Leading IT Transformation – Workshop 18 (Customer Experience)
The Appleton Greene Corporate Training Program (CTP) for Leading IT Transformation is provided by Ms. Drabenstadt MBA BBA Certified Learning Provider (CLP). Program Specifications: Monthly cost USD$2,500.00; Monthly Workshops 6 hours; Monthly Support 4 hours; Program Duration 24 months; Program orders subject to ongoing availability.
If you would like to view the Client Information Hub (CIH) for this program, please Click Here
Learning Provider Profile
Ms. Drabenstadt is a Certified Learning Provider (CLP) at Appleton Greene and she has experience in Information Technology, Information Governance, Compliance and Audit. She has achieved an MBA, and BBA. She has industry experience within the following sectors: Technology; Insurance and Financial Services. She has had commercial experience within the following countries: United States of America, Canada, Australia, India, Trinidad, and Jamaica. Her program will initially be available in the following cities: Madison WI; Minneapolis MN; Chicago IL; Atlanta GA and Denver CO. Her personal achievements include: Developed Trusted IT-Business Relationship; Delivered Increased Business Value/Time; Decreased IT Costs; Re-tooled IT Staff; Increased IT Employee Morale. Her service skills incorporate: IT transformation leadership; process improvement; change management; program management and information governance.
MOST Analysis
Mission Statement
IT transformation uses technology to develop new or adapt existing business processes, culture, and consumer experiences to meet changing customer and industry requirements. IT transformation is the redesigning of business in the digital age. Customer-centricity should be at the center of any digital transformation effort. We have the opportunity to rethink how we do business — how we engage our customers — with digital technology on our side as we move from paper to spreadsheets to innovative applications for managing our business. The company needs to make a commitment to have a customer-first approach. The goal should be to create the best version of customer experience from the perspective of customers. Customers are the most important part of your digital customer experience program. The aim is to make customers satisfied with their experience to ensure that they remain loyal to your brand and recommend your business to others. For this you need to have a holistic approach to the customer experience optimization. The responsibility to offer excellent customer service is not limited to customer support or any single department. It is the responsibility of the entire company to work together to ensure a great digital customer experience is offered to the digital customers. Prioritize your customer’s needs and expectations. Build an organization where every department is customer-obsessed.
Objectives
01. CX Challenges: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Customer Insights: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Design Thinking: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. Data Governance: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Harmonized CX: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
Strategies
01. CX Challenges: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
02. Customer Insights: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
03. Design Thinking: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
04. Data Governance: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
05. Harmonized CX: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
Tasks
01. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze CX Challenges.
02. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Customer Insights.
03. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Design Thinking.
04. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Data Governance.
05. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Harmonized CX.
Introduction
What is the connection between IT Transformation and Customer Experience?
Customer experience is a vital business component that is crucial to your IT transformation. The path to a company’s growth and success is paved with crucial elements like innovation and improvements in the customer experience.
A digital transformation which focuses on customer experience, according to Mckinsey, can boost a company’s revenue by 20 to 50%.
• As a result of the superior digital customer experiences provided by best-in-class businesses, customer expectations and needs are evolving. Companies like Amazon have emerged as the gold standard of the digital customer experience. Due to its preoccupation with its customers and effective use of technology, Amazon has grown into a truly global firm.
Similarly In businesses like Uber, Starbucks, and Zappos, the client is at the heart of everything they do. The corporations are fixated on providing the finest experience possible for their clients.
The bar for the digital consumer experience has been raised by technological improvements and good customer experiences, as noted. Every digital organization in the sector now understands the value of optimizing the customer experience from beginning to end.
• Innovation and customer experience improvement have a significant positive impact on business revenue. New York Times is one illustration of how digital revolution is increasing revenue. About 70% of newspaper advertising revenue has been lost over the past 15 years. On the other hand, the New York Times has 3 million subscribers and generates $500 million in digital revenue.
According to Mckinsey, B2B businesses that have undergone digital transformation in the customer experience process have seen increases in revenue of 10 to 15% and decreases in costs of 10 to 20%.
A few things to consider:
• Prior to developing or redesigning any touchpoint or feature, consider the needs and desires of the consumer.
• To comprehend the customer experience, consider the customer journey in its whole. Never overlook a dimension.
• Pay attention to what top-performing businesses are doing better than you are, and take notes on their tactics.
• Make use of all the data gathered from analytics, customer reviews, and other sources. To deliver top-notch digital client services, collaborate with other departments.
Customer Experience Success Stories Worth Mimicking
PUMA Increases Online Sales by Delivers Right Products at the Right Time.
To achieve their goal of becoming the most coveted sports-life company, PUMA plans to draw on their long history of creating footwear and apparel for some of the world’s best athletes. PUMA is now able to provide more precise product recommendations and a hyper-personalized experience tailored to an individual’s needs by focusing on its product searches and utilizing machine learning to better understand their clients. The solution not only assisted PUMA in meeting its ROI goals in less than two years, but it also dramatically raised online sales for PUMA.
How might digital transformation help you provide a fantastic customer experience?
Become obsessed with your Customers
The business must pledge to put the requirements of the consumer first. The finest possible customer experience should be developed from the customers’ point of view.
The most crucial component of your digital customer experience program is your customers. It is important to satisfy clients so they will remain loyal to your brand and spread the word about your company to others.
To do this, you must optimize the consumer experience holistically. No one department or only customer support is exempt from the duty to provide exceptional customer service. To guarantee that digital clients receive excellent customer experiences, the entire organization must collaborate.
Give your customers’ wants and expectations top priority. Create a company where the focus is always on the consumer.
Organization-wide approach
Customer experience-focused IT transformation is not the responsibility of customer service, nor does it stop at the front-end. All points of contact, including the back end of the business process, are involved. To enhance and deliver a seamless digital customer experience, the entire business and each of its departments must contribute.
• Customers who have complaints or suggestions about a product often contact customer service in the hope that the product teams will hear from them.
• In order to save them from having to repeat information repeatedly, they anticipate that you will share the data that customers provide with other departments as well.
Eliminate silos from the environment. To fulfill the primary goal of providing exceptional customer service, all departments should collaborate effectively. Conflicts will arise throughout the process if each department acts independently.
The greatest method to keep each department connected is by using CRM. They can exchange data that has all been gathered in one place.
Recognize the causes of each pain spot
The basic fact that satisfied customers are good for business growth and success is something you should never forget. It is also preferable to go further than this, though.
Try to understand
• Why is your customer churn increasing?
• Why is it difficult to acquire new customers?
• Why do you have more unhappy customers?
Recognize each cause of a customer journey’s pain point. You may be able to learn what you are doing incorrectly in your IT transition. Your staff may have been given access to a variety of technologies, but you still haven’t been able to offer a terrific digital customer experience.
A few possible causes are shifting consumer expectations, shifting market trends, and a lack of novel items. It can also be due to a dearth of digital channel options, a poorly designed website, or challenging app navigation.
Don’t forget Human touch
When customers form an emotional bond with a brand, their lifetime value increases by 306%.
“Digital” is by definition impersonal and distant. Because of this, creating digital CX is harder than achieving traditional CX. Businesses must realize that a key element of the digital transition is human touch. An improved digital customer experience can be achieved by combining human and technological resources.
In order to assist clients build a relationship with the company, human contact is essential. It adds a human factor to an otherwise impersonal procedure. Customers can experience emotion and passion here while using cutting-edge technology.
Customers yearn for human connection in today’s digital world. They desire a sense of significance for the brand. offer a specialized experience.
• Use the clients’ names in emails, notifications, and SMS messages. Recognize the difference between the compassionate human effect and the disturbing robot effect.
Customers should respond favorably to your individualized service and not be reluctant to interact with your business.
Personalized Journey is customer’s favorite
Customers are made to feel linked to the brand via tailored journeys that follow the “human touch”. Customers value being acknowledged as people rather than as a product or an ID more. No.
• 73% of consumers are more inclined to make a purchase from a company that uses their name.
Customers believe that insufficient customization causes them to discontinue buying from a brand in 63% of cases.
• 91% of digital customers are very likely to purchase from companies again if they receive recommendations and offers that are pertinent to them.
Due to the exceptional tailored behavior they experience from top brands, customers demand a personalized journey from all digital enterprises. If a firm does not offer them pertinent recommendations while they are shopping from it, 47% of online customers consult Amazon.
Make sure customers receive real-time recommendations based on their purchasing patterns by using the appropriate technologies. Make sure customers receive a personalized experience regardless of the digital platform they choose to interact with your brand on as well.
Customer Experience Success Stories Worth Mimicking
Elkjøp Delivers Rich Product Experience to Its Customers.
Elkjp, the biggest retailer of consumer electronics in the Nordic region, with 400 locations and 10,000 staff throughout six nations. Elkjp concentrated on modernizing and redesigning the process for onboarding products and providing automated product information management to its business users in order to achieve their goal of reducing time-to-market and meet rapidly changing consumer expectations and the explosive growth of the electronic products market. With the help of their new technology, the business can now launch new items more quickly and offer a compelling, knowledgeable product experience that encourages conversions across all touchpoints.
IT transformation and customer experience: A deep dive
Customer experience is key to the digital transformation process. Better yet, many projects for digital transformation are driven by business/innovation needs, customer (experience) pain points, and growth/transformation imperatives.
These are brought on by a variety of factors, including the changing expectations of customers and the top-of-the-line experiences they receive, including the growing necessity of an end-to-end customer experience enhancement approach.
Although digital transformation projects in customer experience can undoubtedly go much beyond the mere digital dimension, firms sometimes focus primarily on what has come to be known as the digital customer experience. Even while it makes sense to focus on the digital customer experience, let’s not lose sight of the fact that the consumer is one.
We could provide literally hundreds or even thousands of examples of how the customer experience affects various industries, IT transformation, future growth, and so much more. We may do an overview in the near future that focuses on a few verticals, particular processes and business functions, and a few specific cases.
Mutual benefit and client experience Innovation and transformation as a platform for long-term commercial success
But let’s focus on the key factors that make improving user experience, comprehending the customer journey, and the customer experience crucial in the context of money for the time being.
In addition to specific situations, there are other pieces of research that examine the effects of continuing to prioritize customer experience innovation and optimization. One example is given in an incredibly interesting article written on Customer Think by Lynn Hunsaker, the creator of the CX firm ClearAction.
This segment of our introduction will discuss innovation in the customer experience (which we’ll address later) and the creation of mutual value. We might even use the terms networked value and exponential value in these connected times. where company value and customer value intersect and go beyond.
“Customer experience innovation”, Lynn writes, “creates mutual value for anyone in the holistic definition of customer, regarding any aspect of their experience with a solution, with a focus on the customer’s jobs-to-be-done”. Holistic. Enterprise-wide. End-to-end. I love it.
In a 4-year study, Lynn found that, I quote, “systemic customer experience improvement and innovation were under-used building-blocks in the cause-and-effect system of customer experience optimization”. And she adds a nice comparison by calling company-wide improvement and innovation of customer experience (transformational indeed, as you can read further in her post) the middleware for sustainable business results. I simply love that image, taste it again: “the middleware for sustainable business results”.
What to remember about the customer experience and IT transformation
In any case, let’s get back to the article’s main topic: digital transformation and the customer experience. When considering your digital transformation plan and the client experience, there are certain crucial considerations and warnings to bear in mind. A few are listed below.
A holistic and corporate-wide strategy
The front-end and client-facing services, let alone touchpoints, are only a small part of IT transformation on the level of the customer experience. It affects the entire company and necessitates including the back end as well.
It also needs a corporate-wide strategy, or better yet, a road map leading to such a comprehensive strategy. In order to put something into practice, you must set up a starting point and a staging area, but the final outcomes demand that it be completed sooner rather than later. The enterprise-wide strategy serves as both a beginning point and a stage of transformation.
Customer experience and IT transformation should prioritize putting people first.
The difficulty of technology and process transformation is not limited to the integration of the back-end and front-end.
Both internally and, obviously, with regard to the consumer, people are by far the most crucial element of customer experience management and of a holistic customer experience optimization approach. Even though it becomes increasingly rare as digital becomes pervasive in the customer journey and experience, regardless of age and segments, you can imagine a scenario in which a customer-related IT transformation effort is done to improve the customer experience without the customer using any digital technology in that process.
Make sure that these digital touchpoints and “tools” are so valuable that customers WANT to use them instead of the less valuable and more expensive ones they currently prefer. This is especially important when digital customer-facing processes and interactions, as well as customer experiences, are key in achieving the customer experience optimization goals.
Knowing the why behind each why
The management of the customer experience and its optimization produce definite and observable results for the company in the genuine sense of planning customer interactions to meet or surpass consumer expectations. Each organization, though, is unique.
The “why” behind improving the customer experience is crucial, whether it is the patient experience in healthcare or the citizen experience in government. Beyond the – in my opinion – obvious explanation that happy customers are just good business and that excellent customer service and experiences form the foundation, the question to ask is not just what but also why. Increased customer churn (why? ), more disgruntled customers (why? ), or really anything else with the why beyond the why being key can be individual pain points and answers to the “why” (and often being related with disruptions in your market, changing customer expectations, increasing competition, a lack of innovation, etc.). To put it another way, process improvement and digitization are two different things from change and its justifications.
The obligation to provide customers with quality service
The customer experience is solely the responsibility of the consumer, and as previously said, it will necessitate an enterprise-wide strategy either way.
Naturally, this can take place in stages with roles being assigned, but always with a clear road map for the final results in mind. Digital transformation encompasses all of those things and more in the context of the customer experience, as opposed to just digital marketing and customer service change.
Process optimization and customer experience optimization must work together.
Better customer experiences depend on a number of factors, including processes, data, agility, priority, technology, integration, information, business and IT alignment, digitization, etc.
People, as previously noted, matter more than technologies and even processes. None of the aforementioned factors can promise to improve customer satisfaction. But when linked together for a single objective, they complement one another and function. In a survey conducted by AIIM, factors relating to the customer experience were mentioned more frequently than other factors for future business success, such as process automation, including accurate and consistent customer communication, quick customer response on all fronts, and providing best-in-class customer experience.
However, the process aspect, human element and customer experience part go together.
The exception becomes the rule
There are a number of difficulties from the perspective of customer service and contact centers. As Nicola Millard points out, the contact center of the future will play a more proactive role, and the customer experience and value propositions will shift more toward complex customer requests. This is in addition to the need to redefine and “sell” the role of the contact center in the customer experience equation. The digitization of processes focuses on the automation of routine tasks first (with a broad mix of technology available, including self-learning systems).
