<p>"Can you order crayons for me?" asked my 6 year old son, pushing my phone to me. The simple request reminded me of the technological changes that are redrawing customer experience in the past couple of years.<br><br>Rapid connectivity and fast-paced mobile penetration have impacted almost all facets of our everyday life. According to TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) data, in April 2015, there were 869.93 active wireless and 100.76 broadband subscribers (85.23M - Wireless, 15.52M - Wired) in India, with the wireless broadband user base growing at an impressive 1.86% per month. The direct impact of this ubiquitous connectivity is universalization of data and social connections. Information is readily available, mostly free (Wikipedia has 4.9M articles in English) and social media has become inseparable from life for most of the urban world. (Facebook recently reported 1B worldwide logins a day).<br><br>This phenomenal evolution of Internet and mobile ecosystem has transformed the way customers of today interact with service providers and customers' expectations are always on the mount. Customers are more informed, more empowered, more connected and their voices can be heard like never before. A good product or service is "as expected" but the slightest of disappointments can be beamed to the whole world, in minutes. Hence, along with distinguished products and services, superlative customer experience is fast becoming the prime differentiating factor in customer loyalty.<br><br>In order to strengthen customer loyalty, companies need to relentlessly focus on the following critical areas:<br>1) Design a digital strategy with focus on Mobile First Experience: Customers of today want to interact with companies whenever they want and through their channel of choice. With mobile devices fast becoming the default choice of customers, it is imperative for companies to design the experience for a 5 inch screen first and provide a 24/7 capability to interact though digital channels.<br>2) Provide Simple, Smart and Connected Experience:<br>a. Simple - Attention span of an average customer is rapidly diminishing and anything that does not reduce the cognitive load for the customer is almost certain to be rejected. Hence the age-old rule "Keep it simple " - be it interaction with the call center agents or the digital channels, every touch point needs to ensure minimal customer effort<br>b. Smart - A customer interacts with a company, predominantly because there is a reason: service not working, error in billing, upgrade etc. In most cases, it should not be too difficult for companies to proactively identify the probable "Next Best Action" to help address the customer concern.<br>c. Connected - Integrating interactions across different channels should be the responsibility of the company and not of the customer's. Information once provided, through any channel, should be used to provide connectivity in experience<br>3) Enable frontline employees: While it is extremely critical to empower frontline employees to have an emotional connection with the customers, with a focus on empathy, it is equally important to equip frontline employees with the right data to ensure for the customers consistency and completeness of their experience.<br>4) Always, always listen to the customer, whether they express themselves directly through feedback mechanisms or indirectly through social media, whether they are explicit or implicit. It is suicidal for any company to ignore these hints and not act on them.<br>When companies face their moment of truth- retain the customer, providing a great experience or stare at obsolescence, IT can play a pivotal role in defining the experience landscape in the following areas:<br>1) Data Analytics: Companies have almost unlimited data about customers - interaction data, profile data, behavior data, social data. The trick is to make sense of the data and use it as a competitive weapon to increase loyalty. Mapping the journey of the customers with the company, integrated with demographic information provides the capability to anticipate the potential "Next Best Action" or "Next Best Offer".<br>2) Agility in Operation: Customer behavior is sometimes driven by the larger industry and technology backdrop which is changing at a fast pace. In order to quickly realign to changing expectations, it is almost mandatory to adopt agile mode of operation driven by the DevOps culture.<br>3) Backend Plumbing: A prerequisite for user-friendly design and data-driven, connected experience is a streamlined backend plumbing - business processes, software and hardware stack as well as datacenters come together to facilitate the experience transformation.<br><br>While the new world of ever-increasing customer expectations poses a significant challenge for organizations, it also throws a big opportunity to increase customer loyalty by delighting them with an experience that is "all about them" and technology-intensive.<br><br>More and more, we are seeing examples of how IT is playing a major role in defining user interface, providing connected customer experiences by leveraging data analytics and embracing next generation software development methodologies.<br><br><em>The author, Vishal Bhasin, is senior delivery head at Verizon</em></p>
