From Design-Thinking to Customer Journey Maps, it has never been more widely recognized the need for focusing on Customer Experience Management at the Executive Level. According to a 2015 survey Gartner conducted with CEO's who placed this as one of the highest priorities over the next five years. However, more recent data suggests there are still challenges in the areas of communications and business processes in the execution. Their prediction: customer journey maps will become a vital mechanism for bridging these objectives.
From prior decades focus on CRM to an omni-channel approach towards the entire
Customer Experience (CX), companies are taking a more interactive and holistic approach.
Market dynamism and digital disruption are shifting the power towards more distributed sources of influence, increased choices and competition, and new market entrants. Through enhanced digital mechanisms – mediums, enhanced AI / ML-powered applications, and diversification of devices, as the ways in which consumers engage and procure products and services is rapidly changing.
Consider Amazon as a platform-enabled company leveraging its supply chain distribution channels to offer Whole Foods on-line with delivery service to their shared customers. It demonstrates how a massive scale distribution technology company can leverage its model to provide expanded capabilities of a more regionalized physical store. Through this integration, Amazon can deliver Whole Foods premium product offerings through a virtual e-commerce experience to their customers' doorsteps at scale.
It's no longer sufficient to identify product or service buying patterns, but develop deeper understandings of what, how, and through which mediums are sought, where considerations around new and innovative apps, convenience, price point, logistics, and increasing numbers of choices are all abundant.
SAP's approach: A revolutionary shift away from the reactive to proactive customer engagement as influencers to develop beta versions of new products and releases:
Customer Involvement – Influence and Adopt
Gartner defines a
digital experience platform (DXP) as an integrated set of technologies, based on a common platform, that provides a broad range of audiences with consistent, secure and personalized access to information and applications across many digital touchpoints. Organizations use DXPs to build, deploy and continually improve websites, portals, mobile and other digital experiences.
The (DXP) enables the intelligent enterprises to make real-time decisions in customer interactions that deliver continuous value. They incorporate the voice of the customer into their digital service delivery models emphasizing customer value.
So, how does hyper-Competition – new markets, channels, platforms, and products and service delivery models translate into increased opportunities?
Continuous delivery, continuous innovation, and the effects of agile have only begun to be realized across enterprises.
Gartner paints a vision of the IT Organization's future in 2030 compared with that of 2016, whereby:
Organization is fluid, comprising a set of connected individuals with the flexibility to meet changing supply and demand or market conditions. New pods can form, and existing pods can disband in response to demand and supply elasticity. Acquisitions of new businesses and capabilities, or surges in demand, can be serviced by creating a situation-specific pod, drawing from the whole breadth of the IT domain's internal and external resources.
As the numbers of sources, diversification of mediums, devices, and massive amounts of data contributes to hyper-competition and unpredictability, the ability to maximize the potential for these technologies such as AI-enabled apps, CX digital platforms, analytics, location-based features in an intelligent enterprise enables:
- Relevancy and Saliency of Messaging
- Contextualization in real-time interactions: Speed and Accuracy of messaging
- Geo-proximity of physical location or events
- Hidden motivations such as causal, values based, shifting priorities, trends
- Timed promotions, Cross-Channel
As leaders in Gartner's Quadrant for Multi-Channel Marketing, SAP helps customers achieve these objectives in a dynamic, fast-changing environment. The CX and e-commerce opportunity does not end with app-enablement; It extends throughout the intelligent enterprise.
A Global retailer leveraged SAP Hybris Commerce Cloud to include channels, B2B, B2C through a responsive omni-channel experience.
The reasons: The customer is at the core of CX initiatives from designing and developing new digital product offerings and enhancements. The gathering of insights in an agile environment throughout the experience enables organizations to continuously deliver, meeting and exceeding customer expectations.
What about an entire industry, a reimagining of the business model: Aligning Customer expectations in a new paradigm.
Communications Service Providers: Changing the Game for the Digital Journey
What is your plan to capitalize on disruption - embark and delve deeper into the Digital Customer Journey?