This change in focus from the standard contact center measurements as we know them today to metrics that are more focused on the customer experience will also have an impact on the metrics that are employed.
Measurement across the board: speaking a common language
As was previously noted, and in reference to Nicola Millard’s blog post, there has been a change in how we evaluate the quality of customer care and contact centers. This is crucial to consider when it comes to the customer experience within a larger framework of digital transformation.
Enterprise-wide reforms require global KPIs and measurements. Or, to put it another way, it’s challenging to obtain a comprehensive picture in the midst of the deluge of data and the frequently dispersed customer-related measuring options. Integrating demands concentrating on shared objectives. Speaking the same language throughout all marketing-related operations is similar to how marketing ROI plans are implemented. But this time, the setting is one of consumer experience. To move toward a combination of KPIs and measures that are intimately tied to the consumer, we must be willing to let go of internal and strictly transactional KPIs. That is also a part of transformation. The Customer Effort Score is a method that is gaining popularity in addition to NPS (as a system). In reality, mixtures are frequently employed.
This list is of course far from exhaustive. Also consider:
• The function of IT and numerous enabling technologies, such as virtualization, videoconferencing, unified communications and collaboration, artificial intelligence (routing, IDR, knowledge base, etc.), multi-channel inbound communications, etc.
• The incredibly important role that staff training, engagement, and enablement play, which we’ll go into more detail about in a later piece.
• The blurring of the lines between online and offline environments, as well as the inclusion of digital transformations in offline and hybrid contexts in addition to self-service, etc (think retail stores, for instance).
Last but not least, we discussed the people aspect. We will discuss it separately as well because it is so crucial. Metrics or the customer experience in and of themselves are only one aspect of being connected to the consumer.
People will continue to engage in personal relationships whenever, whenever, and however they choose, regardless of the usage of digital technologies or the fields of digital transformation and virtualization, at least for the time being.
Customer Experience Success Stories Worth Mimicking
Elektro-Material Doubles Sales by Becoming Customer-Centric.
Elektro-Material (EM), the market leader in Swiss business-to-business (B2B) electrical wholesale, provides a range of products including lights, home appliances, and smart home technologies. EM wanted to give clients the comprehensive product information they’ve come to anticipate in order to win in the fiercely competitive internet industry. Elektro-Material was able to launch new products in a quarter of the time and quickly upload product catalogs from 900 suppliers by concentrating on developing an accurate view of its product information and automating the onboarding and administration of product data. Customers of EM now have a thorough and precise understanding of the company’s goods and pictures, which has caused a two-fold increase in sales through digital channels. Additionally, EM is better equipped to handle an anticipated eight-fold increase in product data for the coming year.
Customer-Centricity vs. Product-Centricity
Many businesses have traditionally identified themselves by the goods or services they produce rather than the issues they help their clients with. A company that is focused on its products is fundamentally concerned with product superiority; this strategy is more heavily influenced by research and technology.
On the other hand, a business that values its customers concentrates on the diagnosis of business issues and offers value through specialized solutions. It uses a “outside in” strategy to meet the emotional requirements of the consumer through innovative service delivery. Here, long-term relationships are more important than market share, and the focus is on capturing clients’ minds. Therefore, customer-centricity adopts a buyer-driven pull approach as opposed to a sales-driven push approach when it comes to strategy. In order to increase user engagement, new age digital media tools like influencers, immersive marketing, and personalized customer journeys have replaced traditional media tools like TV, OOH billboards, and print. A company that is focused on its products is Apple. Customers don’t know what they want until you show it to them, to quote Steve Jobs. Apple’s organizational and market structure, which enables the most efficient and successful distribution of their highly innovative products to their clients, is based on this principle. Less attention is placed on specific client feedback, and any customers who can afford it can access the same product features.
At the other end of this range is Amazon. The e-commerce behemoth’s strategy is succinctly summed up by Jeff Bezos: “If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing anything. Being more customer-focused enables you to take more risks. Amazon bases everything it does on satisfying customers. Even though they don’t have a product to sell, they have championed customer-centricity thanks to their distinctive platform for service delivery.
Customer Experience Success Stories Worth Mimicking
Rent-A-Car Delivers Seamless Customer Experience.
With yearly earnings of €138 million, Rent-A-Car is France’s largest company in the proximate renting of automobiles. Rent-A-Car has effectively increased its market share, doubling annual income over the past six years, despite an infusion of new rivals in the auto rental industry. Rent-A-Car has developed a better understanding of its consumers and turned data into a competitive advantage by investing in a Customer 360 solution to get a full picture of their customer experience. This has not only helped the business establish itself as a pioneer in connected automobiles, but it has also aided in the detection of stolen cars and the fight against fraud.
How to create a customer-centric strategy for your business
The goal of a customer-centric business strategy is to satisfy customers both before and after the sale.
Why should businesses concentrate on this?
in order to encourage repeat business, build client loyalty, and foster business expansion.
However, a customer-centric business needs to do more than just provide excellent customer service.
One of the best examples of a company that is customer-centric and has spent years developing a culture around the requirements of the customer is Zappos. They genuinely care about providing value to customers. In fact, if an employee doesn’t fit with Zappos’ customer-focused culture, the company is eager to terminate them.
How significant is being customer-centric?
Econsultancy once asked readers to name the quality that they felt would help create a culture that was genuinely “digital-native.”
Being customer-centric was the most common response (58%) to that question.
However, only 14% of marketers believe that their companies’ culture is customer-centric, according to the CMO Council.
Here’s the thing:
It takes time to implement a customer-centric strategy successfully.
Let’s look at how to develop a customer-centric strategy that links your company to the specific requirements of your clients.
What is customer-centricity?
Customer-centricity is a business approach based on prioritizing and placing your customers at the center of your operations in order to deliver a great experience and forge lasting bonds.
Customer relationship management (CRM) and placing the client at the center of your organization allow you to gather a wealth of information that provides you a complete 360-degree perspective of the customer. The experience of your customers can then be improved by using this information.
For instance:
• Customer data can be used to comprehend purchasing patterns, interests, and engagement.
• You have the ability to spot chances to develop goods, services, and promotions for your most loyal clients.
• Based on top spenders, you can categorize consumers using customer lifetime value.
According to Deloitte & Touche research, organizations that are customer-centric are 60% more lucrative than those that are not, and 64% of those with a CEO who is customer-focused outperform their rivals.
In addition, 90% of businesses only compete on the basis of client satisfaction.
Businesses that put their customers first are able to give customers a satisfying experience throughout their whole journey. Companies must endure a significant change in their organizational structure and culture to achieve this.
The difficulties of developing a customer-centric business
Customers grew more picky about the brands they chose to spend their money with during the economic collapse of the late 1990s, which resulted in a power shift between the brand and the client.
The brands who treated their consumers well, provided excellent service, and developed enduring relationships with them were the ones that prevailed.
Social media emerged at the same time as another game-changer. The way customers connect with brands has changed as a result of social media marketing, and social selling has followed suit. It now plays a significant role in the customer journey.
According to a recent study by Global Web Index, 45% of customers use social networks to conduct brand research, and 41% of social media users learn about new brands or products through social media ads, suggestions, or changes on brands’ pages (a 5 points increase since 2017).
Through social media, one in three consumers learn about new goods, services, and companies.
83% of US internet buyers say that the social media posts of their friends have an impact on their purchasing decisions.
One of the many digital platforms that are altering the relationship between businesses and customers is social media.
According to research, organizations that struggle to become customer-centric are unable to communicate customer information across departments and lack a culture that is focused on the demands of the customer.
The most crucial thing to keep in mind is that most businesses do not have all of the elements in place to say they are customer-centric:
• Instead than concentrating on your products, features, or business model, start by focusing on what your customers need and how they want to interact with you.
• Your business will be able to satisfy the client’s needs and provide a satisfying experience if it is designed with the customer in mind.
Customer Experience Success Stories Worth Mimicking
The BMW Group expands its brand experience throughout the customer’s journey.
The BMW Group communicates with current and potential consumers through an ever-growing variety of channels. The “ultimate driving machine’s” German maker has shifted its attention to in-car comfort and technology. Additionally, BMW Group sought to accurately and consistently connect with its clients via a variety of client touchpoints. Websites, social media feeds, brochures, contact centers for customer assistance, online stores, and dealerships are just a few of these touchpoints. BMW Group is able to give customers a variety of purchase options by utilizing technology to speed up the development of reliable product data.
5 guidelines for growing a customer-centric business
You may anticipate client demands and please them with products and services by making your company customer-centric.
Consider the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, who said, “Our whole role in life is to give you something you didn’t know you wanted. And then once you get it, you can’t imagine your life without it.”
Customer centricity is at the center of Apple’s whole business strategy. Customers fall in love with their product, and their Apple Centers offer first-rate assistance to get them set up and out the door with a smile.
In order to support customers with a fantastic experience from initial discovery to point of purchase and beyond, a customer-centric brand develops products, processes, policies, and a culture that are geared to do so.
Here are five excellent practices to make your company stand out that will help you improve customer centricity:
1. Hire for customer satisfaction. Employees are the workforce that will interact directly with customers and influence many of those interactions. Focus on selecting employees who may be aligned with your company’s commitment to customer-centric thinking and the value of the customer experience, regardless of role.
2. Prioritize your relationships. In a sales performance report, customers are not just numbers to be evaluated and examined. They are individuals who gain significantly when you build a cooperative relationship with them.
3. Democratize consumer information. Centralized access to consumer data and insights is necessary for implementing a new customer-centric approach. A CRM database can aid in creating an united front that provides better customer experiences by facilitating a deeper knowledge of customers.
4. Link corporate culture to client outcomes. When activities can be connected to outcomes, a customer-centricity approach will inspire employees. For instance, real-time strategy implementation might be highlighted by capturing tactics to shorten customer wait times or ease customer migrations.
5. Define your CX strategy. Your brand and business strategy inform your customer experience strategy. Your brand strategy will specify exactly what consumers should expect from your company; your CX plan will detail how you will live up to those demands.
3 ways to measure the success of a customer-centric company
The customer success measures used to gauge customer-centricity will vary every firm. But churn rate, Net Promoter Score, and customer lifetime value are the three most crucial customer-centric metrics that need to be closely watched (CLV).
1. Churn rate
It’s getting harder to bring in new clients. As a result, more businesses are spending money on maintaining their current clientele rather than looking for new ones. This is why:
• It can cost up to five times as much to get new clients as it does to keep your current ones.
• A 10% cost reduction has the same impact on profitability as a 2% gain in customer retention.
• Each year, businesses lose about 10% of their consumer base on average (also known as customer churn)
Businesses with a high retention rate expand more quickly.
Understanding why consumers leave and stay is essential to increasing retention rates.
According to Call Miner’s Churn Index Report, unplanned moving to a new brand as a result of triggers that could have been prevented costs $35.3 billion. Customers were more inclined to abandon a brand, for instance, if:
• Super agents, or knowledgeable customer service representatives, may attend to customers’ needs by attentively hearing their concerns and addressing them before rapidly resolving them.
• Businesses lacked automated self-service channels, such a knowledge base, for customers to resolve problems independently.
Why Customers do not feel rewarded for their loyalty as new customers do, who receive benefits and bonuses upon signing up.
When this information is available, you can compute the churn rate by dividing the total number of customers who have departed in the past year by the average number of all customers (during the same period).
2. Net Promoter Score
Are your clients content? How do you gauge consumer satisfaction? NPS offers the solution.
The goal of NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is to determine client loyalty by posing just one straightforward question:
When a customer responds to this question, their response is subsequently divided into categories using predetermined criteria:
• Promoters (9–10): These individuals genuinely enjoy your good or service and are likely to recommend you to prospective customers. Customers that give you a 9 or 10 are loyal and will spend more money with you over the course of their lifetime.
• Passives (7-8): Those who give you a 7 or 8 are satisfied with their purchase from you, but they are most likely to switch to a rival if they discover a new or superior product.
• Detractors (0-6): These customers are dissatisfied with your goods or services and are likely to harm your brand’s reputation by telling others about their bad experiences.
Your firm will grow more successfully the more Promoters you have. Really, it’s quite easy.
The NPS is a favorite among company boards and executive committees due to its ease of implementation and measurement.
3. Customer lifetime value (CLV)
The most valuable “asset” for a company that values its customers is its client base.
If you’re investing in long-term partnerships, you can use customer lifetime value, or CLV, to determine the “health” of the relationship.
CLV calculates the revenue a customer brings in for the duration that they are a paying customer. It begins with their initial purchase and lasts until they decide not to do business with you again.
To determine CLV, sum up all of your revenue and multiply it by the duration of your business partnership. After that, subtract the initial cost of purchasing them.
If a consumer spends $1,000 each year, for instance, and their “lifetime” is typically 10 years, you would increase that amount by 10 to get $10,000. The CLV is now $9,000 after deducting the purchase cost (in this instance, we’ll assume $1,000).
Not bad, right?
You can better appreciate why it makes sense to spend in client retention by calculating CLV.
But you should consider CLV from a value perspective rather than just a revenue one, which is why we like Dennis Shiao’s definition of customer lifetime value.
Conclusion
It takes time and complexity to transform an organization into one that is really customer-centric.
Do not let this discourage you, though, as even the simplest adjustments to procedures and policies can have a big impact on both your employees and your customers.
The key to maximizing customer value is in being a customer-centric organization. Always consider the customer’s perspective to reduce customer effort and increase customer value.
Do you consider yourself a customer-centric organization?
The best CRM software plays an important role in becoming customer-centric as this is where all of your customer data is stored.
Customer Experience Success Stories Worth Mimicking
KLiNGEL’s rich product data powers its omnichannel strategy.
One of the most well-known manufacturers of home furnishings and apparel in Europe, KLiNGEL has affiliates in Belgium, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Austria. The business sells through over 70 online stores and processes several million orders annually for 18 brands. To guarantee that it offers a consistent view of product data across print catalog and online, KLiNGEL has a multi-brand and omnichannel strategy. KLiNGEL needed to make sure that its clients could view every product in every language because company had operations in 12 European nations. KLiNGEL has been able to launch products online seven times more quickly, decrease customer call volume and product returns, and has ambitions to boost sales on 60 webshops, including Amazon, eBay, and OTTO. This has been made possible by placing a strategic focus on data.
Executive Summary
Chapter 1: CX Challenges
You will discover the top customer experience difficulties firms encounter throughout IT transformation in this course manual, along with the proactive measures you may take to solve them.
