, yes, that’s driven by data, but it’s fulfilled by humans, and we have to remember that.
Tamara:And that, to me, is the number one takeaway. If I made a movie trailer for customer experience, it might go something like this…
Driven by technology. Fueled by data. Powered by people. Coming soon to a leading business near you: Customer experience. By humans. For humans.
Modern businesses can’t rely on their geographical location, or a totally unique product, or even the lowest price to get customers to choose them. It all comes down to which business can provide the best experience.
Let’s go back to Le Canard Affame to bring it all home.
Le Canard doesn’t have happy hour specials and they don’t have the best prices. They don’t even try to compete on price. In fact, there are no prices on the menu! They don’t specialize in exotic or unusual food, either. No, what really sets Le Canard Affame above its competitors is good food paired with exceptional experiences
In fact, a recent survey from asked 15,000 people about customer experience. Over half said they would PAY MORE for a better experience. And 3/4ths said a good experience is key to developing brand loyalty.
In other words, when you use your X and O data to power consistently exceptional customer experience, you can make people feel respected, understood, seen and valued, and they’ll keep coming back. And more likely than not, they’ll bring some friends along.
Thanks for listening to Tech Unknown. You can find transcripts and more at The Digitalist, that’s digitalistmag.com. And make sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. I’m Tamara McCleary, and until next time: Stay sharp, stay curious, and keep exploring the unknown.
CRM and customer-centricity are code words for customer engagement and customer experience
While I labor mightily over the Watchlist submissions (with a few surprises so far — more than last year), I am continuing to keep you informed with weekly guest posts from prominent thinkers in multiple venues. This week, another really insightful one from one of my favorite world-class analysts, thought leaders, and friends: Brian Solis.
Brian dropped a piece on us a couple weeks ago on voice in general and Einstein Voice in particular. This week, he addresses a fundamental transformation that is going on in the world of business and customers — engagement and experience dominating and how to address it with Salesforce 360 Truth as a lynchpin of his discussion.
So, Mr. Solis, take it away!
“I’m going to let you in on a little secret, we’re really not customer centric, we just say it because everyone else does,” said no credible executive ever.
What does customer-centricity even mean today? Is it a state? Is it an intention? Is it plain old marketing? Putting the customer at the center of any business has been aspirational to date, an evolving pursuit of IT, sales/commerce, marketing, and service. But along the way, existing organizational models, lines of business, and systems struggled to collaborate. Add to that, the continuous clash between legacy and emerging technologies made the physical acts of placing the customer at the center of the business onerous and even elusive.
Heading into a new decade, however, businesses are now gaining access to incredible arrays of innovative technologies to accelerate growth and transformation. CRM is still one of the most important keys to customer-centricity. And still, even with strides in innovation, CRM faces some of its most relentless hurdles. It’s incredibly difficult to be customer-centric if you’re not actually centered around the customer. Business and data silos, incomplete or duplicate customer data records, incongruent touchpoints, disconnected apps, and incompatible systems and services — and, to be honest, a lack of unified leadership driving toward strategic integration — remain as common issues that require prioritization and escalation.
The Quest for a 360 View of Customers
Let’s remember that CRM stands for customer relationship management. This is about optimizing relationships and using advancing technology to get closer to customers. The question is, what kind of relationship do you want to have with your customers? The answer starts with knowing the customer, defining the experience you wish to deliver and then building an architecture for meaningful engagement.
Organizations need a 360 view of customers to get to their truth. And this “360 view,” too, has been a long sought after “Holy Grail” in its own right. But to get there requires more than technology and data.
Enterprise vendors, which help business customers modernize operational models, as well as infrastructure, and executive mindsets to organize around integrated customer data and insights, will ultimately create a new blueprint for customer-centricity.
In my research over the years, I’ve learned that the pursuit of customer-centricity was a leading driver for digital transformation. And at the heart of all this is customer experience (CX). In fact, year over year, I found that a majority of digital transformation initiatives were focused on CX. Companies that prioritized customer experience investments evolved much faster across what I defined as “The Six Stages of Digital Transformation.”
