Opportunities in Customer Experience

 

The advances in digital technologies are transforming the relationship between the consumer and businesses by enabling a high level of connectivity. In the digital marketplace, consumers are using the emerging technologies to be more informed about the product and service offerings and to decide whom to trust, what to buy and where to make the purchase. Businesses, on the other hand, are starting to focus on digital initiatives in order to respond to shifts in consumer behavior and to better meet the changing consumer needs. There are three elements: customer understanding, top line growth, and consumer touch points that organizations are transforming in the customer experience pillar.

Companies are building analytics capabilities to advance their understanding of consumer behavior. For example, some firms in the hospitality and tourism field are using online reviews from TripAdvisor.com, Expedia.com, and Booking.com among others to understand the customer satisfiers and dis-satisfiers while other firms are conducting analytics-based experiments like TicketMaster who profited from pricing games due to the willingness of fans to pay more for special games. Furthermore, firms are building online communities to learn from their clients. For example, Threadless, an online retailer, enables customers to create t-shirts using templates that they provide on the website while Novartis, a pharmaceutical company, collaborates with patient groups that are present in different online communities to develop new drugs. In addition, the interlocking plastic blocks toy maker, Lego, created an online community for customers to compete in their design challenge in order to create new robotics products. Firms are using technology to make the in-person sales conversations more effective as financial service firms replaced the paper-based slide decks with a tabled-based presentation to make sales pitches and medical device operators use an iPad to visually inform the doctor about the new product. Moreover, firms are using predictive marketing to transform sales experience through personalization and customization. The internet has created many opportunities for personalization based on previously collected consumer data and a popular example is Amazon.com that uses a large number of filters to determine what kind of books and music to recommend to the clients. Customization has also been applied in different industries to enhance the value proposition as Adidas offers customers the opportunity to co-design the shoes. However, digital transformation has to happen continually and all the above technology-enabled features should respond to the ongoing changing customer wants and needs. For example, Dell enabled the consumer to order the exact personal computer they imagined, but later on found out that customers have shifted their needs and that customization angle is not a crucial part of their model any more. Firms are also working actively in providing streamlined customer processes to make the life of customer easy as successful retailers are using digital plugins to automatically load their clients online shopping list so they can spend more time exploring other products. Companies are using digital initiatives to enhance customer service by responding to customer questions in real-time through social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. In recent years, the advances in Twitter bots have made the boundary between bot and human behavior very fuzzy. Companies are using bots to engage in different types of interactions with their clients such as commenting on their posts and/or answering their complains. Furthermore, companies are enriching the customers’ 9 shopping experience through the omni-channel approach which is a set of activities involved in selling a product or a service through more than one channel. The ability to integrate all customer touch points is crucial for companies to build the brand and boost customer satisfaction because customers change channels and platforms constantly as they may be for a moment comparing prices on a smartphone, then trying on t-shirts in a physical store, and later making the purchase on their laptop. As a final point, companies are offering self-service through digital tools in order to save time for customers and to save money for the company. The classical financial service apps such as m-banking provide a host of value-added for customers because it enables the execution of financial and non-financial transactions in an easier and faster approach while the tourism service apps based on argument reality and geo-localization enable tourists to explore the cityscape and the sites through the use of different multimedia formats in order to make the tourist experience more memorable.

Companies are building analytics capabilities to advance their understanding of consumer behavior. For example, some firms in the hospitality and tourism field are using online reviews from TripAdvisor.com, Expedia.com, and Booking.com among others to understand the customer satisfiers and dis-satisfiers while other firms are conducting analytics-based experiments like TicketMaster who profited from pricing games due to the willingness of fans to pay more for special games. Furthermore, firms are building online communities to learn from their clients. For example, Threadless, an online retailer, enables customers to create t-shirts using templates that they provide on the website while Novartis, a pharmaceutical company, collaborates with patient groups that are present in different online communities to develop new drugs. In addition, the interlocking plastic blocks toy maker, Lego, created an online community for customers to compete in their design challenge in order to create new robotics products. Firms are using technology to make the in-person sales conversations more effective as financial service firms replaced the paper-based slide decks with a tabled-based presentation to make sales pitches and medical device operators use an iPad to visually inform the doctor about the new product. Moreover, firms are using predictive marketing to transform sales experience through personalization and customization. The internet has created many opportunities for personalization based on previously collected consumer data and a popular example is Amazon.com that uses a large number of filters to determine what kind of books and music to recommend to the clients. Customization has also been applied in different industries to enhance the value proposition as Adidas offers customers the opportunity to co-design the shoes. However, digital transformation has to happen continually and all the above technology-enabled features should respond to the ongoing changing customer wants and needs. For example, Dell enabled the consumer to order the exact personal computer they imagined, but later on found out that customers have shifted their needs and that customization angle is not a crucial part of their model any more. Firms are also working actively in providing streamlined customer processes to make the life of customer easy as successful retailers are using digital plugins to automatically load their clients online shopping list so they can spend more time exploring other products. Companies are using digital initiatives to enhance customer service by responding to customer questions in real-time through social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. In recent years, the advances in Twitter bots have made the boundary between bot and human behavior very fuzzy. Companies are using bots to engage in different types of interactions with their clients such as commenting on their posts and/or answering their complains. Furthermore, companies are enriching the customers’ 9 shopping experience through the omni-channel approach which is a set of activities involved in selling a product or a service through more than one channel. The ability to integrate all customer touch points is crucial for companies to build the brand and boost customer satisfaction because customers change channels and platforms constantly as they may be for a moment comparing prices on a smartphone, then trying on t-shirts in a physical store, and later making the purchase on their laptop. As a final point, companies are offering self-service through digital tools in order to save time for customers and to save money for the company. The classical financial service apps such as m-banking provide a host of value-added for customers because it enables the execution of financial and non-financial transactions in an easier and faster approach while the tourism service apps based on argument reality and geo-localization enable tourists to explore the cityscape and the sites through the use of different multimedia formats in order to make the tourist experience more memorable.