One of the most overrated yet underutilized ideas in the contemporary digital retail scene is customer experience (CX), which wins the prize. How many companies lose out on their potential competitive edge because they don’t emphasize excellent CX? How many people are successful in creating a fantastic and unforgettable CX? It’s obvious what consumers anticipate; according to a Forbes survey, 74% of respondents said they’re at least somewhat inclined to make a purchase based only on their relationship with a brand.
In today’s digital economy, it’s a regular occurrence for businesses to unite behind a top goal or seemingly sound idea only to thoroughly botch the strategy. According to a poll by Marketing Charts, the biggest obstacle to providing a great CX is a lack of a suitable strategy.
In the past, offering high-quality goods at reasonable costs and with courteous service was sufficient to draw in and keep customers. Customers today still value these aspects, but they also demand a fantastic digital consumer experience (CX). The advantages of offering a superior customer experience are demonstrated by numerous studies and research. Take into account, for example:
• 89% of consumers say that after having a good customer experience, they are more inclined to make a purchase.
• Following one negative customer experience, 50% of consumers indicate they will move to a new brand.
• More than 33% of consumers said they will write about their positive or negative customer experiences on Facebook. 36% of consumers will share their positive or negative customer experiences with others.
• Profits can grow by 25% to 95% with a 5% increase in client retention rates.
• How customers believe they are being treated accounts for 70% of the customer journey.
However, businesses frequently fall short of what customers expect. The difficulties of digitizing the consumer experience frequently lead to these failures. For the time being, let’s quickly review these before delving deeper into them in the first course manual.
Failing to Bring Journey Maps to Life with Customer Data
Organizations are putting a lot of effort into mapping out the customer journey as they try to understand and enhance the customer experience. A journey map, according to Salesforce, is “a visual representation of the client journey” (also called the buyer journey or user journey). It assists you in narrating how customers have interacted with your brand through all touchpoints.
While route maps are practical tools, they are only visuals without any relevant information. Or, as Gartner’s Jake Sorofman puts it, “directions down a blind alley” that are “built from the inside-out to serve their own commercial objectives, rather than from the outside-in to fulfill consumers’ evolving need state.”
In order to understand the activities that customers do, businesses can use data to evaluate customer behavior across a wide range of digital platforms. Organizations can rapidly spot areas for improvement and places for friction using CX analytic tools that use AI and ML technologies, while also predicting and responding to consumer behavior in real-time.
A “Siloed Mentality”
An unpleasant user experience results from friction in the consumer journey. Organizations must offer smooth transitions between all digital channels in order to deliver a great CX. This calls for allowing consumers to select the channels they want for contact and ensuring that their data is accessible throughout the entire company.
According to McKinsey, “top firms are exploiting rising volumes of data to relate the customer journey and customer happiness to overall strategy,” and those companies that can “break out of this walled approach have the potential to get an unprecedented view of the customer.”
A Lack of Experimentation and Iteration
Many businesses view the client experience as a static process that must be completed perfectly the first time. This frequently leads to two drawbacks. The process frequently slows and fizzles out because the end result is never sufficiently finished. Second, it is impossible to predict whether the new experience will be well-received by customers without testing and experimentation.
Iterative design processes are necessary for creating a successful consumer experience. Organizations should concentrate on releasing their initial version as soon as possible. After that, they must gauge how users react, gather data, and tweak the original design in response to user comments. Up till the intended outcomes are realized, this procedure is repeated.
A Poor CX Design
Many businesses are unaware of how important user and customer experience design is. For instance, designers could include pointless features or convolute the navigation. Growth and client retention are stifled by a bad user experience. Effective CX design ideas apply to all company levels, not just individual products.
A few years ago, McKinsey carried out a sizable international study with the goal of calculating the revenues and returns associated with a supportive company design culture. The analysis found that the top performers increased their sales and returns at a rate that was almost twice as fast as their rivals.
A Lack of Customer Input
Customer decisions are being influenced by social proof more and more in our modern environment. From looking for the top-rated things on Amazon to figuring out which local eatery serves the best food. However, a lot of businesses don’t ask for, consider, or interpret client feedback.
The secret is to set up a system for gathering client input, such as through surveys, and procedures for carrying out their recommendations. Customers frequently need a reward to give feedback. Others will be satisfied with the prospect of their suggestions being considered and included in upcoming goods or services.
Chapter 2: Customer Insights
Consumer insights go beyond merely identifying behavioral trends. Understanding why people act as they do is more important. So, as you transform your IT, you can switch to proactive marketing rather than reactive marketing and plan your next move as well as theirs.
This is the knowledge that you should base your company’s operations on. The power of consumer insights, how to obtain them, and what you can learn from them are all covered in this course handbook. The appropriate tools and some real-world examples will make your IT transformation even more amazing for you and your customers.
What are consumer insights?
A consumer insight is precise knowledge about the beliefs and actions of consumers that explains not only what they believe, prefer, or do, but also why they do it. With this crucial information, you can produce better products, more useful services, and more successful marketing efforts.
For instance, when beauty companies conduct market research, they discover a decline in the number of women in their twenties who dye their hair. They are able to work with that.
However, if you look beyond the market as a whole and into the brains of the consumers, you can see why this group is purchasing hair dye less and less. Maybe the chemicals being employed are making them apprehensive. Or perhaps there are societal and generational disparities in the requirement for hair dyeing? Consumer insights can help you make a difference in such situation.
Currently, you can also strive to rebrand and make products that better meet expectations, for example, using natural ingredients.
If you want to position yourself for success, it’s crucial to analyze consumer insights and human behaviors in addition to market trends. After all, people make up “the market.” Learn what drives your consumers’ behavior.
Why your IT transformation strategy should include consumer insights
Your strategy becomes more focused thanks to customer insights. You gain a clear understanding of what to concentrate on right now and how to get ready for the future. If you are aware of the problem’s fundamental cause rather than just recognizing it, it is far simpler to fix problems or overcome obstacles.
Microsoft claims that companies who use consumer behavior to develop insights outperform their competitors in terms of sales growth by 85%.
So, if you’re dissatisfied with the market research data you currently have and want to learn more about the trends you’ve noticed, turn to customer insight. They can assist you in addressing issues like:
• What are the requirements for our success in this new target market?
• Why are sales declining among that target market?
• What would need to be altered in order to make product X appealing to young people?
• What does our target market notice first about a brand?
• What aspects of the competition do our new target market dislike?
You can learn how to increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns by developing your own brand and product and by identifying the mistakes that your competitors are making in the eyes of your target market.
Take control over the customer journey
Additionally, consumer insights are helpful at every level of the buying process and customer journey. You will want to know what is going on in people’s thoughts, even if they have never heard of your product or brand – or perhaps even more so when they haven’t. By doing this, you may put yourself in the spotlight and become the first to be noticed, leaving a lasting impression on your customers.
Take control over the customer journey
You must use consumer insights if you want to personalize your marketing and enhance the customer experience.
You need a deeper grasp of what appeals to customers and influences their decisions if you want to target them in a more creative way. The secret is to avoid mentioning your brand or products. Talk about your customers.
Chapter 3: Design Thinking
Business as usual to digital first is not an easy adjustment to make because of how quickly and unpredictable our digital world changes. Many people find it difficult to keep up and are unclear of what to do. Design thinking can help with this.
A five-step user-centric design technique called “design thinking” looks at the past, present, and potential futures of an issue before considering potential solutions.
The challenges presented by IT transformation are complicated and ill-defined. Therefore, applying design thinking to your organization’s IT transformation aids in resolving these issues by utilizing a fluid, adaptable, hands-on approach to engage customers and develop solutions.
The five steps of design thinking—empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test—are covered in further detail in this course manual.
Maintaining competitiveness requires IT transformation, but it is simple for organizations to concentrate on just one aspect of the puzzle by merely integrating the newest technology in a plug-and-play manner. In their eagerness to benefit from the digital age, some people place a singular emphasis on implementing the newest technology without taking into account other factors. Successful IT transformation requires a more all-encompassing strategy, which can only be achieved when people, process, and technology are all integrated.
With a focus on the needs of people, design thinking is both an ideology and a methodology that seeks to develop creative solutions to challenging issues. It prioritizes observing and comprehending the user’s point of view and places humans at the core of design.
Businesses in a variety of industries can use this method to their advantage to identify the real needs, challenges, and benefits of customers using the service. This information can then be used to guide targeted efforts to improve the user experience and solve the “people part” of the digital transformation puzzle.
Businesses are urged by design thinking to prioritize people and take into account the actual customers of their goods and services. This creates the foundation for success when implementing new software and methods of operation.
Discovery, design, development, and delivery are the four main phases of any IT transformation journey, and design thinking is particularly helpful in developing the first two. By incorporating design thinking early on, all necessary parties are engaged. This facilitates successful delivery by making the change management process considerably smoother and ensuring that the customers’ needs are met.
Using design thinking to take your business to the next level
The idea of design thinking first emerged in the 1960s as a means of instructing engineers in the creative problem-solving methods used by designers. Today, businesses of all kinds employ design thinking to adopt a people-centric strategy and, in doing so, reap the rewards of this time-tested method.
Design thinking allows stakeholders to set aside preconceived notions and investigate alternate solutions, which is one of its primary benefits. Participants are encouraged to question presumptions and consider alternative strategies throughout the entire process. Trying new things before limiting their options is beneficial for firms.
In order to accomplish a meaningful and significant digital transformation, SMEs can utilize the model to re-imagine their present ways of working, including how they communicate with their customers, how they engage their workers, and how their organization functions.
Stakeholders can stand back from “the way things are” and imagine what their ideal future state might seem with the use of design thinking. This strategy, which places collaboration at its core, aids in creating a shared vision of where the company may go and what more it can accomplish. This thus clarifies their current location (point A) and desired destination (point B).
The technology solutions might be thought of as “digital enablers” that will empower companies to be disruptive, flexible, and innovative. It aids in bridging the A to B gap and bringing that group vision to life, which in turn aids companies in gaining a competitive edge.
It is more crucial than ever to keep a competitive edge in light of the constantly shifting expectations of customers, growing market rivalry, and changing regulatory landscape.
Chapter 4: Data Governance
The customer experience of a business throughout an IT transition may be maintained and continually improved in a number of ways with optimal data governance.
An organization depends on its data to function. Customers and workers are important, but they may come and leave over time. Because of this, companies that depend on humans for institutional knowledge are particularly at risk. When handled properly, the information belonging to your business should endure forever.
The maintenance and ongoing enhancement of an organization’s customer experience can be impacted in a number of different ways by optimal data governance. Although each business has its own set of concerns, one thing is always certain: data governance is essential to a company’s strategic development, long-term viability, and operational excellence.
Let’s look at a few aspects of how data governance affects the customer experience before going into more detail about these and other issues in this course manual.
Speed to Impact
Which is faster: traveling 10 miles on the subway with just one stop and never having to change trains, or traveling 10 miles and having to change trains three times with three to four stops each?
The solution is obvious. It follows that the easier it will be to make an impact on both your business and its customers, the more easily your data is integrated and normalized.
The obstacles teams and customers must overcome in order to obtain important information are reduced by good data governance. This is frequently done concurrently with or shortly after a digital transformation project, which may be necessary to connect data sources in the first place. The work done to link, standardize, and analyze all of the information gathered is then maintained by data governance.
Data Governance Speeds Cross-Team Collaboration
Have you ever been told by a coworker from a different department that their data indicates one thing but yours indicates something quite different?
One of the issues that strong data governance may address is the difference in ownership of segregated data by various departments and teams. Everyone should be able to view and own company data. You won’t ever strike any targets precisely because there are various versions of the reality. Nobody will be able to agree on when you’ve reached them, if for no other reason (though there are several) than because they’ll all be comparing separate numbers!
Data sources are normalized by data governance. When done correctly, it enables the interpretation and analysis of data from even the largest organization without the need for time-consuming translation efforts. As a result, your teams can make deft decisions more rapidly since they are conversant in the same language.
Data Governance Enables Real-Time Enhancements
Would you rather wait until your next visit to your favorite place to receive top-notch customer service? When put that way, the answer is clear, but so many companies only gather information that could affect the outcome after a client has had an encounter.
I’m speaking of the different customer survey results, such as the customer satisfaction (CSAT), net promoter score (NPS), or customer effort score (CES). While these are important components of a successful CX measuring campaign, businesses are losing out if they don’t also include journey orchestration and real-time customer data in their plans.
Through the use of customer journey orchestration, a company is able to change and personalize a customer’s experience in real-time by gathering information from a variety of sources and using that information to make informed choices about the options and offers to make available. Although it may seem like the ideal situation for both customers and the business, it actually calls for data sources to be consolidated and linked across channels and settings.
Here is where sound data governance is important. Even though many automated duties can come under the purview of a particular division, such as marketing or customer support, the information required to customize and improve any of those experiences frequently originates from platforms and teams that span the whole company. All of these sources, technologies, and procedures are brought together by effective data governance, which also guarantees that customers receive precise and significant customisation across a range of experiences.
You can see that data governance can significantly affect how the customer experience is provided, assessed, and improved. It can improve teamwork and enable more individualized service for clients. Any business might be significantly impacted by all of this.
Silos prevent excellent customer experiences
Silo mentality prevents critical information from being shared throughout a business, especially during an IT transformation, as was briefly addressed in the previous chapter. Teams that are free of barriers are not only more creative and productive, which increases the success of the business, but they also provide better client experiences. The creation of barrier-free businesses and outstanding customer experiences is possible with a little assistance from technology.
Which silos can you identify?
The phrase “silo effect” describes a situation in which information is not sufficiently shared across an organization but instead is kept segregated inside teams or by other obvious obstacles. Divergent organizational unit goals are frequently the source of silos. When discussing silos, it’s easy to overlook how they are seen as barriers to collaboration, poor performance, and positive customer experiences.
Knowledge of (the consumer) is the basis for the finest decisions. But because of time constraints and information gaps, decisions in day-to-day business are frequently dependent on assumptions. The information that is sought after is frequently used to support judgments or expedite processes that the company already uses. Simply put, we’re ignorant of it.
Silos confuse the customer
Consider a business that has departments for sales, marketing, and customer service. The objectives of these divisions can be summed up as follows: the marketing specialists seek to influence potential consumers; the sales staff concentrate on learning about interested clients and their wants; and the customer service team assists customers with their particular issues.
