Experience Insights

Where to start in making your organisation’s experience transformation goals a reality

REIMAGINING YOUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Customer experience (CX) is the customer’s perception of interactions with a brand. As many products and services become commoditised and highly available, CX is often the main differentiator an organisation can rely on to compete more effectively.

Ongoing research from multiple sources reinforces the growing importance of CX and its effect on competitiveness. For example, one study found that, by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.1 Depending on the industry, a one per cent increase in CX scores can mean $10 million to $100 million plus annually for an individual brand.2

This isn’t surprising, since statistics have long proven that people are more likely to do business with an organisation that they perceive delivers outstanding service. Research shows that 86 per cent of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience, 73 per cent of buyers point to customer service as an important factor in purchasing decisions, and 65 per cent of buyers find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising.3

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SITS AT THE TOP OF THE CEO AGENDA

And, while the positive benefits of great CX are well-documented, it’s also worth noting that a negative experience can have a significant impact on the business. According to Parature, it takes 12 positive customer experiences to make up for one negative experience.

Introduction

“CX is often the main differentiator an organisation can rely on to

compete more effectively.“

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AS A DRIVER OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Developing a successful CX strategy is only achievable when organisations realise the interconnectedness of people, processes, and technology. Indeed, technology is proving the differentiating factor in many organisations’ ability to deliver outstanding customer experiences. But implementing new technology for its own sake is a recipe for failure. Organisations need to plan strategically for technology investments intended to affect CX.

CX is a key driving force behind digital transformation. Far from being a business buzzword, digital transformation refers to the essential modernisation activities that organisations are undertaking to interact with their customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders digitally.

In fact, Aberdeen Group claims that companies with the strongest omni-channel customer engagement strategies retain an average of 89 per cent of their customers, as compared to 33 per cent for companies with weak omni-channel strategies.4 Furthermore, 89 per cent of customers get frustrated because they have to repeat their issues to multiple representatives.5 Consolidating digital communication channels and offline channels, and making that data available to all company representatives in a single interface, is a bare minimum that organisations should be doing to improve CX. Achieving a comprehensive digital transformation is crucial to developing CX that stands out from the crowd.

Business leaders already know this: 84 per cent of companies believe digital transformation is important or critically important to their survival in the next five years.6 But many also believe that transforming to the digital sphere can be highly challenging and can take many years to achieve. Digital transformation can seem confusing and intimidating.

However, with the right partner and the right approach, businesses can achieve digital transformation that elevates the CX to a point where it becomes a clear competitive differentiator.

This paper explores the importance of CX and how business can transform towards an exceptional experience for all stakeholders: your customers, users or citizens, and your people.

“Achieving a comprehensive digital transformation is crucial

to developing CX that stands out from the crowd.“

CX is all about perception. If a customer believes they’ve had a bad experience, then they have. If they feel they’ve been listened to and treated well, then they have. Every stakeholder in the business experiences their interactions in their own way. Therefore, businesses must consider the customer experience alongside the employee experience, the user experience, the partner experience, and the public experience.

A BRILLIANT AND MEMORABLE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE WILL BE:

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IS ALL ABOUT PERCEPTION

considerate

delightfulattentive

empatheticusefulpersonalised

appreciative

meaningful

relevant

convenientvalued

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS ESSENTIAL TO IMPROVE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

The impact of customer experience can be significant on an organisation. According to McKinsey, the benefits can include:

10%

20%20%

20%

20%

10%reduction in

cost to serve

growth in

customer satisfactionuplift in

customer conversion

reduction in

customer churnboost in revenues from customer lifetime value

CX used to be about customer relationship management (CRM) but now there’s an understanding that the customer experience is affected by all the technology in the organisation. This makes digital transformation essential as a method to improve CX.

decrease in

complaints

Technology is one of the key elements to empower businesses to provide a better CX. There are three key phases required in your customer experience transformation journey: Reframe, Reimagine and Realise.

WHERE TO START?

