There is a very lovely article by Vala Afshar in Huffington Post on the current state, business impact, currency and value of customer experience.
What I liked about this article is that there are really some lovely perspectives on how companies should look at & evaluate customer experience.
Here are some of the things that I liked:
- Customer experience is ..."a sum total of conscious events and coordinated interactions...". I loved the point on conscious events - this is a brilliant point and the impact of making it happen is quite compelling, deep & important in an organization, as the understanding and level of consciousness needed by different stakeholders when they deal with customers, must be of a very high order. The difference is having it in everybody's DNA rather a broad brushstroke of policy & direction!
- The differentiation between company-centric values and customer-centric values is quite vivid and well articulated.
- To deliver authentic customer experience, the point made on infrastructure that must be flexible, scalable, adaptive and intelligent is key. Most often, rigid rules and inflexible tech investments make it hard for the transformation to happen. The need for point solutions that are best-in-class for each touch point but must have the ability to fuse together with other potential interaction experiences is something enough thought process is not given by most companies.
- The need to look at Internet of Things( IOT) in the context of customer experience is a very aspect that is most often missed. Imagine the number of digital apps and APIs that are becoming available or used by customers today. How one extracts information out of them and creates a reverse-feed for understanding and actions, will make a big difference to CX.
There is a need to take a holistic view and break down organization silos if companies want to make customer experience count.