Sharing data amongst these teams would be advantageous for all of them. If the marketing staff knew the sales team and the current customers, they might improve targeting. The sales team might make the appropriate contact with potential clients using marketing data. If the customer care staff understood exactly what the consumer had purchased and what kind of information peaked their interest, they could assist customers more quickly.
Unfortunately, most company teams exist in their individual silos with a constrained view of the customer rather than sharing the same customer knowledge and enhancing it with team-specific information. These silos can easily be seen by the consumer as a breakdown in communication, conflicting information, a lack of service, or other types of poor customer experiences.
A no-brainer solution?
There are several reasons for information silos, but one major issue is that teams typically lack a platform to exchange their customer knowledge. Typically, data related to marketing, sales, and customer care is sent into many systems, each of which, in the worst case scenario, may force customers to visit distinct portals in order to learn more about the product or the company, place an order, or get customer assistance. Speaking of a positive client experience!
At this point, technology steps in to lend a hand and offers solutions to break down silos and create wonderful client experiences.
On the road to a fantastic customer experience, connecting sales, marketing, and support operations on one platform is essential. Different teams can access the whole body of knowledge the company has amassed about its customers in one location, which includes all of the marketing messages, offers, and assistance they have gotten, to name just a few. Better decisions may be made both within and across the teams with the use of this shared knowledge. Platform automation can take advantage of the data from every team, enabling more precise and pertinent actions to be made at scale. Even more, everything leads to wonderful and consistent consumer experiences.
A journey, not just a step
A one-for-all platform could appear to be a simple, obvious answer for knowledge exchange, yet silos are a real problem.
Implementing new technology is only one part of creating a platform that connects sales, marketing, and service within an organization. How should the teams be structured and coordinated to provide the greatest possible client experience?
Planning, onboarding, and change management are necessary for a shared platform shift to be effective. It is vital to realize that the change is not just one action that will instantly transform the company. The journey will permanently alter how the organization interacts with its customers.
Chapter 5: Harmonized CX
It’s time to put survival and cost-cutting concerns to rest in the post-pandemic age. Additionally, begin to consider the consumer experience more strategically.
The cross-channel consumer experience is one area that is likely due for a tune-up. When I say “cross,” I mean interactions where a customer must use more than one channel to make a transaction or obtain service. It is not sufficient to just provide many channels and let them “tune” themselves; they must collaborate harmoniously.
Similar to an orchestra with a skilled conductor, the overall experience is more important than how well each instrument sounds on its own. All performers/channels must be brought out to their best potential by the conductor.
Explosion of channels
Remember the “good old days,” when communicating with a customer required setting up a meeting, making a call from your office, or writing a letter?
Those times are certainly over. We continuously add new, primarily electronic channels, beginning with email in the 1980s and moving on to fax, mobile phones, chat, SMS, and now social media. Why? to deliver a more convenient service and, let’s face it, to reduce expenses. The cost of e-channels is significantly lower than that of phone agents or other human-assisted channels.
Sadly, interactions between channels aren’t always synchronized, which causes customers to repeat themselves when they go between channels. Additionally, social media platforms like Twitter for customer support have made matters more complicated.
Impact on loyalty and purchase rate
It’s probably a greater issue than you think if you own a major company that sells to hundreds or millions of customers. And to support that audacious claim, we have some studies.
According to a 2019 survey of “considered purchases” made by US consumers, 70% of large businesses acknowledged they forget client information from one touchpoint to the next. Additionally, 78% of customers said that they had to repeat information during complex (multi-touch) service encounters.
Stats are interesting, but so what? Well, customers who had to deal with businesses that had this “touchpoint amnesia”…
• had a 50% lower propensity to endorse that business.
• Saw buying rates drop from 24% to 35%
Did that get your attention?
If you still need more encouragement, consider that a ClickFox survey revealed that the biggest source of consumer annoyance was “having to communicate with many agents and beginning over every time.”
According to ClickFox, around 1500 of their contacts responded to the poll. Even though the sample was probably not completely representative, the results are nonetheless highly intriguing and helpful. Nobody will likely be surprised to learn that banks were the next most annoying company for customers, followed by cable and phone companies.
Cross-channel analytics
Currently, ClickFox has paved the way for cross-channel analysis, which they refer to as Customer Experience Analytics. They started working with customers utilizing IVR and phone channels a few years ago to try and determine why callers were choosing to call agents instead of the automated system. According to CMO Anna Convery, they have since added digital channels and social is in the pipeline.
Even though it’s obvious that some businesses could be reluctant to discuss their cross-channel experiences, our impression is that the market is still in its infancy and vendors are still lagging behind.
Unnamed corporation claimed that it took the management three years to properly commit and make a real budget commitment. As a result of poorly designed IVR systems that forced customers to call an agent, analytics revealed the full cost of unsatisfactory cross-channel interactions in agent call time savings. It lowers the experience and wastes agent time, which is a double whammy.
What has changed? The focus has shifted from cost reductions (such as reducing agents’ time) to a more mature understanding of the value of a positive customer experience since it lowers churn and increases revenue. A more growth-oriented perspective is undoubtedly supported by a strengthening economy.
But think about this before you use technology to solve the cross-channel issue. A crucial factor in success is organizational readiness. A “chief experience officer,” or someone who is in charge of the entire customer experience and answers to the CEO, is ideal. Cross-channel analytics connected to remuneration and rewards are also crucial. Otherwise, departmental “silos”-owned individual channels will continue to be optimized.
In this course manual, we’ll go into the topic and talk about how to develop a unified customer experience that will speed up your IT transition while ensuring that your customers are satisfied.
Curriculum
Leading IT Transformation – Workshop 18 – Customer Experience
- CX Challenges
- Customer Insights
- Design Thinking
- Data Governance
- Harmonized CX
Distance Learning
Introduction
Welcome to Appleton Greene and thank you for enrolling on the Leading IT Transformation corporate training program. You will be learning through our unique facilitation via distance-learning method, which will enable you to practically implement everything that you learn academically. The methods and materials used in your program have been designed and developed to ensure that you derive the maximum benefits and enjoyment possible. We hope that you find the program challenging and fun to do. However, if you have never been a distance-learner before, you may be experiencing some trepidation at the task before you. So we will get you started by giving you some basic information and guidance on how you can make the best use of the modules, how you should manage the materials and what you should be doing as you work through them. This guide is designed to point you in the right direction and help you to become an effective distance-learner. Take a few hours or so to study this guide and your guide to tutorial support for students, while making notes, before you start to study in earnest.
Study environment
You will need to locate a quiet and private place to study, preferably a room where you can easily be isolated from external disturbances or distractions. Make sure the room is well-lit and incorporates a relaxed, pleasant feel. If you can spoil yourself within your study environment, you will have much more of a chance to ensure that you are always in the right frame of mind when you do devote time to study. For example, a nice fire, the ability to play soft soothing background music, soft but effective lighting, perhaps a nice view if possible and a good size desk with a comfortable chair. Make sure that your family know when you are studying and understand your study rules. Your study environment is very important. The ideal situation, if at all possible, is to have a separate study, which can be devoted to you. If this is not possible then you will need to pay a lot more attention to developing and managing your study schedule, because it will affect other people as well as yourself. The better your study environment, the more productive you will be.
Study tools & rules
Try and make sure that your study tools are sufficient and in good working order. You will need to have access to a computer, scanner and printer, with access to the internet. You will need a very comfortable chair, which supports your lower back, and you will need a good filing system. It can be very frustrating if you are spending valuable study time trying to fix study tools that are unreliable, or unsuitable for the task. Make sure that your study tools are up to date. You will also need to consider some study rules. Some of these rules will apply to you and will be intended to help you to be more disciplined about when and how you study. This distance-learning guide will help you and after you have read it you can put some thought into what your study rules should be. You will also need to negotiate some study rules for your family, friends or anyone who lives with you. They too will need to be disciplined in order to ensure that they can support you while you study. It is important to ensure that your family and friends are an integral part of your study team. Having their support and encouragement can prove to be a crucial contribution to your successful completion of the program. Involve them in as much as you can.
Successful distance-learning
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes or workshops, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. But unlike traditional internal training courses, it is the student’s responsibility, with a distance-learning program, to ensure that they manage their own study contribution. This requires strong self-discipline and self-motivation skills and there must be a clear will to succeed. Those students who are used to managing themselves, are good at managing others and who enjoy working in isolation, are more likely to be good distance-learners. It is also important to be aware of the main reasons why you are studying and of the main objectives that you are hoping to achieve as a result. You will need to remind yourself of these objectives at times when you need to motivate yourself. Never lose sight of your long-term goals and your short-term objectives. There is nobody available here to pamper you, or to look after you, or to spoon-feed you with information, so you will need to find ways to encourage and appreciate yourself while you are studying. Make sure that you chart your study progress, so that you can be sure of your achievements and re-evaluate your goals and objectives regularly.
Self-assessment
Appleton Greene training programs are in all cases post-graduate programs. Consequently, you should already have obtained a business-related degree and be an experienced learner. You should therefore already be aware of your study strengths and weaknesses. For example, which time of the day are you at your most productive? Are you a lark or an owl? What study methods do you respond to the most? Are you a consistent learner? How do you discipline yourself? How do you ensure that you enjoy yourself while studying? It is important to understand yourself as a learner and so some self-assessment early on will be necessary if you are to apply yourself correctly. Perform a SWOT analysis on yourself as a student. List your internal strengths and weaknesses as a student and your external opportunities and threats. This will help you later on when you are creating a study plan. You can then incorporate features within your study plan that can ensure that you are playing to your strengths, while compensating for your weaknesses. You can also ensure that you make the most of your opportunities, while avoiding the potential threats to your success.
Accepting responsibility as a student
Training programs invariably require a significant investment, both in terms of what they cost and in the time that you need to contribute to study and the responsibility for successful completion of training programs rests entirely with the student. This is never more apparent than when a student is learning via distance-learning. Accepting responsibility as a student is an important step towards ensuring that you can successfully complete your training program. It is easy to instantly blame other people or factors when things go wrong. But the fact of the matter is that if a failure is your failure, then you have the power to do something about it, it is entirely in your own hands. If it is always someone else’s failure, then you are powerless to do anything about it. All students study in entirely different ways, this is because we are all individuals and what is right for one student, is not necessarily right for another. In order to succeed, you will have to accept personal responsibility for finding a way to plan, implement and manage a personal study plan that works for you. If you do not succeed, you only have yourself to blame.
Planning
By far the most critical contribution to stress, is the feeling of not being in control. In the absence of planning we tend to be reactive and can stumble from pillar to post in the hope that things will turn out fine in the end. Invariably they don’t! In order to be in control, we need to have firm ideas about how and when we want to do things. We also need to consider as many possible eventualities as we can, so that we are prepared for them when they happen. Prescriptive Change, is far easier to manage and control, than Emergent Change. The same is true with distance-learning. It is much easier and much more enjoyable, if you feel that you are in control and that things are going to plan. Even when things do go wrong, you are prepared for them and can act accordingly without any unnecessary stress. It is important therefore that you do take time to plan your studies properly.
Management
Once you have developed a clear study plan, it is of equal importance to ensure that you manage the implementation of it. Most of us usually enjoy planning, but it is usually during implementation when things go wrong. Targets are not met and we do not understand why. Sometimes we do not even know if targets are being met. It is not enough for us to conclude that the study plan just failed. If it is failing, you will need to understand what you can do about it. Similarly if your study plan is succeeding, it is still important to understand why, so that you can improve upon your success. You therefore need to have guidelines for self-assessment so that you can be consistent with performance improvement throughout the program. If you manage things correctly, then your performance should constantly improve throughout the program.
Study objectives & tasks
The first place to start is developing your program objectives. These should feature your reasons for undertaking the training program in order of priority. Keep them succinct and to the point in order to avoid confusion. Do not just write the first things that come into your head because they are likely to be too similar to each other. Make a list of possible departmental headings, such as: Customer Service; E-business; Finance; Globalization; Human Resources; Technology; Legal; Management; Marketing and Production. Then brainstorm for ideas by listing as many things that you want to achieve under each heading and later re-arrange these things in order of priority. Finally, select the top item from each department heading and choose these as your program objectives. Try and restrict yourself to five because it will enable you to focus clearly. It is likely that the other things that you listed will be achieved if each of the top objectives are achieved. If this does not prove to be the case, then simply work through the process again.
Study forecast
As a guide, the Appleton Greene Leading IT Transformation corporate training program should take 12-18 months to complete, depending upon your availability and current commitments. The reason why there is such a variance in time estimates is because every student is an individual, with differing productivity levels and different commitments. These differentiations are then exaggerated by the fact that this is a distance-learning program, which incorporates the practical integration of academic theory as an as a part of the training program. Consequently all of the project studies are real, which means that important decisions and compromises need to be made. You will want to get things right and will need to be patient with your expectations in order to ensure that they are. We would always recommend that you are prudent with your own task and time forecasts, but you still need to develop them and have a clear indication of what are realistic expectations in your case. With reference to your time planning: consider the time that you can realistically dedicate towards study with the program every week; calculate how long it should take you to complete the program, using the guidelines featured here; then break the program down into logical modules and allocate a suitable proportion of time to each of them, these will be your milestones; you can create a time plan by using a spreadsheet on your computer, or a personal organizer such as MS Outlook, you could also use a financial forecasting software; break your time forecasts down into manageable chunks of time, the more specific you can be, the more productive and accurate your time management will be; finally, use formulas where possible to do your time calculations for you, because this will help later on when your forecasts need to change in line with actual performance. With reference to your task planning: refer to your list of tasks that need to be undertaken in order to achieve your program objectives; with reference to your time plan, calculate when each task should be implemented; remember that you are not estimating when your objectives will be achieved, but when you will need to focus upon implementing the corresponding tasks; you also need to ensure that each task is implemented in conjunction with the associated training modules which are relevant; then break each single task down into a list of specific to do’s, say approximately ten to do’s for each task and enter these into your study plan; once again you could use MS Outlook to incorporate both your time and task planning and this could constitute your study plan; you could also use a project management software like MS Project. You should now have a clear and realistic forecast detailing when you can expect to be able to do something about undertaking the tasks to achieve your program objectives.