Realise How do we deliver on our vision and future state? What does the roadmap look like?

ReframeWhat is the vision? Where do the greatest opportunities lie? What are the problems we’re trying to solve and where do they lie?

Reimagine What does the future look like? How can we make the most of key opportunities, overcome present challenges and relieve pain points?

ReframeThe discovery phase involves taking stock of where you are at as an organisation, bringing together key people from across your organisation to ensure all facets of the organisation are involved in the customer experience reframing process.

During this initial phase of discovery, businesses need to research and investigate drivers for change. This should be done via regular, recurring sessions with cross-functional representatives from all parts of the business.

Businesses should use tools to analyse and understand the organisation’s current CX maturity level. This includes collecting customer feedback, mapping the customer journey, analysing customer behaviour, conducting user research and live customer testing, and developing personas.

Businesses must adopt a collaborative design thinking approach and map the context of the problems. As this process unfolds, it’s essential to empathise with customers and honestly evaluate the current CX to see where the most impactful changes can be made.

KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK DURING THIS PHASE WILL BE:

• What is our organisational vision and purpose?

• What opportunities do we see?

• What problems are we trying to solve and what is causing these problems?

DISCOVERY

ReimagineThis phase requires assimilating all learnings and insights from the reframing phase and designing what the future experience could look like.

Once it’s clear what’s needed, organisations can then start to develop ideas to generate and define innovation. It’s important to assess the feasibility of each idea, identify its organisational impacts and gaps, and determine what changes are required.

It’s useful to define the value proposition and describe what success looks like at this point. This can help inspire innovative ideas. The group should then explore pain relievers and define the future experience.

The final task in this phase is to prioritise actions.

In this step, businesses need to define and create a proof of concept through a rapid iterative design and prototyping process. They should draft and prototype the new experience using co-design/design studios, sketches, wireframes, user interface flows, visual design, low/high fidelity prototype, rapid user testing and any other methods that make sense for the business.

KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK DURING THIS PHASE WILL BE:

• What does – or could – the future look like?

• How can we make the most of new opportunities in front of us?

• How can we overcome present challenges and relieve any pain points?

• Where do our ‘valuable moments’ lie?

• What does the future customer experience look like, based on this new view of the world?

• What are our key priorities and quick wins?

IDEATION AND CREATION

This phase involves bringing the vision to life and making it actionable and achievable.

The delivery step consists of iterative delivery in which the business measures, learns, and refines the experience. It’s important to have a solution that can be delivered at scale throughout the organisation.

KEY QUESTIONS TO ASK DURING THIS PHASE WILL BE:

• How do we deliver on our vision and future state?

• What does our horizon roadmap look like?

• What are our priorities and quick wins?

• What will make the biggest impact?

• How can we enable our people to succeed? What skills and experience do we need?

• What technology platforms do we need to enable our vision?

• How will we measure whether we’re succeeding?

Realise

EXECUTION, DELIVERY AND EVOLUTION

Regardless of how successfully an organisation has transformed the CX, it’s likely that further improvements are always possible. Once the transformation has been delivered, it’s essential to continue to leverage data insights and other trends to elevate and evolve the digital customer experience.

“…it’s essential to continue to leverage data insights…“

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION CAN BE CHALLENGINGPitfalls can occur when you don’t have all the pieces to manage the change and transform your business model, processes and people.

Incentives Resources Action PlanVision Anxiety?

Incentives Resources Action PlanSkills Confusion?

Resources Action PlanVision Skills Resistance?

Incentives Action PlanVision Skills Frustration?

Incentives ResourcesVision Skills False Starts?

Incentives Resources Action PlanVision Skills CHANGE

Reimagining the customer experience

WHAT ELSE DO WE NEED TO CONSIDER?

While technology is just one consideration when it comes to customer experience transformation, remember that your customer experience platforms must encompass all elements of technology across your organisation, not simply your website.

