<div>As more and more consumers take to the digital world, companies are realising that traditional customer engagement models need to be drastically updated. Thanks to the internet, e-commerce and a global market, customers today are spoiled for choice and have a variety of options and channels to exercise their choice. Moreover, they have a platform in social media to engage with other consumers to share their experiences and reviews, and also to engage directly with companies about their likes and preferences in a public manner. If they are to stay competitive, companies have to acknowledge that customers are now centre-stage, and extremely savvy and well informed about their options and choices.</div><div> </div><div>Rising expectations from customers and the impact of social media on customers’ ability to broadcast good and bad experiences are the top two drivers for organizations’ focus on customer experience. This has served to propel customer engagement organisations within companies to the leadership table, where they are closely involved with the company’s strategic planning for the digital paradigm. </div><div> </div><div>The customer is now the most important stakeholder and the customer experience has become a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) and is measured using metrics like Net Promoter Score, Customer Effort Score is a clear indication that organisations place customer experience, loyalty and advocacy at the top of their agendas. </div><div> </div><div>Addressing this challenge requires a shift in approach the way an organization engages with the customer across different departments and business units in the company. Traditionally, large Fortune 500 companies have many silos that have formed over time, each with their own narrow single-dimensional view of the customer, system interactions based on their subset of data and tools. </div><div> </div><div>Organizations realize that this fundamental and sweeping transformation of older and established enterprises to make them customer-centric is critical if they are to compete against the nimble young companies born into the digital era, who approach customers in new, non-traditional ways leveraged by data. Forward-thinking and fleet-footed enterprises who have adopted the right customer experience spanning Sales, Service and Marketing Automation solutions are seeing gratifying progress in their race to the customer and to provide the best customer experience.</div><div> </div><div>Adopting modern customer experience strategies formulated for the digital world and the digital customer often means sweeping changes within the company. A venture of this complexity doesn’t succeed overnight, but the most successful companies are the ones who have done it in a relatively short time. </div><div> </div><div>A key factor to a successful transformation is the right technology and tool set that allows a company the ability to look at all aspects of a customer’s digital body language (online searches, social media, mobile activity) and marry this behavioural data to that customer’s transaction data and construct an accurate view of the customer’s identity and customer interactions with the systems. Cloud-based commerce, Service and marketing automation solutions are key to helping companies manage, combine and activate data from all these different channels in real time to provide the complete customer experience.</div><div> </div><div>Tips while designing a digital strategy:</div><div>•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Don’t Wait: Accelerate the planning and focus on executing customer experience programs – or risk falling behind </div><div>•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Know your Customers – or lose them: Map the customer journey. Select priority focus areas and identify and deploy the people, process, and technology changes that will deliver real improvements</div><div>•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Empower Your Customers and Organization: Foster a customer-centric culture that transcends internal silos. Develop and cultivate a knowledge foundation – supported by scalable IT systems – that provides customers with self-service options and frontline employees with easy access to a complete view of each customer relationship</div><div>•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Deliver a Seamless Experience: Offer multichannel choice, develop a single customer record, and ensure flexible workflows between departments</div><div>•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Listen and Communicate: Conduct timely, targeted customer surveys to gauge feedback; use personalized proactive outbound communication to deepen engagement </div><div>•<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Measure and Adapt: Implement flexible processes and systems both on premise and in the cloud to serve customers through their entire experience lifecycle. Communicate goals across the organization, make metrics visible, and reward achievement. Continually listen, measure, test, and adjust your approach in real time</div><div> </div><div>An increasing number of enterprise customers are able to deliver the level of real time service needed for digital customers by leveraging comprehensive data, content management and customer communication cloud platforms. These consumer experience applications enable companies to understand customers via their digital body language and anticipate their behaviour and communicate with them effectively and in real time using the most suitable channel.</div><div> </div><div>The number of customers moving to the digital world continues to increase exponentially. People and devices and sensors are getting connected at unprecedented rates. Business and commerce are moving online and companies who adapt to this new way of doing business and understand the importance of data-enabled customer identification and management are the ones who will thrive in the digital economy.</div><div> </div><div><strong>The author, Nitin Singhal is Senior Director, CX Solution, Oracle India.</strong></div><div> </div><div> </div>
