Many current business models are being disrupted. Retailers that are just providing shelf space will soon be out of business. Amazon is continually disrupting existing business models by combining a customer experience based on utility, with convenience at the center of their strategy.

The multi-channel buying habits of consumers demanding a seamless experience pose complex challenges businesses.

Businesses that are thriving have figured out ways to design experiences that attract and retain customers by offering a personal experience that is relevant and personal. Sometimes entirely new business models are required, other times altering the existing model is all that is required.

Creating new products is a daunting task. One study has identified what they term a “decay curve”. According to this study, it takes over fifty ideas to create a new product. By ideas they mean an idea that has been screened, analyzed, developed, tested and marketed.

The Customer Experience Challenge

The customer landscape is rapidly changing, it’s being transformed by a confluence of technology, the internet, and new consumer social behaviors. Digital transformations in unrelated industries play a role in shaping consumer expectations in all industries. For example, when Starbuck’s created their mobile app that enabled increasingly elaborate purchasing interactions, other industries began to look for mobile solutions.

The availability of smart devices provided unprecedented mobile computing power for consumers. As the adoption rate of these devices has soared, so have expectations for a personal, seamless mobile experience.

In the new consumer landscape disruption isn’t a destination or an event, it’s a journey. Companies that want to survive recognize that the reality of the new competitive ecosystem requires new rules of engagement. This shift in mindset starts at the top, it’s a critical success factor.

Consider some of these statistics

According to McKinsey over half of all customer interactions happen during a multi-channel journey.

Today’s internet consumers want their online questions to be addressed promptly; 42% expect a response within one hour.  Source Gigya

45% of consumers prefer a cross-channel combination of online, mobile, and in-store shopping. Source Gigya

68% of consumers agree that shopping today is less about brands or products themselves and more about what they are feeling and needing. Source Gigya

74% of modern consumers rely on social networks to guide purchase decisions. Source Gigya

86% of buyers will pay more for a better customer experience, but only 1% of customers feel that vendors consistently meet their expectations. Source CEI.

Various studies detail levels of customer frustration with the friction they encounter in many organizations. Having to wait on hold for lengthy periods of time, repeat the same information to multiple employees across multiple channels, and failing to get their questions answered in a timely fashion are just a few examples of friction.

The Customer Experience Solution

McKinsey’s research dispels the traditional buying funnel. In the new landscape, consumers operate differently. The new buying process is more like a journey than a linear trek through buying stages. To be relevant firms must recognize that their customer’s experience journeys vary depending on the product or service they are offering. These journeys are continually evolving with the rapid pace of digital innovation.

A few journey examples might be:

• Onboarding
• Making a payment
• Resolving a customer service issue
• Billing
• Reordering
• Checking product or service availability

Brands that are closing the customer experience gap are finding ways to remove friction by transforming the customer experience from moments to journeys. Even more critical, is evaluating the efficacy and experience of each journey from the customer’s perspective.

Most companies are finding ways to get their employees in close proximity to their customers so they can observe and interact with customers to gain an empathetic perspective. In an ecosystem, solutions may be found outside your existing buying process.

Customers expect a seamless multi-channel experience that gives them access whenever wherever and however they choose to connect. When in the midst of a journey, they expect to continue with the process from their last contact point.

50% of all customer interactions happen during a multi-event, multi-channel journey.

Embracing the Customer Experience Challenge.

Removing friction requires agility, collaboration, engaged stakeholders and a culture that nurtures continuous learning and an accurate understanding of what matters most to the consumer. Consumers and brands now function in a world of constant innovation; all are subjected to a barrage of multi-channel noise each and every day.

Here are five factors that can contribute to a satisfying and differentiating customer experience.

Culture

An innovative culture is the fertile soil of new ideas and innovation. It creates the space where the mission, vision, and values of the firm align with the behaviors of the employees. At its best, it’s a community of all stakeholders working toward a common goal.

Are you part of creating a culture that values the customer experience? When values are aligned employees are motivated to serve the customer and each other. Is everyone able to articulate the mission and values?  Are new employees screened for behavioral alignment with the values of the organization?