Just as it’s important to stress that customer experience is far more than a set of technology-based considerations (rather it’s the synthesis of people, processes and technology), it’s equally important to remember when looking at your customer experience platform that digital and customer experience is not just about your website. It is about the whole experience that traverses web, social and back-end systems such as CRM and ERP. It is about the convergence of all systems and technologies, infused with data insights, all tied together through integration.

NO PLATFORM IS AN ISLAND

“…CX platforms must encompass all elements of technology…“

Digital Marketing

Digital Commerce

Web Content Management

Data & AI

All back end systems

CRM ERP

Your Platform

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

ECM

While your customer experience focus needs to be outside-in, change flows from inside-out. It is a journey that needs to be leadership-led and embraced by everyone across your organisation.

Transforming the customer experience requires a mix of the right culture, systems, and processes, as well as vision and commitment from the entire organisation. Customer experience transformation is a business imperative that touches every facet of your organisation and, as such, requires input and ongoing impetus from all areas.

Ultimately, when considering customer experience transformation, we need to remember that the ‘whole’ is the sum of many parts and to think about the holistic and connected experience at all times.

WE NEED TO THINK ABOUT THE HOLISTIC AND CONNECTED EXPERIENCE

“CX transformation is a business imperative that touches every facet of your organisation…“

Public Experience

The Public

Buy Products / Services

Deliver Products / Services

Employee Experience

Your Company

Partner Experience

Your Partners / Suppliers

Pay for Products / Services

Customer Experience

Deliver Products / ServicesUser Experience

Deliver

Value

Use Products

/ Serv

ices

User Ex

perience

Customer

Experi

ence

Your Customer

Your Product / Service

MAY BECOME

Good isn’t good enough anymore. Organisations need to focus on going above and beyond good customer experience. They need to deliver emotional experiences that build trust, loyalty, and advocacy. And they need to deliver functional experience that solve problems and deliver efficiency. Few companies rise above core functionality to deliver exceptional experiences.

Organisations must build an intimate relationship with their audiences through meaningful and memorable interactions. They can then turn an explorer into a consumer, who evolves into an engaged member and, eventually, becomes an advocate.

A successful digital transformation requires a combination of vision, skills, incentives, resources, and an action plan. Missing any one of these vital components will result in confusion, resistance, anxiety, frustration, and false starts, all of which translate to wasted time and money.

YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO STAND STILL

According to Forrester, organisations that lead with CX are the ones that win. Forrester’s index of CX stock leaders7 shows that CX leaders outperform CX laggards on both stock price growth and total returns, with the price of the portfolio of top publicly-traded brands in the CX Index growing 32%, compared with 3% growth for the portfolios of lagging brands.

GOOD ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH ANYMORE.

Conclusion

“In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace,

not standing out is the same as being invisible.” – Seth Godin

What next?Talk to us today about how we can help you reimagine your customer experience transformation journey: cx@intergen.co.nz

Visit www.intergen.co.nz/cxreimagine for an ongoing series of customer experience transformation insights and stories from our customers and our people.

ABOUT US:

Our mission is to empower organisations to reimagine the experience, transforming how they engage and connect with their customers and people.

NOTES:

1 http://www.walkerinfo.com/customers2020/

2 https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/cmo-

collaborators-fill-the-gap-in-the-c-suite-to-drive-

business-growth-accenture-interactive-research-

finds.htm

3 https://www.superoffice.com/blog/customer-

experience-statistics/

4 https://www.internetretailer.com/2013/12/31/why-

omnichannel-strategy-matters

5 https://www.accenture.com/us-en

6 SAP Digital Transformation Executive Study

https://www.sap.com/dmc/exp/4-ways-leaders-

set-themselves-apart/index.html

7 https://go.forrester.com/blogs/does-cx-quality-

ww affect-stock-performance-yes-but/

With technology as the enabler and us as the digital transformation guide, we exist to help organisations to engage their customers, empower their people and enable the future, achieving tomorrow’s advantage, delivered today.