The New Blueprint for 360 Customer Views and Unified Customer Experiences
As a digital analyst, I try to keep up with all of the technology advancements from leading vendors pushing forward cloud, AI, voice, real-time and predictive analytics, sentiment analysis, data integration, 5G, cloud migration, et al. Every day, it seems that CRM, BPM, and ERP platforms are only becoming more and more awesome. But also, as someone who interviews business executives as part of ongoing research efforts, I also hear the very human struggles trying to also keep up with everything while leading difficult modernization and change management initiatives within.
This is why vendors need to apply customer-centricity to their go-to-market initiatives. Perhaps it’s a shift in enterprise sales and marketing from B2B to B2B2C or maybe just P2P (people to people.) We need to complement conversations about innovation and capabilities and platforms with empathy that takes into account very real challenges within the enterprise and also the very real challenges their customers face traversing today’s customer journeys.
Maybe it’s time we humanize the CRM and CX lexicon. (Paul note: Sorry to interrupt. I am behind this 1,000%.)
When we talk about CRM, what we’re really talking about is technology that allows enterprise customers to facilitate more meaningful, productive, and loyalty-building customer engagement. When we talk about customer-centricity, we really need to emphasize efforts around unified customer experience. Actually, we need to call attention more directly to the “customer’s experience.” Adding that “‘s” changes the dynamic of planning and strategy toward customer-centric systems thinking, holistic systems of engagement, and operational innovation.
This is important because customer experience is defined by the sum of all engagements a customer has with your business. Every touchpoint counts. Anything that isn’t helping customers toward their standard of experience may, in fact, be taking away from the experience you’re aiming to deliver.
When it comes to CRM or any enterprise technology for that matter, engagement and experiences must be humanized for executive decision-makers as well as how platforms help them deliver the integrated experiences customers seek.
Rapid Advancements in CRM Technology and User-Centered Narratives Will Help Enterprise Customers Adapt and Innovate
Leading enterprise vendors such as Zoho, Pega, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe, and more, are starting to make strides on this front. In my work with each vendor, I’ll start to explore this topic of CRM to CX evolution in more detail over time.
One vendor that recently caught my attention was Salesforce through its recent announcement of Customer 360 Truth. Originally announced at Dreamforce 19, I didn’t get a chance to really process the news and its approach until now. It was this Salesforce hosted Q&A with Patrick Stokes, executive vice president of platform shared services at Salesforce, that really impressed me. In it, he explains how Salesforce views the integration of sales, service, marketing, commerce, and communities as well as third-party and legacy systems as a single source of “truth.” But it was his transparency in explaining the opportunity and the challenges facing the harnessing of customer truth, that hit home.
Stokes explained, “Seeking a single source of truth for each customer isn’t a new idea, but it’s been difficult to achieve. Buying a car, or even selling a CRM solution as we do, can involve hundreds of touchpoints across a variety of systems that need to be tracked and managed. Ultimately, you want to have a holistic graph of past and present customer engagement so you can better serve the customer and predict future needs.”
It’s not just Salesforce solving for this. The difficulties in achieving a 360 customer view explained earlier in this article is what every company faces and what every vendor, and also enterprise digital transformations, are striving to answer.
I also appreciated Stokes’ expanded perspective beyond technology and technical hurdles that made the conversation much more relatable.
“You can’t up-level customer experiences if you can’t overcome organizational barriers that prevent deeper integration.” he continued. “When you have a more customer-centric culture, those barriers tend to break down.”
Customer 360 Truth Aims to Unite Disparate Data for a 360 Customer View
We are finally arriving at the moment when CRM technology and data can power integrated and value-added customer engagement and experiences. According to Salesforce research, the demand is certainly there, “70 percent of customers say they expect connected experiences in which their preferences are known across touchpoints.” That number will only go higher as customers start to realize the fruits of next-generation CRM solutions.
Customer 360 Truth introduces a new set of data and identity capabilities. It promises the ability for companies to connect, authenticate, and govern customer data and identity across the Salesforce platform to build “a single source of truth across all of their customer relationships.”
Customer 360 Truth as a service is divided into four parts (per Salesforce’s press release):
Customer 360 Data Manager: Delivers the ability to access, connect and resolve a customer’s data across Salesforce and other systems, using a canonical data model and a universal Salesforce ID that represents each customer.
