Most organisations today understand the importance of giving their customers the best possible experience.
By Greg Gatherer, account manager at Liferay Africa
They also understand that a large part of doing so means reaching them with the right message, at the right time, on the right channel. But in a world where customers are on a wide variety of channels at different times, meeting them where they are can be tricky.
This is because the consumer’s buying journey is no longer a straight line. It now involves multiple lane changes as the buyer navigates between platforms such as company websites, apps, search engines, and social media platforms, as well as communication channels such as email, MMS, instant messaging, and print. A 3-D consumer is a consumer who is in complete control of their own journey, effortlessly migrating across various devices such as mobile, desktop, and IoT.
Customers expect businesses to meet them where they are, and in order to do so, businesses must be present in all digital dimensions. This is true for organisations operating in both the business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C) sectors. Buyer behaviours in the B2B sector have been influenced by consumer experiences in the B2C sector.
There are a few fundamentals you can put in place to ensure that you provide the kind of 3D customer experience that will set your organisation apart from its competitors.
Understanding the 3D customer experience
But what does the 3D customer experience actually entail and how does this differ from the 3D connected customer? 3D customer experience necessitates bringing together the three Ds of Data, Design, and Deliver.
When it comes to the first of those Ds, most organisations understand that data is critical. But in a world where 2,5-quintillion bytes of data are produced by humans every day, it’s important to be able to filter out the data that will give your organisation usable insights.
Done correctly, it can tell you things like which channels an individual customer prefers, what times of the day they’re most likely to interact with your organisation, and what kind of transactions they engage in when they do.
Using these insights, you can not only design changes to your products and services but to every single customer touchpoint, including communications, marketing, and billing. Remember, every department within an organisation contributes to the overall customer experience and the insights gained from customer data can be used to make tweaks and improvements at every level.
Finally, you can deliver these improvements to the customer, understanding that they need to complement each other and work together if your organisation is to provide the kind of experience that today’s customer expects. If you’ve done things properly, you should end up providing experiences optimised for each individual customer across online and offline channels.
It’s also important to point out that this should be an ongoing process that is constantly refined, in order to ensure that you’re always providing the best experience possible.
Technology helps
Fortunately, technology can go a long way when it comes to ensuring that you have the levels of orchestration needed to provide that kind of experience. This is especially true when it comes to the digital experiences which make up so much of today’s overall customer experience.
A digital experience platform (DXP), for example, can either be a single piece of software or a suite of products and can provide the architecture necessary for organisations to digitise their business operations, deliver connected customer experiences, and gather actionable customer insights.
Especially critical to their role in providing great customer experiences is the ability for DXPs to bring together insights from a range of sources and help break down the departmental silos within organisations.
A good DXP will work within your organisation’s existing processes and technologies to scale a solution customised to your specific business needs. Additionally, rather than replacing any technologies you’re using, it should optimise the full range of technologies available to you.
An absolute imperative
Today, customer experience is the single most important differentiator between organisations. The best way to make it the focus of your organisation is to take a 3D approach, aided by the right technologies, and constantly refine it.