Performance management
It is one thing to develop your study forecast, it is quite another to monitor your progress. Ultimately it is less important whether you achieve your original study forecast and more important that you update it so that it constantly remains realistic in line with your performance. As you begin to work through the program, you will begin to have more of an idea about your own personal performance and productivity levels as a distance-learner. Once you have completed your first study module, you should re-evaluate your study forecast for both time and tasks, so that they reflect your actual performance level achieved. In order to achieve this you must first time yourself while training by using an alarm clock. Set the alarm for hourly intervals and make a note of how far you have come within that time. You can then make a note of your actual performance on your study plan and then compare your performance against your forecast. Then consider the reasons that have contributed towards your performance level, whether they are positive or negative and make a considered adjustment to your future forecasts as a result. Given time, you should start achieving your forecasts regularly.
With reference to time management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual time taken in your study plan; consider your successes with time-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; consider your failures with time-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to time planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your time expectations. You need to be consistent with your time management, otherwise you will never complete your studies. This will either be because you are not contributing enough time to your studies, or you will become less efficient with the time that you do allocate to your studies. Remember, if you are not in control of your studies, they can just become yet another cause of stress for you.
With reference to your task management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual tasks that you have undertaken in your study plan; consider your successes with task-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case; take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; consider your failures with task-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to task planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your task expectations. You need to be consistent with your task management, otherwise you will never know whether you are achieving your program objectives or not.
Keeping in touch
You will have access to qualified and experienced professors and tutors who are responsible for providing tutorial support for your particular training program. So don’t be shy about letting them know how you are getting on. We keep electronic records of all tutorial support emails so that professors and tutors can review previous correspondence before considering an individual response. It also means that there is a record of all communications between you and your professors and tutors and this helps to avoid any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation. If you have a problem relating to the program, share it with them via email. It is likely that they have come across the same problem before and are usually able to make helpful suggestions and steer you in the right direction. To learn more about when and how to use tutorial support, please refer to the Tutorial Support section of this student information guide. This will help you to ensure that you are making the most of tutorial support that is available to you and will ultimately contribute towards your success and enjoyment with your training program.
Work colleagues and family
You should certainly discuss your program study progress with your colleagues, friends and your family. Appleton Greene training programs are very practical. They require you to seek information from other people, to plan, develop and implement processes with other people and to achieve feedback from other people in relation to viability and productivity. You will therefore have plenty of opportunities to test your ideas and enlist the views of others. People tend to be sympathetic towards distance-learners, so don’t bottle it all up in yourself. Get out there and share it! It is also likely that your family and colleagues are going to benefit from your labors with the program, so they are likely to be much more interested in being involved than you might think. Be bold about delegating work to those who might benefit themselves. This is a great way to achieve understanding and commitment from people who you may later rely upon for process implementation. Share your experiences with your friends and family.
Making it relevant
The key to successful learning is to make it relevant to your own individual circumstances. At all times you should be trying to make bridges between the content of the program and your own situation. Whether you achieve this through quiet reflection or through interactive discussion with your colleagues, client partners or your family, remember that it is the most important and rewarding aspect of translating your studies into real self-improvement. You should be clear about how you want the program to benefit you. This involves setting clear study objectives in relation to the content of the course in terms of understanding, concepts, completing research or reviewing activities and relating the content of the modules to your own situation. Your objectives may understandably change as you work through the program, in which case you should enter the revised objectives on your study plan so that you have a permanent reminder of what you are trying to achieve, when and why.
Distance-learning check-list
Prepare your study environment, your study tools and rules.
Undertake detailed self-assessment in terms of your ability as a learner.
Create a format for your study plan.
Consider your study objectives and tasks.
Create a study forecast.
Assess your study performance.
Re-evaluate your study forecast.
Be consistent when managing your study plan.
Use your Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) for tutorial support.
Make sure you keep in touch with those around you.
Tutorial Support
Programs
Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. They are implemented over a sustainable period of time and professional support is consistently provided by qualified learning providers and specialist consultants.
Support available
You will have a designated Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and an Accredited Consultant and we encourage you to communicate with them as much as possible. In all cases tutorial support is provided online because we can then keep a record of all communications to ensure that tutorial support remains consistent. You would also be forwarding your work to the tutorial support unit for evaluation and assessment. You will receive individual feedback on all of the work that you undertake on a one-to-one basis, together with specific recommendations for anything that may need to be changed in order to achieve a pass with merit or a pass with distinction and you then have as many opportunities as you may need to re-submit project studies until they meet with the required standard. Consequently the only reason that you should really fail (CLP) is if you do not do the work. It makes no difference to us whether a student takes 12 months or 18 months to complete the program, what matters is that in all cases the same quality standard will have been achieved.
Support Process
Please forward all of your future emails to the designated (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit email address that has been provided and please do not duplicate or copy your emails to other AGC email accounts as this will just cause unnecessary administration. Please note that emails are always answered as quickly as possible but you will need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general tutorial support emails during busy periods, because emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. You will also need to allow a period of up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Please therefore kindly allow for this within your time planning. All communications are managed online via email because it enables tutorial service support managers to review other communications which have been received before responding and it ensures that there is a copy of all communications retained on file for future reference. All communications will be stored within your personal (CLP) study file here at Appleton Greene throughout your designated study period. If you need any assistance or clarification at any time, please do not hesitate to contact us by forwarding an email and remember that we are here to help. If you have any questions, please list and number your questions succinctly and you can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each and every query.
Time Management
It takes approximately 1 Year to complete the Leading IT Transformation corporate training program, incorporating 12 x 6-hour monthly workshops. Each student will also need to contribute approximately 4 hours per week over 1 Year of their personal time. Students can study from home or work at their own pace and are responsible for managing their own study plan. There are no formal examinations and students are evaluated and assessed based upon their project study submissions, together with the quality of their internal analysis and supporting documents. They can contribute more time towards study when they have the time to do so and can contribute less time when they are busy. All students tend to be in full time employment while studying and the Leading IT Transformation program is purposely designed to accommodate this, so there is plenty of flexibility in terms of time management. It makes no difference to us at Appleton Greene, whether individuals take 12-18 months to complete this program. What matters is that in all cases the same standard of quality will have been achieved with the standard and bespoke programs that have been developed.
Distance Learning Guide
The distance learning guide should be your first port of call when starting your training program. It will help you when you are planning how and when to study, how to create the right environment and how to establish the right frame of mind. If you can lay the foundations properly during the planning stage, then it will contribute to your enjoyment and productivity while training later. The guide helps to change your lifestyle in order to accommodate time for study and to cultivate good study habits. It helps you to chart your progress so that you can measure your performance and achieve your goals. It explains the tools that you will need for study and how to make them work. It also explains how to translate academic theory into practical reality. Spend some time now working through your distance learning guide and make sure that you have firm foundations in place so that you can make the most of your distance learning program. There is no requirement for you to attend training workshops or classes at Appleton Greene offices. The entire program is undertaken online, program course manuals and project studies are administered via the Appleton Greene web site and via email, so you are able to study at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office as long as you have a computer and access to the internet.
How To Study
The how to study guide provides students with a clear understanding of the Appleton Greene facilitation via distance learning training methods and enables students to obtain a clear overview of the training program content. It enables students to understand the step-by-step training methods used by Appleton Greene and how course manuals are integrated with project studies. It explains the research and development that is required and the need to provide evidence and references to support your statements. It also enables students to understand precisely what will be required of them in order to achieve a pass with merit and a pass with distinction for individual project studies and provides useful guidance on how to be innovative and creative when developing your Unique Program Proposition (UPP).
Tutorial Support
Tutorial support for the Appleton Greene Leading IT Transformation corporate training program is provided online either through the Appleton Greene Client Support Portal (CSP), or via email. All tutorial support requests are facilitated by a designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). They are responsible for deciding which professor or tutor is the most appropriate option relating to the support required and then the tutorial support request is forwarded onto them. Once the professor or tutor has completed the tutorial support request and answered any questions that have been asked, this communication is then returned to the student via email by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). This enables all tutorial support, between students, professors and tutors, to be facilitated by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM) efficiently and securely through the email account. You will therefore need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general support queries and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because all tutorial support requests are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Consequently you need to put some thought into the management of your tutorial support procedure in order to ensure that your study plan is feasible and to obtain the maximum possible benefit from tutorial support during your period of study. Please retain copies of your tutorial support emails for future reference. Please ensure that ALL of your tutorial support emails are set out using the format as suggested within your guide to tutorial support. Your tutorial support emails need to be referenced clearly to the specific part of the course manual or project study which you are working on at any given time. You also need to list and number any questions that you would like to ask, up to a maximum of five questions within each tutorial support email. Remember the more specific you can be with your questions the more specific your answers will be too and this will help you to avoid any unnecessary misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or duplication. The guide to tutorial support is intended to help you to understand how and when to use support in order to ensure that you get the most out of your training program. Appleton Greene training programs are designed to enable you to do things for yourself. They provide you with a structure or a framework and we use tutorial support to facilitate students while they practically implement what they learn. In other words, we are enabling students to do things for themselves. The benefits of distance learning via facilitation are considerable and are much more sustainable in the long-term than traditional short-term knowledge sharing programs. Consequently you should learn how and when to use tutorial support so that you can maximize the benefits from your learning experience with Appleton Greene. This guide describes the purpose of each training function and how to use them and how to use tutorial support in relation to each aspect of the training program. It also provides useful tips and guidance with regard to best practice.
Tutorial Support Tips
Students are often unsure about how and when to use tutorial support with Appleton Greene. This Tip List will help you to understand more about how to achieve the most from using tutorial support. Refer to it regularly to ensure that you are continuing to use the service properly. Tutorial support is critical to the success of your training experience, but it is important to understand when and how to use it in order to maximize the benefit that you receive. It is no coincidence that those students who succeed are those that learn how to be positive, proactive and productive when using tutorial support.
Be positive and friendly with your tutorial support emails
Remember that if you forward an email to the tutorial support unit, you are dealing with real people. “Do unto others as you would expect others to do unto you”. If you are positive, complimentary and generally friendly in your emails, you will generate a similar response in return. This will be more enjoyable, productive and rewarding for you in the long-term.
Think about the impression that you want to create
Every time that you communicate, you create an impression, which can be either positive or negative, so put some thought into the impression that you want to create. Remember that copies of all tutorial support emails are stored electronically and tutors will always refer to prior correspondence before responding to any current emails. Over a period of time, a general opinion will be arrived at in relation to your character, attitude and ability. Try to manage your own frustrations, mood swings and temperament professionally, without involving the tutorial support team. Demonstrating frustration or a lack of patience is a weakness and will be interpreted as such. The good thing about communicating in writing, is that you will have the time to consider your content carefully, you can review it and proof-read it before sending your email to Appleton Greene and this should help you to communicate more professionally, consistently and to avoid any unnecessary knee-jerk reactions to individual situations as and when they may arise. Please also remember that the CLP Tutorial Support Unit will not just be responsible for evaluating and assessing the quality of your work, they will also be responsible for providing recommendations to other learning providers and to client contacts within the Appleton Greene global client network, so do be in control of your own emotions and try to create a good impression.
Remember that quality is preferred to quantity
Please remember that when you send an email to the tutorial support team, you are not using Twitter or Text Messaging. Try not to forward an email every time that you have a thought. This will not prove to be productive either for you or for the tutorial support team. Take time to prepare your communications properly, as if you were writing a professional letter to a business colleague and make a list of queries that you are likely to have and then incorporate them within one email, say once every month, so that the tutorial support team can understand more about context, application and your methodology for study. Get yourself into a consistent routine with your tutorial support requests and use the tutorial support template provided with ALL of your emails. The (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit will not spoon-feed you with information. They need to be able to evaluate and assess your tutorial support requests carefully and professionally.
Be specific about your questions in order to receive specific answers
Try not to write essays by thinking as you are writing tutorial support emails. The tutorial support unit can be unclear about what in fact you are asking, or what you are looking to achieve. Be specific about asking questions that you want answers to. Number your questions. You will then receive specific answers to each and every question. This is the main purpose of tutorial support via email.
Keep a record of your tutorial support emails
It is important that you keep a record of all tutorial support emails that are forwarded to you. You can then refer to them when necessary and it avoids any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Individual training workshops or telephone support
Please be advised that Appleton Greene does not provide separate or individual tutorial support meetings, workshops, or provide telephone support for individual students. Appleton Greene is an equal opportunities learning and service provider and we are therefore understandably bound to treat all students equally. We cannot therefore broker special financial or study arrangements with individual students regardless of the circumstances. All tutorial support is provided online and this enables Appleton Greene to keep a record of all communications between students, professors and tutors on file for future reference, in accordance with our quality management procedure and your terms and conditions of enrolment. All tutorial support is provided online via email because it enables us to have time to consider support content carefully, it ensures that you receive a considered and detailed response to your queries. You can number questions that you would like to ask, which relate to things that you do not understand or where clarification may be required. You can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each individual query. You will also then have a record of these communications and of all tutorial support, which has been provided to you. This makes tutorial support administration more productive by avoiding any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Tutorial Support Email Format
You should use this tutorial support format if you need to request clarification or assistance while studying with your training program. Please note that ALL of your tutorial support request emails should use the same format. You should therefore set up a standard email template, which you can then use as and when you need to. Emails that are forwarded to Appleton Greene, which do not use the following format, may be rejected and returned to you by the (CLP) Program Administration Manager. A detailed response will then be forwarded to you via email usually within 20 business days of receipt for general support queries and 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Your tutorial support request, together with the corresponding TSU reply, will then be saved and stored within your electronic TSU file at Appleton Greene for future reference.
Subject line of your email
Please insert: Appleton Greene (CLP) Tutorial Support Request: (Your Full Name) (Date), within the subject line of your email.
Main body of your email
Please insert:
1. Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) Tutorial Support Request
2. Your Full Name
3. Date of TS request
4. Preferred email address
5. Backup email address
6. Course manual page name or number (reference)
7. Project study page name or number (reference)
Subject of enquiry
Please insert a maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Briefly outline the subject matter of your inquiry, or what your questions relate to.
Question 1
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 3
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 4
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 5
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Please note that a maximum of 5 questions is permitted with each individual tutorial support request email.
Procedure
* List the questions that you want to ask first, then re-arrange them in order of priority. Make sure that you reference them, where necessary, to the course manuals or project studies.
* Make sure that you are specific about your questions and number them. Try to plan the content within your emails to make sure that it is relevant.
* Make sure that your tutorial support emails are set out correctly, using the Tutorial Support Email Format provided here.
* Save a copy of your email and incorporate the date sent after the subject title. Keep your tutorial support emails within the same file and in date order for easy reference.
* Allow up to 20 business days for a response to general tutorial support emails and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because detailed individual responses will be made in all cases and tutorial support emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received.