Salesforce Identity for Customers: Removes friction from the login experience and enables a single, authenticated and secure relationship between a customer and all of a company’s websites, e-commerce stores, mobile apps, and connected products.
Customer 360 Audiences: Builds unified customer profiles across known data such as email addresses and first-party IDs and unknown data such as website visits and device IDs. It then creates customer segments and marketing engagement journeys from those profiles and delivers AI-powered insights, like lifetime value and likelihood to churn.
Privacy and Data Governance: Enables companies to collect and respect customer data use and privacy preferences, as well as apply data classification labels to all data in Salesforce.
Additionally, Customer 360 Truth is powered by the Cloud Information Model (CIM), enabled by Mulesoft’s open-source modeling technology. CIM is an open-source data model that standardizes data interoperability across cloud apps.
As Stokes described it, “…When you are connecting data sources to Customer 360, you are mapping data from the source to a canonical data model, CIM. The Customer 360 source of truth is not only the identity of who your customer is, but it is the corresponding keys for where that data lives within Salesforce.”
Salesforce admins can then establish connections between data sources to prepare, match, reconcile and update a customer profile.
“The reconciled profile across apps enable employees to pull up relevant data at the time of need from any connected system, such as when a service agent may need to pull a list of past purchases from an order system in order to better assist in solving a problem,” Stokes explained.
What’s important is that this approach connects data but leaves the information in the systems that manage it. Add to this, Salesforce’s recently upgraded Einstein platform (now with voice), businesses have access to AI-powered recommendations and insights to take immediate action.
Other approaches are still siloed and require incredible patchwork. And other promising solutions are creating separate AI-powered layers to process information from disparate systems (even sourcing from multiple vendors) in real-time and then feeding results back to business users across platforms.
With Salesforce, a map is created on top of the data in each cloud to know where it is, how to retrieve it in time of need and then use it to personalize a variety of experiences at the moment.
What I appreciate about Customer 360 Truth goes beyond its capabilities. It’s also how Salesforce is communicating to customers that it’s going after root problems to deliver what their customers ultimately want, more personalized, integrated experiences. In doing so, Salesforce is also walking the walk by delivering a more human, relatable customer experience for businesses, which helps them deliver better experiences to their customers.
The evolution of CRM, after all of these years, is finally making customer-centricity a reality. The ability to place the customer (and their data) at the center of “their experience” and empower businesses to deliver more personal engagement, integrated journeys, and better outcomes is what adds up to memorable and sought-after customer experiences. And this is just the beginning of a new genre of experience innovation (and market narratives). When human-centered innovation and market conversations win, the customer and the customer’s customer also win.
3 Ways a Digital Business Can Get Customer Experience Right
Reading Time: 3 mins 30 sec.
There is a secret to success shared by top digital businesses today, and it has to do with providing a positive customer experience. Happy customers are loyal customers, and loyal customers are willing to pay more for better customer experience. But what about those companies that go above and beyond to provide an unmatched customer experience? What is their secret to success?
Read about three digital businesses that are thriving due to the customer experience they provide and to get a glimpse of their common secret to success.
Grupo Xcaret
Grupo Xcaret is a family and environmentally-friendly all-inclusive resort made up of theme parks, hotels, and restaurants. The company takes a holistic approach in providing great customer experiences by creating an integrated ecosystem behind the scenes.
With the all-inclusive approach, visitors can pay for their stay all at once, then move freely throughout the various parks and accommodations without having to stop to pay, weigh decisions on additional spending for food or entry fees, or be held up in unnecessary entrance lines. Their secret to success is….a data-sharing ecosystem makes this all possible; it connects Xcaret’s lodging, restaurant, and park application systems together, combining data to better serve its customers. By analyzing the data collected and predicting next steps, Grupo Xcaret provides its visitors timely, personalized offers that let them know their experience is important to the company.
Caesars Entertainment
Also in the business of entertaining, Caesars Entertainment knows how to provide a great customer experience. But what is their secret to success? Caesars has created advanced engagement models to give each customer a personalized experience, from check-in to restaurant and show deals, to suggestions for making the most of their time on the casino floor. This is possible because they store all of their data in a shared cloud, giving 360-degree access to customers on every Caesars property.
