The Future of Customer Experience free essay sample

Frowareness, discovery, attraction, interaction, purchase, use, cultivation and advocacy. It can also be used to mean an individual experience over one transaction; the distinction is usually clear in context. Analysts and commentators who write about customer experience (CX) and  customer relationship management  have increasingly recognized the importance of managing the customers experience. Customers receive some kind of experience, ranging from positive to negative, during the course of buying  goods  and  services. BlackBerry takes a look into the future of customer experience. This video depicts what the future of retailing could look like in the near future. A young woman uses mobile technology to identify, search and buy an outfit for a wedding and to interact with retailers in the online and physical worlds. This video also details how retailers can use mobile technology in the future to collaborate, and respond faster to trends and customer demand. This video shows how businesses could use integrated social networking to better serve customers and to improve employee collaboration and engagement. A fictional utilities company uses social networking to track, respond and improve their customer experience and service levels whilst increasing staff productivity. In this video, existing technologies have been  re-imagined  with smarter devices and better experiences. It showcases device integration, sharing and social networking, e-commerce, retail management systems, GPS tracking, mobile payment systems and augmented reality. BlackBerry takes a look at the impact mobile technology could have in the future of customer service. Analysis of the case The Future of Customer Experience? Its Getting Personal No matter what business, a growing percentage of customers are nearly always connected, with instant access to more advanced tools and detailed information than many enterprises had just a few years ago. These smart, digitally empowered consumers and businesses have the power to behave in a far smarter and better-informed manner than ever before. This power has also radically changed customer expectations, driving demand for better, more innovative, and personalized products, services, and experiences. This should come as no surprise to any executive. Given a choice, each of us (as well as our customers) prefers experiences tailored to our unique wants and needs. Firms that are best able to do so have significant competitive advantage over those that cannot. Though the promise–and power–of personalization has been at the forefront of marketing theory for some time, its widespread application to customer experience is only just beginning. Today, disruptive digital innovation is changing the ways companies serve their customers, as well as the ways these customers expect to be treated. Personalization is the Foundation Of Innovative Customer Experience. In the age of smart customers, personalization is the future of experience. Mass production and consumption of news, entertainment, products, and services have already lost the battle, giving way to personalization and customization. Apps such as  Zite  and  Flipboard  allow each of us to totally personalize the ways we consume news. Amazon has personalized the ways we shop, and Netflix and Hulu how we watch movies, TV, and other media programming. Pandora serves up increasingly personalized musical streams based on a listener’s taste (â€Å"thumbs up; thumbs down†), continuously learning about users’ musical preferences based on real-time customer feedback. There are hundreds of examples, with more coming every day. The point is these increasing levels of digitally driven personalization allow customers to choose what they consume, from whom, and how they interact with and consume it. These digital experiences are training smart customers to expect everything, from every company–product, services, experiences, and more–to be customized in a similar manner. When it comes to innovative customer experience, this all leads to one word: personalization. ‘One Size Fits All’ Simply Doesn’t Fly Anymore. And It Doesn’t Have To. No company can afford to or needs to deliver a fully customized â€Å"ideal experience† to each individual customer across the range of digital, human, and static touchpoints and interactions. The fact is, some customers are simply worth more than others, and it takes a great deal of intelligence for companies to figure out what the â€Å"right† experiences are for any given group of customers, much less how to personalize them. The good news is, â€Å"smart touchpoints† and the data they can produce, combined with the ability to analyze the digital breadcrumbs and data that surrounds almost every customer, means that any firm of any size has the tools for intelligent personalization at hand. Starting with what can be the biggest step, a firm needs to be willing to adjust its offerings to the needs of individual customers based on an understanding of what those individual customers (or the smallest possible groups they represent) want, and how that’s different from others. The more effectively a company uses customer information to understand and acknowledge both the differences and similarities, the easier it will be to provide benefits uniquely suited to those customers. In ways never before possible, you can approach them with truly personalized, highly customized offers, through relevant channels, in ways that drive stronger, more profitable relationships, better serving your customers by giving them exactly what they want, when they want it. Result: Customer experiences that are not only highly differentiated, but that cannot be easily duplicated by others. It is infact the hardest thing for competitors to copy. For many companies, it isn’t obvious to executives how or why they should provide meaningful personalization. Their customers have been satisfied with the existing product lineup. Their products may be commodities, or perhaps their firms are in a regulated utility. While the desire to create a â€Å"differentiated customer experience† is high on the list of objectives when it comes to customer experience strategy, they do not yet grasp that the most effective customer experiences are those tailored in a significant manner to meet the needs of that particular customer. They simply dont realize how fast customer expectations are changing, and what this means to the design of forward-looking customer experience strategies today. Companies that do realize this–and take action as a result–will create truly differentiated, category-leading experiences that make interacting with them so relevant, so much more convenient, and so perfectly suited to customers’ wants and needs that they won’t even  consider switching to a competitor. Points to consider while designing a customer experience The world has changed and the balance of power has shifted to the customers. The speed with which consumers have shifted to all things  digital/social/mobile  has taken many companies by surprise. â€Å"It’s like skating to a ping-pong ball 1. PERSONALIZATION AND CONTEXT With consumers adopting evermore numerous channels and devices to access information and interact with brands, businesses are scrambling to figure out how to deliver a more unified customer experience. In the wake of this, two new mantras are on the lips of every marketer: personalization and context. As a larger number of users become more familiar with social/mobile technologies, they’ll likely use them in more complex ways: sophistication breeds heightened expectation. Consumers will favor brands that provide context and relevance to their daily lives. Businesses can accomplish this by  producing quality content  that is not only relevant to their brand’s target audience, but promoted (and optimized) over multiple channels such as web, mobile and social, and accessible to them on demand. For many, this presents a daunting challenge that will likely put a strain on existing resources. If this is the case for a brand, they may want to consider outsourcing to an  inbound marketing services agency  that specializes on all aspects of digital marketing. Key Inferences * An explosion of customer touchpoints is at hand. Digital customer experience today is defined primarily by websites, with mobile applications on smartphones not far behind, and the future will include as many as 10 additional customer touchpoints. Deciding which channels to incorporate into your strategy is crucial to defining your organization’s future in digital customer experience. A unified experience requires the right people, process, and technology foundations. Customers love their devices but also want consistency across the devices and apps they use. Unified experiences that cross touchpoints demand improved yet common designs, common content assets and application code, and delivery processes tuned for speed and harmonized skills and roles. * Investments in unified experience founda tions will pay off now. Investments in foundations for unified customer experiences will pay dividends in the short term.