Customers - Not just the king but the entire kingdom!

What does the customer want? This question is driving organizations today. In this technology centric world, the customer is empowered with strong opinions about what they know and tools to make their opinions heard. Brands that are successful today have managed to create experiences that satisfy the customers' at every stage of their journey leading to high brand equity and loyalty. Data is present in abundance, but the challenge is how to "connect" the voluminous data to the expectations of the customers to understand what they really want.

A connected enterprise has to conquer three areas - customer, the marketplace and the organization itself. Customers today have access to abundant information and options to choose from and therefore they demand a personalized and engaging experience. This article cites statistics that show 9 out of 10 customers purchase from a competitor following a bad customer experience.

The marketplace in recent years had been cluttered with a plethora of marketing options and tools for campaigns, content, analytics, social media etc. The key challenge here is to filter the signal from all the noise. In terms of the organization, it is essential that CXM initiatives do not remain restricted to specific divisions within the organization and that organizations opt for an enterprise-wide approach.

We know customer loyalty is of supreme importance for any organization. Loyalty is an outcome of building an emotional connect or delivering perfect products or services. The emotional aspect here is of such high significance that CEM could actually be re-christened as Customer Emotion Management.

If you look at a customer's journey, it consists of three broad phases - Acquire, Retain and Support.

Customers - Not just the king but the entire kingdom!

The Acquire phase is driven by Marketing, the Retain handled by the Sales team and the Support by the Customer Service. As these functions are individual entities, it is crucial for enterprises to integrate them so customers have a seamless journey. This "Connected Intelligence" can help organizations handle the growth of customer expectations by building - Context and Relevancy.

"Connected Customer" must be handled in sync with "Connected Intelligence" and as customers change their channels and devices, they must get seamless connectivity from brand. Also, companies need to understand the customer profile and use that to offer an integrated customer experience for a "Connected Experience".

It is important to understand that today there are no billion dollar ideas. The key lies in effective implementation through engagement i.e. moving closer to the customer with interactions that occur before the product/service is consumed and enrichment - managing structured and unstructured content. This content management can be done by collecting data, analyzing it to form customer segments and applying insights.

Technology can play a big role in helping companies better understand customers and fulfill their requirements. The future will belong to those who adapt to these trends and begin their transformation of being connected.

About the Author

Unnikrishnan Sukumaran (Unni) heads the Customer Experience Practice at CES in Wipro Limited. His charter includes defining and executing strategic initiatives differentiating the various consumer touch points in their end to end journey from discovery to decision making to service. His practice provides compelling proposition at the intersection point of business and technology delivering customer engagement and experience. Unni has close to two decades of experience in this space.

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