Aeroporti di Roma
Whether you’re heading to Mexico for an all-inclusive family vacation or jet-setting to Vegas or Dubai for a more adults-only adventure, those leaving from Rome’s Aeroporti di Roma will receive a premier customer experience as soon as they reach the airport.
Aeroporti di Roma found its secret to success by integrating its data ecosystem to improve the traveling experience for flyers. From flight reservations to shopping in the terminal to boarding the plane, data is captured and analyzed, giving the airport a holistic view of its passengers. Heat maps detect passenger flow and help the airport streamline the journey from check-in to boarding based on data patterns.
A Data Sharing Ecosystem: The Secret to Great Customer Experiences
Have you figured it out yet? The secret to customer experience success is through data sharing. It allows digital businesses to personalize each individual’s visit and unveils a more thorough understanding of customer preferences. It also increases cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.
All three of the companies mentioned rely on TIBCO to integrate their systems. To learn more about each business’s strategy, check out their case studies on our Customers’ page.
Connecting an enterprise is easier said than done, however. Integrating previously siloed data, sometimes bringing in outside data from partners or even rivals, requires careful consideration and coordination. But the end result helps digital businesses deliver an experience that only looks effortless to the customer.
For more on the importance of customer experience, specifically around airport strategies, read this piece by TIBCO exec/SVP Erich Gerber. If you’re interested in seeing how TIBCO can help you build a connected customer journey, learn more here.
Adobe Offers Experience Manager as Cloud Service
Adobe on Monday announced the availability of Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service for B2B and B2C companies of all sizes.
The service provides “a globally scalable, agile and secure digital foundation that optimizes marketer and developer workflows across the entire content lifecycle, and connects to data insights to deliver personalized experiences across the customer journey,” said Haresh Kumar, director of product marketing for Adobe Experience Manager.
“It allows companies to be far more nimble and scale at any point, because Experience Manager is always on, always current, always at scale, and always learning,” he told CRM Buyer.
Built-In Intelligence
Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service integrates scalable, secure and agile content management; digital asset management; digital signage management; and customer communication applications.
It eliminates the need to build in downtime to accommodate version upgrades.
The production environment is configured and constantly maintained to be consistent with Adobe’s standard security practices and controls.
Brands can combine insights from a customer’s previous purchases and interest in emails about particular products using Adobe Sensei, the company’s artificial intelligence and machine learning framework, to recommend items the customer is likely to purchase. Adobe Sensei also lets brands automatically tag images and videos.
Brands can create and deliver experiences across any channel, device or app, using built-in Adobe Sensei capabilities to automate the adaptation of content for different channels.
Teams can work simultaneously on multiple assets for multiple channels, saving time.
Pricing scales seamlessly and the solution can be scaled based on usage metrics.
Early results from mid-market companies to large enterprises using the application show ingestion time is 50 percent faster, administrative efficiency increased 40 percent and author productivity increased by more than 20 percent, Adobe said.
Good for Customers, Good for Adobe
“This is a good move for Adobe, and one that should have considerable benefits for its customers,” remarked Nicole France, principal analyst at Constellation Research.
By redesigning Adobe Experience Manager to operate through a microservices architecture, the company “is making it significantly easier for its customers both to integrate various sources of digital assets and content, and to present that content across digital channels,” she told CRM Buyer.
In general, offerings that manage multiple sources of content and information across multiple channels with a consistent, easy-to-use interface make it possible for companies to streamline and improve the way they interact with their customers, France observed.
They therefore let staff focus on the messages or sentiments they’re trying to communicate and how to do that most effectively rather than on the minutiae of which assets and channels to use, she noted.
“Focusing on the higher-order customer interaction, rather than the mechanics of how to make it happen, certainly improves a company’s ability to create positive customer experiences,” France said.
However, the term “experience manager” is a misnomer, in her view.
“This really isn’t a tool for managing customer experiences — not least because no one can ‘manage’ customer experiences — but one for dynamically managing the assets that form a large part of digital customer interactions,” France explained.
