Category: Digital Experience

CX Technology, Status and Vision

In a recent and extremely insightful webinar, Gartner shared a few very interesting findings, that show company’s approaches when it comes to investing in technology to support or enable the delivery of (what they hope will be) superior customer experience.

Gartner says that in 2018…

Improved customer experience and loyalty is the top outcome for digital business transformation.

In a survey to CEOs, the answer to the question “What are the top three outcomes your organization has already realized as a result of its digital business transformation?“, almost half of responses mentioned improved interactions, thus loyalty with customers, and improved customer experience.

More than 80% of client calls to Gartner about CRM and CX applications are focused on a specific business requirement for one department, and tend not to have the whole enterprise in scope.

Most of the market leading vendors claim to have a fully integrated CX platform, that can help companies deliver a seamless customer experience. But the truth is those platforms are a mix of various applications – in some cases even built in different technologies.

Different applications for eCommerce, Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Content, etc. that aren’t joined up, don’t share channels (email, chat, web, phone, social) or analytics, and don’t have out-of-the-box connectors to each other, thus require integration efforts.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. Gartner actually states that “No transformational customer experience or CRM initiative succeeds using only one application“. Best-of-breed solutions for the various areas have been developed and built by different technology vendors. What companies need to do is make sure they take a holistic view when architecting their customer engagement hubs.

An estimated 50% of organizations are still thinking of the customer life cycle from an inside-out perspective – focusing on the idea of selling and service cycles, rather than buying and ownership cycles.

Changing technology platforms is always easier than changing a company’s culture or people’s minds. Despite most companies, in particular their CxO’s, are saying that improving customer experience is their main priority, the transformation is attempted with people that struggle to change their mindset.

The famous quote suits like a glove: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results“.

20140725 CX Infinite Loop

At Capventis, the company I work for, we re-designed the CX infinity loop, where “Buy” and “Own” (the customer’s perspective) stand out and are the main focus. Whereas “Market and Sell” or “Support and Serve” (the company’s perspective) is secondary, recognizing nonetheless its importance and impact on customer experience.

Customer Analytics is the top technology for CX investment. By 2020, more than 40% of all data analytics projects will relate to an aspect of customer experience.

Following what we have been saying at Capventis, in this more demanding and ever more sophisticated digital world, Experience is the driver, but Information is the ingredient.

Information, data, analytics are becoming absolutely crucial for the delivery of great customer experience, playing a key role in various areas. Some of which are…

  • Measure customer experiences
  • Blend operational (O-data) and experience (X-data) customer data
  • Prioritise improvements on the customer journey
  • Enable real-time personalised interactions
  • Deliver artificial intelligence and allow machine learning

A Shift will have to happen: Data-Driven Systems to Event-Driven Systems.

Companies are data-driven, and still prioritise the preservation of data, which is the source of truth, and they deliver experiences on the back of the data they’ve collected. Gartner envisions that in the next few years, companies will have to become event-driven, where the priority is reacting to events. According to Gartner, the key components of an event-driven system are:

  • Situational Awareness – Event visibility and context over customer journey
  • Customer Intelligence – Event-driven recommendations and CRM capabilities
  • Real-Time Orchestration – Automate, act and achieve customer experience

Digital Experience Disillusion

digital-experience-documents-cloud-1440x959

There is an illusion, in the world of business, that makes companies believe that they’re innovating or ahead of the curve, in terms of delivering digital experiences, just because they’re investing in new digital platforms or channels – be it websites, kiosks, or mobile apps. I come across this almost on a daily basis. The truth is that those things alone won’t put your company at the forefront, or perform the so-called “digital transformation” in isolation.

If you want to deliver outstanding digital experiences, you need to understand that to engage customers digitally, you must do it in a way that is meaningful and personalised. And for that, it is absolutely crucial that you understand the human being on the other side of the screen. The values, principles, aspirations, preferences, and behaviours of the person that is interacting with your company.

Furthermore, you must do it in a way that is contextual, from two perspectives. Not only from a device or site perspective – because there is significant differences when it comes to deliver experiences on a website or a mobile app; on a laptop or a smartphone – but also from a cultural perspective – because people around the world have very distinct lifestyles, habits, customs and beliefs.

No company was able to get it right first time. Nor able to get it right at some point, and keep it unchangeable. And neither will you. It just doesn’t work that way. The world and the societies we live in, are mutable, constantly changing and developing. So it is extremely important that you put in place a program that allows you to continuously gather, research, monitor and improve your knowledge of your customers and their expectations.

That is precisely why it is key that you collect Experience Data (e.g. Voice-of-Customer, Voice-of-Employee). And then blend it with Operational Data (e.g. Orders, Transactions, Tickets). Analyse, make sense of the data, find trends/drivers, and deliver actionable insights. Which will allow you to design new and improved experiences, that you can then enable with digital platforms, and deliver via digital channels.