Listening

Feedback is the fuel of innovation. Giving and receiving feedback is a skill that must be developed and honed. Our biology works against us. The brain doesn’t always appreciate feedback, especially the developmental kind.

The folks at IDEO, a design thinking firm, are careful about language. Because they must provide a lot of feedback they have adopted language that encourages candid feedback. When critiquing they use two types of statements:

“ I like …….”

“I wish….”

I like is obvious, I wish is a way to communicate improvement feedback without any judgmental baggage. Personally, I like these statements and I’ve found them quite useful.

Social media has created the opportunity for a dialogue with customers and associates. Emerging tools offer marketers a means by which they can monitor and even enter conversations. However, it’s important to understand the appropriate etiquette to avoid missteps and maximize the benefit.

Asking customers, prospects, and employees open-ended questions is a very useful practice. We are often blinded by our own knowledge and assumptions. Allowing, even encouraging candid feedback is a helpful way to identify opportunities and challenges.

Good listening practices can serve as an early warning detection system allowing companies to respond before potential problems become serious ones.

Empowering

Consumers are frustrated by an inability to get:

• answers to their questions
• resolution to their problems

According to an American Express survey, 78% of consumers have bailed on a transaction or not made the intended purchase because of a poor service experience.

More importantly, when companies engage and respond to customer service requests over social media, those customers spend 20% to 40% more money with the company than other customers do.

Many companies spend a great deal of time and effort defining the customer’s journey. They realize that designing an engaging customer experience can offer many benefits and ultimately have a positive impact on the bottom line.

Try asking your associates a few open-ended questions about their experience with each other, customers, supplies. Ask them about suggestions for improving their lives.

Speed

Customers expect quick answers and solutions; this is essential if you are committed to listening socially. Even if you aren’t committed to social listening customers are increasingly presuming you will be listening or they’ll switch to a competitor.

Associates need the tools, training, and trust to quickly handle and resolve customer questions and complaints without transferring consumers from one department to the other. Ask frontline stakeholders to identify gaps and barriers that create friction and slow down responses. Are these gaps created internally? Externally? Experiment with design changes that offer faster solutions. In some cases, self-service options may be an effective alternative.

Speed is often relative, so it’s important to appropriately set and manage expectations. Make use of the feedback loop to develop an appropriate understanding of how your customer defines speed.

Agility

If companies are going to transform the customer experience from moments to journeys, then they’ll have to be willing to continuously learn and make adjustments. This is a new paradigm for many because it may feel more like a laboratory than a business. Successful companies will always be innovating, trying new ideas and methods, keeping what works and dropping what doesn’t.

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Today’s rapid pace of disruptive change is shaping customer expectations and, therefore, Customer Experience (CX) in ways that threaten to leave less agile brands behind.

What’s more, customers are judging brands against their most recent stellar customer experience. Your CX must be on par or your business future could be in question.

“Customer Experience is at the top of every business’ priority list. It concerns the CEO to the CMO and even the CIO. Emerging technology, changing consumer needs and effective use of customer data are critical elements to ensuring your Customer Experience Strategy is as powerful as possible in a competitive and digital landscape.”

In this article, we’ll look Top disruptions that have contributed to and are shaping Customer Experience and Customer Experience strategies today.

The increased pace of change.

Technological advances are unfolding at a vastly accelerated pace and it seems that not a day goes by without the next groundbreaking development emerging. What was groundbreaking yesterday is yesterday’s news today – I am being facetious but the reality is that the half-life of technology seems to shrink every year.

The challenge in all this from a Customer Experience perspective is to identify what is useful, relevant and desirable. The big wins being realized from this disruption happen when technology is humanized and made relevant to real people.

Abundance of customer data.

These days, brands are collecting vast amounts of data about customers, their interactions, buying preferences and behaviors, and more. Essentially, data can be collected in three ways:

• By asking customers for it directly (via profiles and preferences).
• By indirectly tracking customers (via interaction analytics).
• By connecting other data sources to our own (via third-party data providers).

Data collection on this scale, and the manipulation of the data collected represents a huge opportunity for the savvy disruptors to gain a competitive advantage and secure big wins over the competition.