* Emails can and do get lost. So if you have not received a reply within the appropriate time, forward another copy or a reminder to the tutorial support unit to be sure that it has been received but do not forward reminders unless the appropriate time has elapsed.
* When you receive a reply, save it immediately featuring the date of receipt after the subject heading for easy reference. In most cases the tutorial support unit replies to your questions individually, so you will have a record of the questions that you asked as well as the answers offered. With project studies however, separate emails are usually forwarded by the tutorial support unit, so do keep a record of your own original emails as well.
* Remember to be positive and friendly in your emails. You are dealing with real people who will respond to the same things that you respond to.
* Try not to repeat questions that have already been asked in previous emails. If this happens the tutorial support unit will probably just refer you to the appropriate answers that have already been provided within previous emails.
* If you lose your tutorial support email records you can write to Appleton Greene to receive a copy of your tutorial support file, but a separate administration charge may be levied for this service.
How To Study
Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can help you to plan a task list for getting started so that you can be clear about your direction and your priorities in relation to your training program. It is also a good way to introduce yourself to the tutorial support team.
Planning your study environment
Your study conditions are of great importance and will have a direct effect on how much you enjoy your training program. Consider how much space you will have, whether it is comfortable and private and whether you are likely to be disturbed. The study tools and facilities at your disposal are also important to the success of your distance-learning experience. Your tutorial support unit can help with useful tips and guidance, regardless of your starting position. It is important to get this right before you start working on your training program.
Planning your program objectives
It is important that you have a clear list of study objectives, in order of priority, before you start working on your training program. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance here to ensure that your study objectives have been afforded due consideration and priority.
Planning how and when to study
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. This approach is designed to let you study efficiently away from the traditional classroom environment. It is important however, that you plan how and when to study, so that you are making the most of your natural attributes, strengths and opportunities. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance and useful tips to ensure that you are playing to your strengths.
Planning your study tasks
You should have a clear understanding of the study tasks that you should be undertaking and the priority associated with each task. These tasks should also be integrated with your program objectives. The distance learning guide and the guide to tutorial support for students should help you here, but if you need any clarification or assistance, please contact your tutorial support unit.
Planning your time
You will need to allocate specific times during your calendar when you intend to study if you are to have a realistic chance of completing your program on time. You are responsible for planning and managing your own study time, so it is important that you are successful with this. Your tutorial support unit can help you with this if your time plan is not working.
Keeping in touch
Consistency is the key here. If you communicate too frequently in short bursts, or too infrequently with no pattern, then your management ability with your studies will be questioned, both by you and by your tutorial support unit. It is obvious when a student is in control and when one is not and this will depend how able you are at sticking with your study plan. Inconsistency invariably leads to in-completion.
Charting your progress
Your tutorial support team can help you to chart your own study progress. Refer to your distance learning guide for further details.
Making it work
To succeed, all that you will need to do is apply yourself to undertaking your training program and interpreting it correctly. Success or failure lies in your hands and your hands alone, so be sure that you have a strategy for making it work. Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can guide you through the process of program planning, development and implementation.
Reading methods
Interpretation is often unique to the individual but it can be improved and even quantified by implementing consistent interpretation methods. Interpretation can be affected by outside interference such as family members, TV, or the Internet, or simply by other thoughts which are demanding priority in our minds. One thing that can improve our productivity is using recognized reading methods. This helps us to focus and to be more structured when reading information for reasons of importance, rather than relaxation.
Speed reading
When reading through course manuals for the first time, subconsciously set your reading speed to be just fast enough that you cannot dwell on individual words or tables. With practice, you should be able to read an A4 sheet of paper in one minute. You will not achieve much in the way of a detailed understanding, but your brain will retain a useful overview. This overview will be important later on and will enable you to keep individual issues in perspective with a more generic picture because speed reading appeals to the memory part of the brain. Do not worry about what you do or do not remember at this stage.
Content reading
Once you have speed read everything, you can then start work in earnest. You now need to read a particular section of your course manual thoroughly, by making detailed notes while you read. This process is called Content Reading and it will help to consolidate your understanding and interpretation of the information that has been provided.
Making structured notes on the course manuals
When you are content reading, you should be making detailed notes, which are both structured and informative. Make these notes in a MS Word document on your computer, because you can then amend and update these as and when you deem it to be necessary. List your notes under three headings: 1. Interpretation – 2. Questions – 3. Tasks. The purpose of the 1st section is to clarify your interpretation by writing it down. The purpose of the 2nd section is to list any questions that the issue raises for you. The purpose of the 3rd section is to list any tasks that you should undertake as a result. Anyone who has graduated with a business-related degree should already be familiar with this process.
Organizing structured notes separately
You should then transfer your notes to a separate study notebook, preferably one that enables easy referencing, such as a MS Word Document, a MS Excel Spreadsheet, a MS Access Database, or a personal organizer on your cell phone. Transferring your notes allows you to have the opportunity of cross-checking and verifying them, which assists considerably with understanding and interpretation. You will also find that the better you are at doing this, the more chance you will have of ensuring that you achieve your study objectives.
Question your understanding
Do challenge your understanding. Explain things to yourself in your own words by writing things down.
Clarifying your understanding
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your understanding.
Question your interpretation
Do challenge your interpretation. Qualify your interpretation by writing it down.
Clarifying your interpretation
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your interpretation.
Qualification Requirements
The student will need to successfully complete the project study and all of the exercises relating to the Leading IT Transformation corporate training program, achieving a pass with merit or distinction in each case, in order to qualify as an Accredited Leading IT Transformation Specialist (ALITTS). All monthly workshops need to be tried and tested within your company. These project studies can be completed in your own time and at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office. There are no formal examinations, assessment is based upon the successful completion of the project studies. They are called project studies because, unlike case studies, these projects are not theoretical, they incorporate real program processes that need to be properly researched and developed. The project studies assist us in measuring your understanding and interpretation of the training program and enable us to assess qualification merits. All of the project studies are based entirely upon the content within the training program and they enable you to integrate what you have learnt into your corporate training practice.
Leading IT Transformation – Grading Contribution
Project Study – Grading Contribution
Customer Service – 10%
E-business – 05%
Finance – 10%
Globalization – 10%
Human Resources – 10%
Information Technology – 10%
Legal – 05%
Management – 10%
Marketing – 10%
Production – 10%
Education – 05%
Logistics – 05%
TOTAL GRADING – 100%
Qualification grades
A mark of 90% = Pass with Distinction.
A mark of 75% = Pass with Merit.
A mark of less than 75% = Fail.
If you fail to achieve a mark of 75% with a project study, you will receive detailed feedback from the Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and/or Accredited Consultant, together with a list of tasks which you will need to complete, in order to ensure that your project study meets with the minimum quality standard that is required by Appleton Greene. You can then re-submit your project study for further evaluation and assessment. Indeed you can re-submit as many drafts of your project studies as you need to, until such a time as they eventually meet with the required standard by Appleton Greene, so you need not worry about this, it is all part of the learning process.
When marking project studies, Appleton Greene is looking for sufficient evidence of the following:
Pass with merit
A satisfactory level of program understanding
A satisfactory level of program interpretation
A satisfactory level of project study content presentation
A satisfactory level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
A satisfactory level of the practical integration of academic theory
Pass with distinction
An exceptional level of program understanding
An exceptional level of program interpretation
An exceptional level of project study content presentation
An exceptional level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
An exceptional level of the practical integration of academic theory
Preliminary Analysis
Online Article
“Customer Experience And Digital Transformation: Challenges And Opportunities
By Pavel Orlov,
Forbes
As a Co-Founder at Innowise Group with 20-year experience in software engineering, Pavel loves helping businesses grow through technology.
Big Changes In The Financial Services Industry
It is uncommon for people to contact their banks unless they have to, and those interactions should be as smooth as possible. Accordingly, more than 80% of clients in financial services consider customer experience one of their top three priorities.
There is no denying that digital transformation is here to stay. Financial services companies have never been more focused on technology adoption and customer experience. The increased exposure to the digital world means customers expect cutting-edge capabilities and smooth digital experiences from companies.
Digital Or Brick-And-Mortar?
Due to the current focus on digital transformation, there seems to be a misperception that bank branches are doomed to extinction. In fact, despite technological advancements, many people still prefer face-to-face communication. Rather than completely replacing conventional relationships, digital transformation is intended to enhance them.
Some customers prefer to make payments from a desktop computer and enjoy checking balances on mobile phones. Others prefer to apply for a loan online by filling out a brief application. Nevertheless, more than two-thirds of customers still value having a local branch nearby.
One of the permanent difficulties and opportunities of digital banking is finding a middle ground where banks can serve the needs of all their clients and still accelerate transformation at the same time.
Enhancing Customer Engagement Through Contactless Self-Service
According to Harvard Business Review, today’s customers expect to self-serve. As financial institutions recognize the importance of giving customers more control over their experiences, they are improving self-service, implementing artificial intelligence, enhancing natural language processing, and automating business processes to provide a more effective, contactless customer experience.
Providing Seamless Customer Experiences Through Digital Transformation
Keeping track of consumer behavior is one of the most important things financial institutions should do. Since cashless payments are becoming the norm, switching between multiple channels of communication is no longer an option but a requirement. The cloud is important, too. In an increasingly cloud-based world, financial services companies will need to move their information systems as they scale their operations rapidly.
Prioritizing Cybersecurity And Data Integrity
According to HBR Analytic Services, as fraud incidences rise, managing them has become a significant concern for the financial services sector. Financial services companies should always remember that customers have high expectations for the protection and safety of their sensitive information. Consequently, businesses need to ensure their digital operations are protected from cyber threats while maintaining a balance between providing first-rate customer service and implementing strong security policies.
Scalable Security Issues
When it comes to banks that are undergoing or are considering a digital transformation, the security of the IT infrastructure and data in those IT systems remains one of the major concerns.
A modern banking environment contains hundreds or even thousands of networked computers. Incorporating mobile, cloud and social channels increases the possible attack surface tremendously.
Fortunately, the banking industry’s digital transformation is also fueling the demand for customized security and compliance solutions that can scale. With modern security technologies of data exchange and encryption protocols, any bank can now safeguard virtually any digital asset, regardless of how extensive its portfolio may be.
Eliminating Outdated Software
Consumers want a banking experience that is much greater than what traditional banking systems can offer. However, many banks lack technological competence. There is a strong need for an upgrade in back-office technology because many large financial systems are based on out-of-date programming languages, so they cannot function properly in today’s digital world.
The transition from outdated legacy banking systems to sophisticated digitally connected environments can be challenging. There is a substantial amount of upfront investment involved in customizing processes, building software and integrating it with external systems, and maintaining security. Investing in staff training is also essential if banks want to maximize ROI.
Compared to older technology, the newer platforms are intrinsically safer and more compatible with compliance regulations because they are readily available for monitoring security. This demonstrates to your customers that you are serious about protecting their privacy.
CRM And Process Automation
Automation can increase the efficiency of back-office processes. Banks can save significant time, resources and money by automating everyday administrative tasks and solving problems. Additionally, automation encourages banks to digitize unstructured data to allow their employees and systems to access as much information as possible. When all data is in one system, banks can continue to innovate and provide secure, digital products to remain competitive.
Another advantage of digitization is that it can improve customer service. Virtual assistants and chatbots relieve customer service centers of simple queries and give them more time to assist customers with more complicated issues. Customer service agents can also use automated systems to build a comprehensive portrait of the customer based on data held across the entire bank, enabling them to offer more personalized service (and enhance bank product offerings).
With CRM, each department can access the same information across all client profiles while establishing individual triggers for offering additional services. Employees can use detailed customer profiles generated from marketing, sales and service data to identify new lead conversion opportunities. Because they won’t have to start from scratch every time an interdepartmental lead enters the funnel, they’ll be able to provide a more seamless and personalized experience for the consumer while also streamlining the conversion process.
Customer Service Re-Imagined
Customer experience is increasingly reliant on technology. Emerging FinTech companies are putting banks under intense competition, capitalizing on their inability to keep up with digital innovation. With today’s high customer expectations, finding the right tools to provide smart and scalable customer service has become increasingly important. For a better customer experience, companies operating in the financial sector need to provide personalized, multichannel services and manage extensive communication channels.”
If you would like to view the original article, please visit: www.forbes.com
Online Article
“If you’re not focusing on customer experience in digital transformation, you’re losing value
By sheryl estrada,
Fortune
“Digital transformation is not just around automating your processes, doing a back office discipline, and making sure that you’re becoming more productive. There’s another piece that you have to do—the transformation around interacting with your customers. Doing both, a company can become ‘future ready.’” That’s what Stephanie L. Woerner, principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, told me.
Woerner, also the director of MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research (CISR), is a co-author of the new book, Future Ready: The Four Pathways to Capturing Digital Value, along with fellow MIT research scientists Peter Weill and Ina Sebastian.
Since CFOs are increasingly at the center of major technology transformations, I asked Woerner to share some of the highlights of the research. The four pathways include: focusing on operational efficiency and fixing complexity first; focusing on customer experience first and eventually fixing complexities; addressing both in iterative steps; or just starting from scratch and creating a digital-native business unit. All pathways, or a combination, are said to be viable when looking at financial performance.
It’s vital to communicate and create a common language for the pathway so that everyone in the company understands and uses it to describe the journey, according to the research.
Companies that are “future ready,” by executing a digital transformation have significantly higher financial performance—with average revenue growth of 17.3 percentage points and net margins of 14 percentage points above industry averages, MIT CISR scientists found.
Beginning and ending with value
For five years, the group of experts conducted research on ways to leverage digital capabilities to innovate, engage, and satisfy customers. The findings are based on data from more than a thousand companies, case studies, and interviews. On average, it took 22 months before companies began to see measurable results from the digital transformation process, Woerner said.
If you’re purchasing pricey software and systems for digital transformation, she recommends monitoring how you’re capturing digital value with a dashboard:
– Value from operations. (implementing new platforms). “Is your cost of operations going down? Do you have more operational efficiency? Is your speed to market faster?”
– Value from customers. (cross-selling, customer stickiness, and new offerings) “Are you increasing your revenue from customers? Are you able to cross-sell better?”
– Value from your ecosystem. Bringing in partners and products and services from outside. “This is where you start to track things like revenues from partnering, and start taking stock of what kind of data you see from the ecosystem.”
Although all are important, when taking a look at each of the values individually, the value from customers contributed the most to revenue growth and profitability, she says.
For example, “if you can increase 10% of your value from customers [like in cross-selling] you’d see a 5.9% increase in your revenue growth, and a 4.5% increase in your profitability [year over year],” Woerner says. This was followed by value from ecosystems and then value from operations.
