Developing a satisfying customer experience is no longer a cool ‘element or added advantage; it is a must-have component. It’s Integral to a company’s goal. But nowadays, customers have more options than ever before.
Major market players like Amazon, Apple, and Google have hit the markets with disruptions that satisfy customer expectations. By sensing their pulse, they have come with new techs and gadgets. As a result, brands that provide poor experiences spend more by losing their customers’ loyalty. Customers that leave companies due to poor experiences have a harmful influence on customer retention rates and bottom lines.
Marketers must ensure that their brand is engaging, offers good product quality, and is responsive and individualized to earn consumer loyalty. Businesses that quickly adjust to bridge the customer experience gap by adopting new technology, agility in generating customer experiences, and appropriate business strategies will win and thrive in this cutthroat, competitive environment.
In this blog, let’s examine what customers demand and expect from a brand, the obstacles businesses have in meeting these expectations, and also how companies may utilize technology as an ally to overcome these challenges and exceed customers’ expectations.
Data-driven Customer Experience from B2C and B2B to B2E
“Businesses DO NOT EXIST TO MAKE MONEY,” says Simon Sinek in this brief, thought-provoking video interview. I agree with him. What is the goal of our business? Is it to make money or provide excellent products and services that benefit others?
Money is necessary for a business to function, but it should not be its primary goal. So, the goal is the starting point that directs us in the right way to think like the consumer and work backwards.
In B2C, we consider the consumer. If we’re talking about B2B, we’re talking about B2B2C. Every one of us is a consumer. I specialize in business-to-business (B2B) transactions (business to everyone).
B2B and B2C customer experience methods are extremely similar. It all boils down to trust and the right relationship and providing value. But do we truly offer the best value at the best time?
Let’s take a step back and look at some of the world’s most valuable companies: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. What makes them so massive? With its access to users and understanding of users, Facebook presents the clearest answer. So it comes down to data.
A great customer experience is defined by providing the appropriate value at the right time. However, if you operate on a one-to-many rather than a one-to-one basis, fail to listen to your consumers, and fail to harness the correct data, your CX will be ineffective.
Customer Expectations: A difficult nut to Crack with the Right Tools.
What a bad customer experience is:
- A craze or a trend
- A digital or social event
- An additional benefit for customers
- It is only about marketing items and services.
Businesses understand how critical it is to meet their customers’ expectations. But, as a result, in their eagerness to create the perfect customer experience, they fail to accurately appreciate the difference between producing customer experiences and satisfying consumer expectations.
This results in the development of numerous techniques to evaluate client expectations. A/B testing such tactics to uncover client expectations is a legitimate go-to method for measuring efficacy and conversion. However, the same cannot be stated for assumptions-based ways.
Business Obstacles and How to Overcome Them
Data is imprisoned in obsolete, disconnected systems, the first challenge.
The customer experience is like a galaxy, expanding by the minute and extending to various touchpoints. However, it is not a single point in space; rather, it is a complicated web, similar to neural networks, that may effortlessly transfer information to carry out remedial operations.
Consider yourself standing in a desert with a parched throat and on the edge of passing out from thirst. You can see a water fountain from a distance, but you cannot reach it no matter how hard you try.
Similarly, obsolete systems prevent firms from using data to bridge the customer gap due to a lack of agility, leading to a random mess.
Solution: Make use of your IT teams.
The preceding scenario exemplifies what happens when old systems are used. Businesses frequently aim to integrate technology with their existing setup to better use data. Of course, such add-ons provide some benefits but complicate the system’s procedure. Moreover, Add-ons, mostly dependent on human updates and maintenance, incur additional expenditures for organizations. Unless and until firms upgrade their plans from the ground up, each further effort is a cost and effort burden.
In this digital age, the function of IT is rapidly changing. As a result, the digital maturity of your firm has a significant impact on the customer experience. Modernization ensures a smooth shift from diverse, siloed systems to a future-ready, API-first architecture that allows for easier and faster interfaces.
Modernizing your system necessitates substantial investment and work. As a result, organizations must enlist the help of their CIOs, CTOs, and IT teams. They can together discover which digital features are at the heart of your organization and collaborate to develop strategies centred on such digital assets. It is worth noting that the ROI from digital transformation is visible after a specific amount of time. Businesses can calculate ROI by considering productivity impact, time-to-market, ease of adoption, etc.
Challenge 2: The wrong path – Measuring client satisfaction through surveys rather than data
In general, surveys are a reliable tool for gathering client information. However, from the standpoint of a marketing tool, the same cannot be said. Surveys can only provide a rough estimate of the quality of your customer service. The McKinsey 2020 paper identifies four fundamental problems in survey-based systems.
Join the Open Source Community: Diversify the egg placement to transform data into insights.
As previously stated, data is the new oil. With the ability to generate, combine, and analyze data, great consumer experiences may be created. According to the Acquia survey, “an incredible 88 percent of marketers intend to take an open-source approach to their CX platform.” And rightly so, because embracing open-source software simplifies integrations and allows marketers to enjoy the best of both (or more) worlds. Furthermore, it will enable you to learn and grow from someone else’s technological trial and error because open-source platforms allow everyone to leverage such expertise.
Challenge 3: The Conundrum of Privacy
Marketers are concerned about the prevalence of data privacy legislation in various countries. This widens the gap for creating an extraordinary customer experience and prohibits marketers from accurately evaluating client expectations.
The Acquia report explains why this gap exists. ‘When asked how marketers believe consumers feel about exchanging personal information in exchange for a better experience, 81% of marketers replied ‘comfortable,’ according to the report. On the other hand, only 11% of customers reported being very comfortable providing their data, and 79% of consumers believe firms should not use their data to promote to them.’ This clearly shows that marketers and consumers have very different perspectives on how brands obtain and use customer data.
The Solution: to the Privacy Paradox
Coming up with a solution is a difficult but not impossible task. There are two measures to do to address this. To begin, you must grasp the applicable jurisdiction or laws. You also need technologies that can connect data points and provide meaningful insights. For the first phase, your organization may require the aid and counsel of a legal professional.
Second, it is mostly about contacting clients to get the appropriate data set. Use tools from different providers to discover what works best for churning out the data you require, rather than relying on a comprehensive suite of services from a single provider.
Technology + Data + People = Connected Experiences
Providing customer-satisfying experiences is not a novel concept. What counts is acing it to make it valuable for today and tomorrow. As a result, being future-ready is a requirement for your company. The idea here is to build and integrate systems that can welcome digital disruptions and evolve into a solution that can suit client needs.
To navigate this maze of options more quickly and easily, you’ll need a service provider who understands what to expect from your platform.