Bear in mind, however, that in order to get the most from big data’s potential, it’s necessary to “translate” the information into actionable strategies that companies can use to grow sales, increase profitability and enhance Customer Experience. “Actionable” is key. If your translation is too complicated or doesn’t clearly demonstrate value, there’s a real danger it will be ignored.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)

Most applications of AI for business lie in the AI subset of machine learning. Programmers have designed clever algorithms that can “learn” from previous results and shape outputs based on that accumulated knowledge. These capabilities are being leveraged today to detect patterns in customer data, behavior and needs which, in turn, enable enhanced customer experiences through hyper-personalization and responsive customer service.

However, AI still has a long way to go and a massive amount of disruption is still lurking somewhere down the road. If you consider machine learning as functioning on a single layer between input and output, deep learning (the future) will function across complicated cross-functional networks, multiplying its output capabilities exponentially.

Video.

While you might consider video as being yesterday’s disruptor, it deserves a special mention because not only has it turned the way we consume information on its head, there are serious downsides to not engaging with video.

A good example is how video relates to your business website – if you’re looking to get found in organic search that is. One of the metrics Google uses to determine the relevance of your website or web page is “dwell time”, which is how long a user spends on page. Video greatly enhances this metric.

Brands today can leverage video in old and new ways to enhance customer experience – old, but still good, as in step-by-step instructions on how to use your product or new as in a virtual reality video that allows you to test drive a car when you can’t go to a dealership.

The seamless omni-channel experience.

Regardless of whether you use Salesforce to manage customer support, SAP to manage orders and Riversand (Product Information Management or PIM software) to manage product information, your customers expect a seamless and unified customer experience that doesn’t require them to hop across systems/applications to do what they need to do. This implies integration across your enterprise.

This holds true regardless of how your customers choose to interact with your brand, be it via the web, a mobile device, social media, IVR, a call center, chat or any other available channel. A seamless omni-channel experience, with a strong and relevant brand presence at each stage of your customer’s journey, is key to delivering a superior customer experience, encouraging brand loyalty and maximizing customer satisfaction.

Seamless CX Spells Opportunity For Your Business.

Intelligent use of customer data and integrated digital experience platforms represent a serious opportunity for savvy businesses to outperform their competitors. A seamless omnichannel experience, with a strong and relevant brand presence at each stage of your customer’s journey, with the right message and functionality, delivers a superior and compelling CX that builds trust and relationships.

The mantra of modern enterprise is “disrupt to deliver more value” — use it to your advantage for CX.

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HR heads who are not aligning themselves to CX strategies would definitely fail.

When organizations don’t embed CX into key HR processes like hiring, training, and rewards and recognition, they miss a prime opportunity to foster an environment that enables employee CX success.

While it may seem counterintuitive, any organization that wants to deliver a great customer experience shouldn’t focus on its customers first, but rather on its employees. Engaged employees are valuable assets, and they trigger a virtuous cycle that drives great customer experiences, leading to more loyal customers and stronger financial results.

Yet despite research showing that more than 70 percent of companies have an ongoing commitment to significant employee engagement efforts, the level of employee engagement inside companies did not change between 2017 and 2018. One of the reasons companies struggle to engage employees is that their HR department does not participate enough in these efforts. In fact, when we work with large organizations, we often find that the HR groups haven’t fully embraced their role in either the company’s customer experience or employee engagement efforts, and that disconnect matters! When an HR group is significantly involved in an organization’s CX efforts with employees, the company is four times more likely to deliver a customer experience that is significantly above average in its industry.

For companies that want to deliver a great customer experience, employee engagement is not optional.

• Customer centricity is getting more attention. HR professionals not only indicated an increase in the belief that their companies need to become more customer-centric; they also reported higher levels of participation in this change. The percentage of HR professionals who responded that they are significantly helping their organizations become more customer-centric doubled over the past four years from 15 to 31 percent.
• HR is finding niches for CX collaboration. Six out of 10 HR respondents felt they were at least considerably involved in their company’s CX efforts, with HR leading the work in adjusting hiring and recruiting practices. When it comes to HR and CX teams working together, they are most successful in incorporating CX into training and onboarding and developing measurements and incentives to reinforce good customer-centric behaviors.
• HR has more time and wants more CX outreach. When it comes to the obstacles that impede HR professionals’ ability to help their companies become more customer-centric, the obstacle that dropped the most the last four years is HR professionals not having enough time. The only obstacle that increased over the last four years, coming in as the second most common obstacle, is that the CX organization has not engaged HR.