“Experiences are, by definition, subjective. It’s impossible to manage a customer’s experience, but it is possible to stack the deck to make it more likely that the experience is a good one. Having the right tools is an important step in that direction,” she said.
Continuous Innovation
“This really is a matter of speed and ease rather than a revolutionary shift in offering, allowing for an acceleration of delivery of omnichannel assets,” said Liz Miller, principal analyst at Constellation Research.
For both B2B and B2C companies, the modernization of the Experience Manager architecture “enables the power of the cloud to meet the power of creativity, allowing for a broad range of assets to be quickly accessed, updated, personalized or modified on the fly with strong uptime and availability,” she told CRM Buyer.
Access to Adobe’s continuous innovation means customers do not have to wait for the next update or round of releases, Miller said.”Innovation can be made available on the fly and without lag.”
For B2C companies in particular, the rapid scale up and down based on their needs means the assets they need and the experience they want to deliver through their content “is just as robust in points of uptime crunch as it is in low traffic moments,” she added, which “empowers performance at the scale of a customer, versus the scale and uptime availability of how the Adobe platform is implemented.”
Edge on the Competition
Oracle and Salesforce have been offering service clouds for years, and SAP is working with Accenture to develop vertical service clouds for industries.
Adobe’s heritage in content development gives it the edge, because “Experience Manager empowers the engagement process from creative ideation all the way through to optimized asset delivery,” Miller said. Adobe is “looking to eliminate the creative gap between asset creation and engagement.”
Richard Adhikari has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2008. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, mobile technologies, CRM, databases, software development, mainframe and mid-range computing, and application development. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including Information Week and Computerworld. He is the author of two books on client/server technology.
Email Richard.
Managing Experience And Costs On Retail’s 2020 To-Do List
Apparently, in the early 1900s, the various products of the earth could be ordered quite easily, if one were “of above-average capacity or character,” middle class, and happened to live in London. For recipients of my 2019 Christmas presents, the good news is that I could choose gifts originating far beyond the shores of the UK without a capacity, character, or class test.
Although this was good for my nearest and dearest (otherwise they might not have got so much as a tangerine), it’s not clear it was good for the UK’s retail sector. I haven’t seen any figures that go up to December 25, but it seems the Black Friday figures were pretty good – even for the High Street, at least in terms of volume. However, the travails of the UK retail sector are not demand but margin driven; demand remains reasonably buoyant. In October 2019, ONS reported that year-on-year growth in the quantity bought increased by 3.1%, with growth across all sectors except household goods stores.
However, McKinsey research has already shown that UK consumers are twice as likely to trade down – i.e., to buy a cheaper product – than trade up. Cost-cutting is just one weapon in the retailer’s armory in their fight for their share of consumer spending. The research suggests that savings from indirect procurement are an important source of margin improvement for retailers. In particular, marketing, private label packaging, and supplier managed costs are all identified as categories that can deliver double-digit savings. The strategy house also recommends retailers look to clean sheeting, consumer insights, and design to value combined with digital analytics to unlock value.
Retail products and product mix are also undergoing rapid change. Nielsen’s 2018 report the Rise and Rise Again of Private Label showcases an important component of that change. Getting private label right helped Tesco make the top 10 of Deloitte’s 2019 Global Powers of Retailing. In 2018, with the aim of cutting its own-label costs, the company announced a strategic partnership with Carrefour.
Innovation at pace and being able to scale what works also at a pace are, as Deloitte has highlighted, crucial for retailers. With this frenetic pace of activity, it is important not to evaluate products in a binary “ditch” / “scale” manner. Tracking a customer’s product experience journey can reap huge dividends helping organizations make changes to realize value without having to go back to the drawing board.
Learn how Belkin uses the Qualtrics XM Platform to track product insights in real-time across all stages of the customer journey, which enabled its product teams to intervene post-product launch and successfully close an $ 80 million gap against sales targets.
For more on how SAP Ariba supports retail, read my colleague Florian’s post, and see my colleague James’ post on the importance of being able to combine experience data with operational data.
Designing a Winning E-Commerce Customer Experience
In 2020, an optimized digital customer experience can tip the balance toward gaining a purchase instead of losing a customer. Excellent CX has transitioned firmly from something nice to have to a business requirement.