An example? An organization that started with customer value is the cement company CEMEX. In 2017, they created the CEMEX Go mobile app geared towards construction site managers, Woerner explained. They could get pricing, ordering, advice, and also the ability to track a cement delivery.
“They got 90% adoption in one year of its release,” Woerner says. “Everybody began to move away from going out to the trailer on the building site and inputting things on the mainframe to doing it all on the mobile device. And this is a place where the CFO was really important because for a short period of time CEMEX had two platforms going on.”
With the CFO and team looking at operational value and efficiency, the focus was on reducing the cost to serve, as it was getting really quite high, but, at the same time, improving the experience of customers was still a priority, Woerner says. With the data, “the CEO eventually said, ‘Okay, now we’re gonna stop and integrate these two systems together so that now we have one system,’” she says. “They had to spend probably a year to 18 months doing that integration, but now they’re building on top of that.”
Regarding the ecosystem value, CEMEX has a building materials network called Construama, based in Mexico and other Latin American countries. CEMEX launched its Construrama Online store in 2018.
‘Silos and spaghetti’
Woerner also mentioned the importance of friction-free data. But legacy systems and long-time habits are holding some firms back. “Most companies start in a place we call ‘silos and spaghetti,’” she says. “They’ve got one business unit silo, and another business unit silo, or even product silos. For instance, you can’t cross-sell if you have all of these silos.”
An example? “This is something that Schneider Electric found,” she explains. “They finished most of their big acquisitions in 2008. They had 198 business units, and they had 158 ERP [enterprise resource planning] systems, and they had this amazingly fragmented customer experience. Somebody who’s going to buy from one business unit, couldn’t buy from another.” By 2018, they were down to 12 ERP systems, she says.
So, it took Schneider Electric 10 years? “Yes, they were big and had done a lot,” Woerner says. “But not all transformations take that long.”
In going from “silos and spaghetti” to “future-ready,” the company experienced “organizational explosions,” which Woerner says all organizations undertaking digital transformation will experience. The research uncovered four: allocating who’s making the important decisions (power struggle); creating new ways of working that bring in the customer’s voice; ending data silos; and restructuring.
One thing is for sure, the time and effort put into digital transformation is beneficial to keep a focus on the customer, create new avenues of revenue, and stay competitive.”
If you would like to view the original article, please visit: www.fortune.com
Online Article
“How Digital Transformation Can Overcome the Customer Experience Revolution
By Agility CMS
Digital transformation uses technology to develop new or adapt existing business processes, culture, and consumer experiences to meet changing customer and industry requirements. Digital transformation is the redesigning of business in the digital age.
Isn’t it amazing how consistent developments in the digital arena have brought revolutionary changes in the customer experience? Sales, virtual marketing, and customer support are just a few domains that have experienced significant changes.
Customer-centricity should be at the center of any digital transformation effort. We have the opportunity to rethink how we do business — how we engage our customers — with digital technology on our side as we move from paper to spreadsheets to innovative applications for managing our business.
If you’re just getting started, there’s no need to build up your business processes and change them. Your company can be future-proofed right from the start. Stickies and handwritten ledgers can’t maintain a 21st-century firm. Think, plan, and develop digitally, and you’ll be agile, flexible, and ready to expand.
And if you want to know how digital transformation affects consumer behavior, this write-up is for you.
A Short History of Digital Transformation
Technological change has a long history, dating back hundreds (the printing press) or even thousands of years (the wheel). From Business Insider to Wired, every tech newspaper has been trumpeting digital transformation, and the MIT Sloan School of Management has an entire effort dedicated to advancing the digital economy.
However, there is a backstory to the exponential rise of technology. It all started with infrastructure, which served as a springboard for new apps and, ultimately, new ways of online business. As a result, everything is interconnected: the infrastructure decided which apps were used, and these, in turn, defined which procedures functioned best in the system overall.
The Digital Maturity Spectrum
The DX that a firm provides to its consumers is highly reliant on the maturity of its digital channels in six essential areas, as evaluated by the consumer:
• Reachability
• Channel Flexibility
• Simplicity and ease of use
• Personalization
• Purchase convenience
• Service Convenience
A Digital Transformation (DX) maturity spectrum develops after delving deeper into the six areas to indicate how well-positioned a company’s digital customer experience strategy is. Before realizing the aim of a frictionless and highly competitive digital customer experience, a company must progress through multiple maturity levels.
A practical digital experience maturity evaluation framework is based on some key categories to assist businesses in better positioning their actual DX performance offered to customers through digital touchpoints. A company progresses beyond being accessible to customers via digital channels to caring for, engaging with, and ultimately driving a preferred digital lifestyle.
A Digital Transformation’s Effect on Customer Satisfaction
Customers today expect a higher degree of service. They seek a long-term partnership rather than a series of one-off transactions. Customers aren’t the only ones who will benefit from this. Businesses are no exception. Customers that have an emotional connection to a brand have 3x more excellent lifetime value and are 30% more inclined to suggest them to others, according to Motista.
Customers’ expectations have risen in lockstep with technological advancements. More, better, and faster service is required of businesses.
What is the Customer Experience Revolution?
In the modern digital environment, businesses can keep intimate contact with their clientele and consistently improve services in both immediate and economical ways. However, the entirety of the sample of responders has a significant distance to travel before they can be considered customer experience focused.
It is difficult for even large enterprises to have everyone in their organization on the same page. Despite this, we may get a great deal of insight by analyzing the qualities that set the Elites apart from the rest.
What do large enterprises do to drive their customer experience (CX) innovation? The services offered by such organizations are more user-friendly. Companies like Amazon and Uber were able to upend entire markets by leveraging the CX innovation.
Today, your clients expect world-class ease of use and a problem-free experience with every engagement with your company. The good news is that if you want to build a successful music business, you don’t have to worry about upending an entire industry—just your direct competitors.
The customer experience revolution has made it feasible to use particular metrics to understand better what your organization should be doing. The pricing survey is the first metric that most organizations may benefit from. Analyzing other data can frequently assist you in identifying ways to adapt and adapt your products for new budgets by looking at these statistics concerning other data.
Let’s imagine, for example, that you have a surplus of a certain commodity in your warehouse. Even if your brand does not currently sell a smaller unit of that item, packaging the item in a lesser quantity may encourage customers to keep buying it if they cannot afford or store it.
Using it For Company Advantage
It’s unlikely that shifts like digital transformation and decreased purchasing power will disappear anytime soon. As a result, you may expect a long-term change in client purchasing and interaction patterns.
If you’re already on the path to digital transformation, staying up to date on the latest technology is accessible. People’s expectations for quality and service will only rise, and they will be more outspoken than ever. However, this may appear to be a negative on the surface because you now have more information about what your clients desire and how they perceive your business. That’s a great opportunity, and you should take advantage of it.
Listening is your responsibility, and you need to be proactive about it. Take charge of and effectively manage the feedback loop. As your monitoring and awareness increase, so will your ability to respond quickly and effectively in the heat of the situation.
How Customers are Benefiting from Digital Transformation
Experience in Multiple Channels
Customers in this era aren’t tethered to a single channel, so a multi-channel strategy. Whether it’s video monetization or social media marketing, customer experience should be the central focus for expected results.
Many businesses benefit from digital transformation by providing customers with immediacy, personalization, and accessibility. It helps to achieve business objectives and also in customer retention.
Ensuring That Customers Are Kept up to Date
When transitioning to the digital realm, make sure your consumers know it. Virtual marketing would come in handy in doing so. Keep in mind that you may be able to help your customers by using a social media platform like Facebook, Twitter, and so on. When using an app with a website, ensure none of the services conflict.
People also need to know why you’re making the digital changeover. HSBC, for example, has posted instructional videos on its revamped online banking platform. All brands must establish an online presence in the age of the internet.
As a result, the company no longer has to respond to individuals’ simple questions because of its online presence. One can generate content like interactive and recorded films to help consumers find solutions to their questions. Some firms can use social media and hashtags to show recurring customers. Companies use this functionality to make customers feel appreciated when they get a shout-out.
Various departments are responsible for managing individual stages of the client’s journey. They rarely converse with one another, let alone work together. They frequently operate as though it were their fiefdom. Gmail apps are a powerful tool that comes in handy while clubbing their efforts and streamlining communication.
Unparalleled Service
Customers prefer to be served online, and 69 percent want businesses to digital their services. Each touchpoint must be frictionless and consistent as customers utilize more digital avenues to contact organizations.
These organizations make presentation templates to facilitate better interaction with customers. Every interaction sets the stage for future communication and relationship development. You risk upsetting your consumers if you don’t do so – 70% of customers believe organizations should coordinate internally, so they don’t have to repeat themselves to customer service.
Providing Only the Essential Information
When providing customers with only the most essential and relevant information, firms can drive them to an app for anything beyond their online services, thanks to the virtual transformation. As a result, websites and apps aren’t clogged with pointless data.
Brands need to know where the user came from, what assets they looked at, and what data they found to provide a more relevant tour to the consumer. It helps customers plan a trip tailored to their specific interests and desires. An email automation function that allows for the scheduling of emails can be included to improve the user’s experience.
Headless CMS to the Rescue
The changing needs of the digital era gave birth to headless CMSs. To address a company’s desire to engage consumers with tailored information across numerous platforms at all customer journey phases.
Headless CMSs have been introduced, providing benefits and features that make them an enticing alternative to traditional CMSs.
Understanding Headless CMS
A headless CMS does not rely on front-end components or the “head” to define how the material is shown to users. Instead, using an application programming interface, material may be produced anywhere for various channels (or API).
By eliminating the presentation layer or the head from the CMS, there are theoretically no limitations on how and where rich information can be presented for a great customer experience, such as on desktops, mobile devices, smartwatches, intelligent fridges, IoT industrial devices, and so on.
Several advantages to sending material out for various user experiences include doing it more quickly and interfacing with third-party systems. However, it’s critical to maintain a decoupled architecture when adopting headless CMS solutions.
Benefits of Headless CMS
A headless CMS, also known as a decoupled CMS, has grown in popularity as a solution for marketers aiming to provide omnichannel experiences across many consumer touchpoints. Let’s look at some of the most compelling reasons to use a headless CMS for your company.
Developers’ Speed and Ease
The benefit of headless CMS is how much time it saves developers by removing the annoyances of proprietary systems. You can use any programming language you choose, and because it’s API-driven, you can easily design your presentation layer and front-end.
A Future-Proof Solution
Your teams will be able to construct new websites and add new functionality to existing websites and portals faster with a headless CMS. You can organize and restructure your material anytime, making it easy to rebrand new initiatives across platforms as needed.
Outstanding Software Design
A headless CMS is an excellent solution for enterprises building online platforms and services to achieve and create a best practice environment with the highest levels of integrity and security. A headless CMS allows you to start from scratch and build a superior software architecture.
The Need to Ensure That Every Consumer Has a Positive Experience
An enterprise-wide strategy will be necessary for one form or another, as was previously said, because the customer experience is solely the customer’s responsibility. Youtube marketing or other social media marketing efforts should focus on enhancing an enjoyable customer experience.
This may be done in stages, and responsibilities can be delegated, but it should be done while keeping a detailed plan for the ultimate goals in mind. The digital transformation is not the same as the transformation of digital marketing, nor is it the same as the transformation of customer service. Instead, it is all of these things and more in the context of the customer experience.
Final Thoughts
It’s easy to get left behind in the fast-paced world of technology. Blink, and you miss it. In today’s dynamic market, accessing the newest technological innovations and real-time data in a safe atmosphere is critical for any industry. Also appealing to today’s more digitally savvy workforce is creating a digital-forward environment. To ensure your organization’s long-term prosperity, you must embrace digital change.”
If you would like to view the original article, please visit: www.agilitycms.com
Course Manuals 1-5
Course Manual 1: CX Challenges
The top issues that CX experts wish to solve before 2025 are revealed by new data from top CRM vendor Kustomer.
For its “What the Future Holds for CX Organizations” research, Kustomer polled over 100 industry experts, and the following problems emerged as the most prevalent:
1. Customers need to repeat information (46%)
2. Lack of personalization in customer interactions (34%)
3. Customers’ perception that their time is not valued (34%)
4. Agents lack context about customers (30%)
5. Customer service being siloed from other departments (30%)
Our toughest obstacles are also our best opportunities, the research notes, which is a blessing. Indeed, for firms, the most productive investment possibilities often arise from understanding where they are lagging.
So, if the aforementioned problems seem all too familiar, here is some sound advise to help you move on and have a happy 2025.
1. Customers’ Need to Repeat Information
Customers typically have to repeat themselves while switching from voice to email, a bot to a human, or even from one agent to another on the same channel. This not only irritates the customer but also takes up agents’ time.
Omnichannel asserted that it would solve this issue. But it continues. When contact center agents lack the critical customer context to continue a discussion, siloed data and antiquated CRM systems are frequently to blame. It instead begins from scratch.
Fortunately, the cloud makes it simple for contact centers to update their CRM, incorporate it into the technological ecosystem, and begin recording each customer’s whole history of interactions. Operations do not lose context as customers switch between channels because of this.
Agents are fully aware of the customer’s identity, past purchases, and any active engagements thanks to this feature. This reduces effort for both consumers and agents and paves the path for frictionless contact center engagements.
2. Lack of Personalization in Customer Interactions
To become more strategically oriented around specific customers, brands are launching hyper-personalization activities in place of customer segmentation strategies. These tactics, which revolutionize CX and heavily rely on consumer data, include pre-populating applications, dynamic pricing, and real-time product notifications.
Thankfully, many businesses have established a central data lake to streamline the procedure. Businesses can strengthen their efforts to personalize their interactions with customers along the customer journey by connecting AI technologies to this, or by utilizing those already built into the data platform or CRM.
A customer care representative may focus entirely on personalizing the interaction, empathizing with the consumer, and resolving their issue with the aid of AI. They can delegate the tedious tasks, like as returns and reorders, to a machine.
These interventions increase the amount of time spent on the actual problem, save time for both the customer and the agent, increase agent productivity, and improve customer service.
Contact centers may advance with their proactive outreach, going beyond reactive customer service. In fact, they may anticipate problems before clients even become aware of one, opening the door to chances to foster loyalty and increase revenue.
3. Customers’ Perception That Their Time is Not Valued
The field of customer experience management (CXM) is devoted to identifying and eliminating time- and effort-consuming frictions in customer journeys.