Finding Ways for HR and CX to Work Together

There are many opportunities for HR and CX to work together, especially in the existing processes and activities that the HR organization manages for the company. Here are a few specific opportunities for CX/HR collaboration:

• Hiring and onboarding. CX and HR professionals can collaborate on ways to screen individuals for the attitudes and abilities needed to deliver on the company’s CX vision.
• Training and development. CX subject matter expertise and instructional design skills are often divided between the two departments. CX pros can work shoulder-to-shoulder with HR to contribute the required knowledge to design and deliver training to help employees become more customer-centric.
• Performance management. Many organizations put a lot of energy into defining what they want to accomplish, but don’t adequately define how employees need to act in order to achieve those objectives. CX and HR can work together to ensure that employee goal setting and evaluation processes include role-specific expectations or measures of success that connect employees’ efforts to the CX strategy.
• Rewards and recognition. When embarking on CX change, it’s important for the company to examine how it recognizes and rewards employees. CX and HR teams can make sure the desired employee behaviors are reinforced with the appropriate formal reward programs, peer-to-peer recognition opportunities, and team celebrations.

The bottom line is that unengaged employees don’t create engaged customers. Now is the time for the CX and HR teams to come together to engage employees in the company’s customer experience efforts.

The global outsourcing industry had experienced sustained revenue growth between the years of 2000 to 2012, followed by a disruption in the years 2012-2015. At present it is experiencing a growth surge. The latest IDC report by GII predicts that the Global Outsourcing Market is expected to reach US $202.6 billion in 2016 with a five-year CAGR of 5.3%. In addition, the outlook towards BPO has changed with BPO now being considered as a transformational tool. Businesses are now expecting it to add more value beyond cost reductions. Outsourcing facilitates broadening of market base, enhancing business-customer relationships, provides new answers to complex and changing questions and pushes business process transformation.

It has becomes important for companies to ensure that they make their choice of a BPO partner with care and consideration, given that the decision to outsource and the accompanying adjustments and changes that come with it can be daunting. Managing a relationship with the wrong BPO provider can be disastrous. Knowledge of the essential traits that contribute to the performance of a great BPO partner would come in handy in making the final decision.

9 Essential Attributes of a Successful BPO Partnership

Here are nine essential attributes that distinguishes a top performing BPO partner from the rest leading to a highly successful BPO partnership. An effective BPO partner:

Inculcates a Partnership-based approach

A survey conducted by the Everest Group found that adopting a partnership-based approach towards BPO governance is a best-in-class BPO practice. This approach involves both parties taking a collaborative approach to governance with the BPO provider playing the role of a strategic partner and both parties adopting a flexible attitude towards business objectives as the relationship matures. Both parties take a fair approach towards conflict resolution. It would also require a shared approach towards governance, operation, management and organizational structures.

Emphasizes on Conferring Value beyond Cost Reduction

An ideal BPO partner should not restrict itself to fulfilling the essentials but must think in terms of delivering value far beyond the minimum. A high performing BPO provider should think of how their service can help their client far beyond the limitations; how they can contribute in terms of improving collaboration and innovation and should have specific ideas on their contribution as well as strategies and ideas with respect to the future. Today’s BPO providers are expected to go above and beyond the SLAs where possible, keeping the company goals and vision in mind. In a survey of businesses, 2/3rd respondents definitely expressed a requirement for BPO partnerships to be value-based and not just simply about reducing costs. A BPO partner should address both tangible as well as intangible objectives.

Leverages Latest Technology for Business Process Transformation

A high performing BPO partner customizes their processes using technology to multiply value. Cloud computing, analytics, social media, automation are among the latest technologies employed that differentiate the top BPO provider from the average as it helps them to innovate and confer advantage. A survey conducted by Everest Group showed that 56% percent of high performing businesses said gaining access to technology in a BPO partnership was important, while only 27 percent of typical performers agreed.