No matter how good a product or service is, the e-commerce Web and mobile design surrounding it will play a key role in maintaining engagement and ensuring consumers complete their shopping journey. Even the slightest friction, such as poor load speeds, can drive users away from a site, resulting in an immediate lost sale.
In fact, research shows that “53 percent of mobile site visitors
leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.”
E-commerce businesses can optimize their CX by implementing effective design and technology tips and tricks.
E-commerce design best practices alter over time due to shifts in consumer behavior, such as the population increasingly choosing mobile devices over desktop to shop. It often doesn’t matter how good your product or service offering is. If your site looks outdated, or if it is confusing to use from a consumer’s perspective, you’ll lose a sale.
Following are the top features and functionalities for creating an exceptional CX for online shoppers.
1. Dark Mode
Dark mode switches the background of a mobile operating system to black, reducing eye strain in some environments, enabling mobile devices to adjust better to ambient lighting conditions, and (since black pixels on a mobile phone are turned off) extending battery life.
Recently several social media platforms, including Twitter, released dark mode versions of their apps. This practice is expected to extend to e-commerce sites and applications in 2020.
The increase in customers who choose to shop via social media has amplified the practical application of dark mode for e-commerce retailers. When customers are redirected to an external site, dark mode functionality will improve the consistency and reduce friction.
2. Accessibility for All
Designing for accessibility helps e-commerce companies better serve shoppers with disabilities, and avoids lawsuits alleging that sites are not accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
To avoid implementing features that are difficult to use or incompatible with devices required by users with disabilities, designers must ensure that sites are following Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
3. Smooth Navigation
Where does your site’s navigation menu button appear when it’s accessed from a mobile device? Typically, buttons appear at the top left- or right-hand corners of screens, to replicate desktop versions. How useful is that on a mobile device?
Instead, e-cCommerce sites are starting to position navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen to help ease frustrations and facilitate thumb use, putting the end user first. This makes sense, as 94 percent of smartphone users hold devices vertically, research indicates.
4. Minimalism and Simplicity
The “less is more” principle applies to e-commerce Web design, and many sites are moving away from intrusive design features such as pop-ups and widgets.
Sites with minimal design and a simplified shopping journey allow more white space, opting for relatively larger fonts, and focusing on simple navigation.
Too much content and functionality in an industry that is, by nature, image-led is offputting for users and may lead to cart abandonment.
5. Content-Centric Designs
A content-centric design provides information that shoppers need to discover new products or make purchases.
Consumers are now “the experts,” because they’re able to research products and services independently. Content-centric design enables this and, in turn, improves the user experience.
It’s useful to remember that 83 percent of online shoppers intend to do something other than make a purchase when visiting a brand’s website for the first time, according to an Episerver report.
To give your visitors what they want, fill your website with relevant educational content and offer interactive experiences to build a rapport with your audience. This tactic will help position your brand not only as a vendor that people buy from, but also as a company that really cares about creating a positive connection with shoppers, which ultimately helps you build brand loyalty and more sales.
6. Powerful Microinteractions
If you’re fully up to speed with a user-centric design, you may already be aware of the power of “microinteractions.” This term refers to small, subtle features on a website that grab audience attention.
Microinteractions are the finishing touches that add to the overall experience visitors get at a website. The idea is to help businesses that operate in crowded marketplaces to stand out.
They include items such as scrolling visuals, sound effects, confirmation messages, hover animations and transition animations. Another example of a microinteraction is enhancing the view of products, as when informative text is displayed when users hover over an item image.
Another is the use of animation to track checkout progression.
Microinteractions add to the overall experience visitors get at an e-commerce site and can be used strategically to push consumers to completing a sale.
As technology progresses, more microinteraction capabilities will be available to integrate with any e-commerce site. These features are not brand new, but they became popular in 2019 and are likely to gain more prominence in 2020.
7. Well-Timed Chatbots
Chatbots have come a long way since they were introduced. They once were seen as clunky, automated, soulless systems, but artificial intelligence and machine learning have changed that perception, and they now add a lot of value to sites.