Possesses Capabilities that Assure Results

A suitable BPO provider would possess the necessary wherewithal including processes and technology that can be used to re-engineer your processes to help achieve your goals within the specified time limit. It would be utilizing performance metrics that help in monitoring the performance of the outsourced processes as well as how it impacts the overall performance of the company

Possesses Comprehensive Industry Domain Expertise Enriched by Analytics

Companies must carry out thorough research into the capabilities of the potential BPO partner. Some of the necessary attributes that the BPO provider must possess include the possession of in-depth knowledge of industry verticals and best practices. The BPO partner must display considerable expertise and experience in the desired industry line. They should have worked with other businesses and organizations in your industry and so should be well aware of industry specific context, terms, concepts, facts and trends that are necessary for ensuring that exact and precise BPO services are provided.

Offers the Right Outsourcing Solutions in the Right Location

As BPO options expand and outsourcing providers expand their footprint world -wide, choosing the right location for outsourcing becomes critical for the success of business strategies. Keeping the number of available options in mind (nearshoring, offshoring, onshoring), companies must identify the BPO partner with global service delivery centers that is best suited for translation of their BPO goals. Different businesses benefit from different kind of outsourcing models. An experienced BPO partner would provide you with the best possible solutions for your BPO requirements, ensuring that your process is executed in in a location that is conveniently located to your business, not affected relatively by prevailing global forces such as wars and conflicts and equipped with disaster recovery options.

Promotes Business Adaptability by Offering Scalability

Keeping the uncertain and dynamic global economic and business conditions in context, an effective BPO partner would have options for scalability incorporated as part of its outsourcing mandate. They would be able to scale up or down the operations of the project in accordance with the requirements. The quality of a BPO partner can be evaluated from the way they are able to modulate a project in response to changing requirements as well as opening up in new locations, where required. They should be able to align their schedule along with yours.

Comprehensively Invests in Human Talent

A high performance BPO partner will invest in its human resources as the success of any BPO enterprise is dependent on the quality of the staff. High performing staff will ensure that a BPO project ranks high on all KPIs. Surveys show that most companies realize that the success of BPO initiatives hinges upon the investment in manpower. 75% of top business performers credit the success of their BPO activities to the quality of the provider’s BPO people expertise. Only 38% of average business performers realize the value of its human resources.

Complies With International Industry Specific Process Quality And Data Security Standards

The right BPO partner should have processes and procedures in place that are in alignment with standard industry regulations concerning quality management, data quality and security. Data security has become a serious issue worldwide with many high profile security breaches having occurred in recent times. Confidentiality and data protection remains a vital issue of concern for companies intending to outsource. A reliable BPO partner would address these issues by ensuring that they possess accreditations from top industry specific regulators which are a measure of their commitment to data security, confidentiality, protection of healthcare information, and other industry-specific requirements.

Provides Business Continuity Planning And Disaster Recovery Options

A reliable BPO service provider would possess contingency plans to ensure business continuity in the case of emergencies and disasters. The Business Continuity Planning options would include measures to minimize service disruption and enable resumption of normal operations as well as facilitating shifting of services. Embarking on an outsourcing journey requires enormous amount of research and planning before settling on the right kind of BPO partner that helps businesses achieve their mission-critical goals. Inserting the above points in their BPO partner selection checklist would help businesses make more effective and accurate decisions regarding the choice of a suitable BPO partner. The careful and well-researched choice of an efficient and experienced Back Office Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services provider would help businesses achieve their goals in a comprehensive way.

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As brands seek to remain relevant and deliver value to their customers in the digital age, customer engagement has become a focal point on the agenda. Marketers now know that engaged customers buy more, spread more word of mouth, and are more satisfied and loyal.

Highly engaged customers gain more value from your core offering and will devote their own time and effort to creating value on behalf of your brand. Brands that invest in a well-thought-out customer engagement program are seeing meaningful business results through co-designed products or services, user-generated content, grassroots publicity, and broad brand reach.

To get to these kinds of results, you need a well-designed and managed engagement strategy—not just a collection of ad-hoc tactics.

In our experience working with clients, we have identified five key steps to developing an effective customer engagement program:

1. Align The Organization
   The strongest customer engagement programs don’t rely only on individual marketing touch points. They leverage the entire customer experience as a continuum for customers to deepen their relationship with the brand.

This “continuum of engagement” will require a cross-functional team across the company—marketing, product, customer service, etc.—to develop and execute a seamless customer engagement program regardless of channel or stage in the customer life cycle.

Executive support is critical at the early stages—helping secure resources, selecting members of the cross-functional team, and establishing a chain of command. An effective practice when selecting program sponsors is to find an executive champion outside of marketing who will co-sponsor the initiative along with the CMO.

Furthermore, a critical step in this phase is to define what “engagement” means for your brand.

2. Design Your Strategy
   After gaining executive support and buy-in from key teams, you’ll want to develop an overarching strategy for your customer engagement program. Not only should this strategy be aligned to key organizational objectives, it should provide a guide for the relationship your brand wants with customers. It should outline the value your customers will get from engaging with you, identify your business goals for the program, establish measures of success, and present a plan for tapping customers’ key motivations to engage.

In this phase, you’ll hypothesize a “theory of engagement” for your program: which types of engagement activities deliver the most results and which emotions these activities should tap into to drive customer behavior. This ideation process is a valuable part of aligning the team around the objectives of the engagement program. You should validate and refine your hypotheses using data, insights, and driver modeling.

The outcome of the strategy phase will be a customer engagement ladder that depicts a customer’s journey toward high levels of engagement with your brand. Your ladder should be designed to realize increasing value for your customers. A well-designed engagement ladder becomes the architecture that supports tactics and campaigns.

3. Develop Tactics
   A customer engagement program needs to operate seamlessly across channels. To maximize value, it should be consistent and synced, regardless of where a customer engages. Since today’s customer expects always-on, personalized, and unified experiences from brands, it’s critical to offer the right engagement opportunities—tailored to each customer—across all channels: mobile, web, social, and physical.

Of particular importance, mobile is one of the most powerful platforms available to brands. Even very simple mobile engagement produces strong impacts on both web and physical engagement, as well as on sales. In addition, depending on your industry or business, social media offers multiple opportunities to facilitate and encourage customer engagement.

Online and traditional advertising, loyalty programs, brick and mortar locations, and customer service also offer engagement opportunities. They should be optimized to put customers on the engagement path and help them move up the ladder over time. These programs can act as feedback loops to help route customers back onto the engagement ladder over and over, regardless of where they interact with the brand.

4. Pilot And Scale
   When preparing to introduce new components of an engagement program, build in the discipline to filter ideas and test them with customers to prove their value. Testing techniques that have been effective for our clients include agile pilots, A/B testing, and cohort analysis.

Once a new program has been validated and optimized through piloting, it’s time to scale. Scale requires putting the right processes and systems in place to offer and manage each new program for the broader market.

5. Measure And Manage
   The measurement strategy should provide leaders and teams the information needed to make smart business decisions and optimize the engagement program. When determining what to measure, it’s important to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter most and find ways to streamline information so the critical insights come clearly to the surface in actionable ways.

A challenging but valuable exercise is to develop a customer engagement score—combining multiple behavioral measures of engagement into one KPI. Increases in this score can be linked to improved sales and other business results, helping quantify the ROI and value of your engagement program. Furthermore, customer engagement scores can also contribute to predictive customer lifetime value models.

Other sophisticated methods of customer engagement measurement can produce what we call “magic numbers:” flags that call out critical behaviors requiring action, such as flags that indicate “at risk” customers who are likely to churn and need reactivation or “ready to advocate” individuals who should be recruited into advocacy programs or provided with special referral offers.

Customers today decide when and how to interact with brands or whether to ignore a brand entirely. A customer engagement program is essential to capture and retain customers—not just their dollars, but also their respect, affinity, excitement, and willingness to spread word of mouth.

Now is the time to think through this process and deepen your relationship with customers—and in return your brand will increase satisfaction, loyalty, reach, and sales.

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