When powered by industry-leading technology, chatbots can help enhance a consumer’s online experience with a brand, provide shopping assistance and answer questions, at any time, which makes them a winner for international e-commerce sites that attract visitors from all around the world in different time zones.
One caveat about chatbots: Use them with precision timing. For example, there’s no point in activating a chatbot when a user has just landed onto a page, as it can cause distraction.
8. Voice Purchases
More online shoppers are beginning to turn to voice for their e-commerce needs. In 2018, 12 percent of online shoppers used voice devices to research multiple times a month or more frequently, Episerver research suggests, and this figure grew to 22 percent in 2019.
When it comes to buying products and services by voice, 17 percent of online shoppers made multiple voice purchases a month in 2019. up from 11 percent in 2018.
A voice-enabled checkout process represents a growing opportunity for e-commerce businesses in 2020, especially for mobile devices. Enabling voice input will distinguish your site from the pack.
9. Personalized Privacy
While it’s clear that personalization provides benefits when it comes to customer experience, privacy now plays a more dominant role in shoppers’ buying decisions.
Proactively offering personalized privacy as part of your CX will build trust and transparency between your brand and your customers.
For example, send communications and content that educates consumers on how their information is used and stored.
10. Frictionless Checkout
Create frictionless checkout by implementing data and technology integrations that increase speed and convenience for customers.
To make checkouts “frictionless,” you must begin with your data — and this is even more important for e-commerce sites that operate on an international scale.
By having access to accurate international address data and offering multiple payment and currency options, you can streamline the checkout process for your users, and optimize checkout flows.
In addition, functionalities such as enabling guest checkout, simplifying form fills, and using predictive type-ahead technology that autocompletes an address as it is being typed can help ease data input and reduce errors.
Watch Sales Soar
By introducing the above functions on your e-commerce site you’ll improve your customers’ online experience.
That in turn will help to boost brand loyalty and trust, and have a positive impact on your overall sales.
Athar Naqi is head of strategic alliances at
Loqate, a location intelligence specialist.
Wait and See: Four Ways To Keep The Customer Experience Going When Uncertainty Looms
Part 4 of the “2020 Strategies and Insights for Midsize Companies” series
“Wait and see.”
That phrase can be like a huge, red stop light for businesses of all sizes when uncertainty looms. No matter if that uncertainty springs from the political landscape like the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election, or company leadership is changing, or a merger is happening, companies oftentimes pause on making big decisions around big technology purchases, staffing, and business initiatives until after the change.
Sometimes “wait and see” is just part of business when uncertainty looms. But that self-inflicted pause rarely, if ever, flies with customers. Customer needs, demands, and expectations don’t wait for elections, mergers, budgets, or internal onboarding to conclude.
So, as we face this new decade, how can you keep customer experience (CX) improvement efforts moving if you feel stuck on “wait and see?” Because you may not have a choice about following high-level directives to hold off on big purchases and decisions. But it doesn’t make good business sense to put customers on the back burner, either.
One idea: focus on what you can do. This could be the perfect time to revisit the CX basics at your company. Because customer experience is about much more than tech, initiatives, and big projects. It’s a mindset, or a way of doing things, to be interwoven into the fabric of your company’s culture.
Here are some things you can focus on to keep the company’s CX mindset flowing in times of uncertainty.
Are the basics really under control?
I’m going to get really basic for just a moment. When I say, “the basics,” I mean, are the phones being answered, and answered effectively? While the focus today may be on perfecting digital and online communication, the phone is still customers’ most preferred channel when it comes to contacting the companies where they do business. Fifty-seven percent of consumers used the phone to address a service problem last year. Seventy-five percent of companies believe they’re doing a good job with telephone communication, but only 48% of customers agree. Flames fly every day on social media from angry customers who can’t get a call answered, or when they encounter phone agents who simply don’t seem to care. Getting the phones right is a CX basic. Use “wait and see” time to secret shop your company’s phone systems or contact center. Assess, advocate for, and improve on the phone basics.
Is your website communicating well?
You probably already know website design is important to winning and retaining customers. But a customer’s experience with your site goes well beyond aesthetics. Bad, inconsistent, and confusing content leads to friction with customers. Two out of three customers in one recent study regularly had trouble finding answers on company websites. Here’s an example. I recently visited the website of a company where I had made a purchase and found that the customer service number posted on their site wasn’t correct. Their site invited me to chat online with agents “right now.” When I clicked to enter the chat, the page changed and said chat was closed, but I could feel free to e-mail them. I felt like a digital hot potato—passed around from source to source without getting anywhere. In the end, it felt like the company had deliberately wasted my time. So, secret shop your company website. Ask some communication-savvy colleagues to do the same. You probably don’t need a big budget or to wait for an election to pass in order to get the basics squared away.
How about a customer experience metrics and measurements refresh?
By now, companies who are more customer experience mature should have CX operational and experience metrics in place. Along with your senior team, you’re likely monitoring and triaging customers’ experiences with your application processes, customer wait times, website, and in your contact center, for example. But how long has it been since you challenged what you were measuring, how you were measuring it, and if those were the things that really mattered to customers? What mattered two years ago may not be what matters now. Most small and midsized companies don’t need a big budget to shift what they’re measuring and when. And if you’re not measuring, monitoring, and triaging data surrounding customers’ experiences yet, 2020 is a good time to get started, using systems and resources you already have in place.
Expand your thinking on customer feedback
No matter what size company you run, collecting feedback should be part of your business model. And hopefully by now you’re well on your way to collecting and reviewing feedback on a regular basis. If you get stuck in “wait and see” mode, go back and take another dive back into feedback you’ve collected. Challenge whether you’re acting feedback everywhere possible in your business. Sixty-three percent of companies that collect feedback don’t do a good job of using it holistically in their business. Think about using feedback in your policy and rulemaking work, risk management activities, marketing and public relations work. In the coming decade, you will want to maximize your current business processes, including how and where you use the customer feedback you’re already collecting.
“Wait and see” is oftentimes just part of the normal course of doing business. But that doesn’t mean your focus on CX needs to take a huge pause. With an entrepreneurial spirit and mindset, you can face the 2020s intuitively knowing what it takes to advance the customer experience dialogue, even if big projects go on hold. Small and midsize businesses have an opportunity to be nimble in ways where many large organizations struggle. Embrace and expand on the basics of customer experience management during periods of “wait and see,” and you will be embracing competitive opportunity.
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See IDC’s list of top trends for small and midsize businesses in the 2020s. Download the IDC infographic, sponsored by SAP, “The Roaring 2020s – Six Trends Midsize Companies in the Next Decade.”
And we invite you join our upcoming webinar for a deeper dive into each of these trends and what you can do now to take advantage of them. Register for Winning in the 2020s: Six Trends Every Midsize Company Needs to Know.
Customer Experience Strategy And Overall Company Strategy
The generic company strategies model developed by Michael Porter classifies companies into one of three broad, generic categories: cost leaders (competing on low prices), differentiators (competing based on innovation in their products/services), and segments (competing by focusing on specific market needs) (Philipson, 1992).
A customer experience strategy is defined as “a plan that guides activities and [the] resource allocation needed to deliver an experience that meets or exceeds customer expectations.” There are also three customer experience strategies that align with the generic company strategies: self-service optimization, proactive guidance, and tailored intimacy (Forrester, 2010).
The following diagrams depict how the three customer experience strategies align with the three generic company strategies.
The self-service optimization strategy
The objective of the self-service optimization strategy is to create extremely effective high-touch self-service that is simple, automated, and error-free. Here are some examples of how this objective has been implemented:
The proactive guidance strategy
The objective of the proactive guidance strategy is to ensure customer delight by educating on innovations, solving problems preemptively, and connecting through social media. Here are some examples of how this objective has been implemented:
The “tailored intimacy” strategy
The objective of the tailored intimacy strategy is to use knowledge of target customers to create deep connections through interactions that are attuned, empathetic, and personalized to clients’ needs and aspirations. Here are some examples of how this objective has been implemented:
By focusing on aligning the generic company strategy with the customer experience strategy, it is then necessary to align the customer experience ecosystem to this strategy.
Learn how to choose the right digital experience platform for your business by watching the on-demand SAP Webinar featuring Forrester, “Customer Experience Matters.”