However, lengthy lines to contact customer service continue to be a problem. Companies are finding more creative ways to solve this issue and cut down on wait times as they struggle to hire enough workers to handle the influx of customers.
Risky techniques include digital deflection. But a strategy that is gaining ground is being proactive, anticipating contacts, and getting out in front of the game. In fact, according to Gartner study from 2022, getting proactive service boosts customer value by 9%.
Again, a CRM platform that can support mass messaging and target particular client categories based on your unique data, such as orders, geography, or customer satisfaction, would likely be the foundation of such a successful plan.
However, there are additional ways that contact centers might use prediction to shorten wait times. Predictive analytics, for instance, enables managers to improve projections and staffing calculations, improving operations’ ability to meet incoming demand.
4. Agents Lack Context About Customers
Similar to the first issue, contact centers can solve this one by using an omnichannel CRM solution that keeps track of client conversations across several media.
The contact handling process will be improved even further by utilizing additional analytics tools to present fresh perspectives, delve deeper into this data, and expose insightful consumer information.
Numerous of these tools are included into contemporary, complex CRM systems. Kustomer is a good illustration. Along with past encounters, it gives agents a timeline of the client journey, including website visits, sales, and customer sentiment history.
For these characteristics, the system integrates with a variety of business tools. For instance, by integrating with the order management system, it enables all customers to make purchases that are compatible with the platform.
5. Customer Service Being Siloed from Other Departments
As service teams track recurring customer issues, pinpoint their main causes, and then pass them along to other departments in the hope that they might be resolved, CX is gradually evolving into a team sport.
This kind of strategy is only natural, but it frequently comes to a standstill as contact centers battle to increase their influence across the organization. As a result, in order to capture the attention of other department heads, operations frequently needs to develop a business case using KPIs, related costs, and recordings of irate customers.
However, contact centers can make a mistake by not making internal information and qualitative feedback more accessible.
For instance, buyers may frequently write to request a product in a particular color or express dissatisfaction with the fit of a particular item. The product team may be motivated to develop a new color or include a size guide on the website as a result of gathering and sharing this data with them.
Customer service representatives can actively contact consumers and let them know that they acted on their input if all of this is tracked and labeled in a centralized CRM. This will increase customer trust and promote business growth.
Additionally, creating a shared workspace, assigning senior agents as CX liaisons, and aggressively fostering goodwill are some suggestions for removing boundaries with other departments.
Customer service transformation: Six key challenges
To boost their agility and provide better customer service, many firms have had to quickly transform into digitally-driven enterprises in recent years. In 2025, IDC predicts that spending on technology for digital transformation would increase to $2.8 trillion, more than twice what was committed in 2020.
However, the headlines about transformation frequently fail to convey how challenging it is or the challenges encountered along the way. The right vision, organizational buy-in, effective communication and change management, as well as contemporary collaborative technologies that may automate and increase staff productivity, are all necessary for customer service transformation.
Here are six typical issues to watch out for and solutions for if your company is going to start its own customer service transformation.
Challenge 1: Setting the vision
One of the biggest obstacles businesses encounter when modernizing customer service is establishing the appropriate strategic vision. The importance of the customer experience in fostering brand loyalty and trust is demonstrated by Deloitte study. The most crucial elements for gaining customers’ trust, after product quality and price, were prompt problem-solving and friendly staff.
Therefore, before implementing any change, leaders need to identify the “why” their organizations need to transform customer service—ideally something more than a desire to stay up with the competition. Here are some crucial inquiries that can assist in forming your vision for customer service:
• What special customer service problems and inefficiencies do you have at your company, and how do they degrade the customer experience?
• Are there any obstacles or bottlenecks preventing your staff from providing greater customer service?
• Are there any conclusions you can draw from your company’s customer service statistics, such as call volume, wait times, and KPIs for customer satisfaction and retention? There may be areas for improvement, according to this data.
Challenge 2: Managing budget and resource constraints
Every business must carefully identify its goals while modernizing customer service because no firm has unlimited resources.
Not a trip, but a destination, is transformation. As it frequently takes place in stages, you’ll need to choose which activities to take on first using the funds and resources at your disposal. This could entail making initial investments in cutting-edge contact center technologies, setting up a digital center of excellence to standardize and carry out your strategy, or recruiting particular positions, such a chief digital officer to lead your transition.
To start changing your customer experience, you must decide which actions will have the biggest impact on your transformation and how much money and human capital you can commit to these projects.
Challenge 3: Developing a customer-first mindset and culture
Starting from the outside in and placing clients at the center of everything you do will help you find value rather than approaching problems from the inside out.
Leading from the top, leaders must establish and express a strategic vision for the transformation of customer service. It also necessitates knowledge of your target market, their particular demands, and the ways in which your company can meet those needs.
To make sure you’re rewarding the proper behaviors and conveying a clear message about how your organization defines success, you might even need to change your key performance indicators (KPIs). To gauge the development of your company, you can choose to establish new benchmarks for customer service, such as the proportion of calls where customers’ problems are fixed on the first try.
Whatever strategy you choose, you must set up the proper metrics and measurements to support the desired results.
Challenge 4: Investing in the right tools
When modernizing customer service, businesses must make the correct technological investments. Even while technology adoption varies from organization to organization, most businesses may profit from fundamental features like automation, data integration, and interoperability.
The correct tools may expedite employees’ work and facilitate the transition to a new way of doing business. This will help to improve both the experiences of employees and customers.
Call center agents may be productive almost anywhere, at any time, thanks to virtual, cloud-based contact center solutions and services that enable them to answer calls both on-site and remotely from a branch office or their homes. Additionally, these solutions offer data that can help you better understand your customer experience and pinpoint areas that need constant development.
Through the facilitation of multichannel and omnichannel consumer connections, whether via chat or instant messaging, online or over the phone, cloud-based unified and collaboration tools can help increase the agility of your business. These solutions also make it simple to scale your resources in response to shifting client demand, offering you more adaptability to meet shifting consumer needs and guaranteeing that staff members always have the resources they need to provide customers with excellent service.
Challenge 5: Executing effective change management
Cultural change is also required by digital transformation, but organizations often have trouble successfully preparing for change.
Companies frequently have to deal with employees’ concerns about being replaced by technology, uncertainty about new technology, and general resistance to change whenever there is a change. By making sure your teams have the tools, expertise, and training they need to effectively navigate the next phase of the company’s evolution, you can overcome these difficulties.
You may foster enthusiasm for transformation at all organizational levels by finding internal champions for the change. To assist you in using a train-the-trainer strategy, where other employees receive feedback and mentoring from their peers, these employees can offer input on training or even develop into subject matter experts in a particular tool.
Additionally, you should constantly convey how improving customer service will benefit staff members by reducing their tasks, raising customer happiness, and setting up the business for success. This will ultimately benefit the entire team.
Now, every company needs to operate at the pace of its clients. Businesses may make sure they properly meet client demands and establish an enduring, long-term relationship with customers by tackling their most pressing customer service concerns.
Companies that went above and beyond for their customers: Trader Joe’s
There is a reason why Trader Joe’s has a cult following. The privately held supermarket chain, which has stores across the nation, always puts its customers and staff first.
All of the company’s products are under the “Trader Joe’s” brand, and it provides exceptional perks and promotional opportunities to team members while passing on cost savings to customers.
Everyone, including us, has a favorite Trader Joe’s customer service tale. A guy in his 89s was snowed in at his Pennsylvania home one day around the holidays. His daughter called a number of stores to check if anyone delivered because she was worried about getting him food.
In violation of their own rules, Trader Joe’s delivered the man’s low-sodium diet-friendly goods gratis. A Trader Joe’s employee arrived at the door with a full delivery in less than 30 minutes.
Conclusion: If your team members aren’t adaptable enough to break the rules, they won’t always be able to act morally upright. Make sure there is a simple mechanism for customer service workers to receive permission for deeds of kindness that vastly improve people’s lives.
The challenge of keeping up with customer expectations
5 Ways Technology Has Changed Customer Expectations
When it comes to client expectations, technological innovation has raised the bar.
With digital tools that make it possible to access goods, services, and information with the swipe of a thumb at any time of day, businesses must keep inventing and enhancing the customer experience to increase sales, improve their customer retention rate, and stay competitive.
We examine 5 ways that technology has significantly altered customer expectations in this portion of the course manual.
Customers expect it now
The use of digital technologies has changed consumer behaviors. Customers may virtually instantaneously obtain what they want because to mobile devices, apps, automation, machine learning, and other factors. The ability to obtain what they want, when they want, and how they want has empowered customers.
Instant satisfaction is the key.
A constant state of accessibility is expected in the society we live in. Consumers will no longer be restricted by regular business hours and will expect to be able to make purchases, access information, make reservations, and do other daily activities around-the-clock.
There’s an expectation that service is fast, simple and hassle-free
Simplicity and prompt resolutions are essential whether searching for information, extracting data, contacting a service desk, browsing an e-commerce platform, or using an online booking system.
Our capacity for patience has decreased due to technology. There is an expectation that we can complete tasks quickly, thus it is not enough to simply be accessible at all times.
Long and convoluted purchasing journeys that involve opening new tabs on your phone with each button press are likely to be overlooked. Or the lengthy registration or log-in process, the difficult event search, or the voluminous questionnaires you must complete before you can make a reservation.
The rate of abandonments will be high.
Customers demand an online experience from the companies they do business with. And in order to achieve the required results, those services must be straightforward, simple to use across all platforms, and rapid.
Because if they don’t get it, they’ll quickly grow tired of it and go on.
Customers expect a seamless omnichannel experience
A single channel is not the only one the modern consumer uses.
They window shop, make purchases, post opinions via apps, and seek assistance from customer service teams on social media.
They anticipate that these channels will function well together to give them a seamless, customized experience. They anticipate that goods will be delivered to their homes via the internet, saving them the trouble of going to a store.
Alternatively, they could be able to place an online order and pick up their product as quickly as possible from a nearby physical store. They seek complete freedom of choice in both what and how they can purchase goods.
Customers expect companies to be active on social media platforms
Social media is already a popular place for people to interact, so businesses should be there.
They must be proactive in contacting clients, establishing rapport with them, and informing them of their offerings. Customers want a steady stream of pertinent information that not only promotes a business’s brand but also demonstrates its knowledge and commitment to providing unmatched customer service.
Additionally, social media is not the only component of the online ecosystem for customer care. As a result of technology, new support avenues have emerged, including forums, groups, and review websites. As our mobile gadgets become more intelligent, they also open up more channels for acquiring information and knowledge.
The firms that are successful make sure that their expertise stands out among the noise and that their voice is heard.
Customers just want stuff that works
We are all aware of the profound impact that digital technology has had on our world. Furthermore, its influence on the online client experience cannot be emphasized.
Customers have, of course, always expected things like excellent service, straightforward procedures, and quick turnaround times. The explosion of information and choice now readily available without having to leave your living room is where digital technology has altered things, though.
Consumers in the modern day are more commercially savvy than ever and always linked to their surroundings. Online experiences that are individualized, straightforward, and engaging are anticipated because we know the appropriate platforms can make them possible. And when our experience is poor, we instantly recognize it and typically complain about it by leaving (or, more accurately, our thumbs).
Because of our high expectations for what technology can do, there are high expectations for a great, hassle-free consumer experience. Given the opportunities that technology presents, it is crucial to get it right because the modern consumer frequently judges businesses based on their online customer experiences.
In the end, what we really desire are items that function and slightly ease our lives.
Customer Experience Fails: MoviePass
Fail: Forgetting That Customers Come First
Your team’s first priority should be attending to client demands and assisting customers in reaching their objectives. Customer success managers (CSMs) occasionally put their company’s growth ahead of customer success, though. Because your CSMs aim to move consumers along your sales funnel, this is one of the most typical customer experience errors.
While doing so could be advantageous for your business, it doesn’t promote customer success and will turn customers away. The easiest approach to prevent this error is to show your consumers that you care about them and help them use your product or service to accomplish their goals.
For $10 per month, customers could use MoviePass, a subscription-based company that offered one movie every day. However, the firm discontinued its service and stated that it was “unable to anticipate if or when the MoviePassTM service will continue” after receiving more than 1,500 complaints from customers to the Better Business Bureau.
One of the complaints that went viral was from a client in San Francisco whose account was abruptly and unceremoniously closed. She spent some time looking for a customer service number that appeared to be hidden before learning that her account had been suspended for breaking the terms and conditions. Due to this customer’s violation of the subscription policy by attending a “premium movie,” the subscription was terminated without a refund.
This is an excellent illustration of prioritizing business success over customer success. When customers signed up, MoviePass should have been transparent about its regulations and offered materials that define what constitutes a “premium movie.”
Additionally, MoviePass’s support staff should have gotten in touch with clients directly if they were still infringing the law. They could have clarified any misunderstandings about their practices and retained the customer’s long-term business instead of just closing the accounts.
Course Manual 2: Customer Insights
Why Customer Insights Are Critical For A Business To Thrive
Retailers must harness the power of data in order to keep up with the shift in client needs since the industry is evolving quickly. One of the most important aspects of ensuring future business is analyzing all the data points available to determine how to effectively serve clients.
Understanding your customers on a deep level and keeping them at the center of all company decisions are essential skills for successful retailing.
As a result, customer insights are crucial to the development and success of your company. If you blindly follow what you think is best and disregard what the customer is telling you, you will surely go in the incorrect direction. The customer’s feedback ought to be your company’s compass as it moves forward.
Customer Acquisition
In a report by Forrester Consulting titled “Leverage Powerful, Flexible, and Scaled Customer Insights To Secure Your Business’s Future,” leaders from a range of industries, including retail, media, and technology, were interviewed to assess the state of customer analytics. More efficient consumer analytics programs, according to the study participants, enhanced data procedures and governance, more agile decision-making, better customer experiences, and the acceleration of digital transformation activities, among other things.
The first step in gaining customers is earning their trust. Gaining credibility and trust from both present and potential customers is the core objective of all content marketing, something brands are always aiming for. Increased sales and long-term client loyalty result from building trust.
Adopting a client-centric approach delivers value for both the consumer and the business if you’re as focused with efficiency as most firms are. Finding new ways to communicate with your clients, conducting information interviews, and regularly integrating discovery into your operations are all excellent strategies. This guarantees that you can respond quickly to questions throughout the road, allowing for quick iteration and optimization. Customer insights are a crucial tool for better decision-making about the customer demands your team should be focusing on right now. The most successful firms remain lean until they have discovered product market fit.
Analytics leaders are increasingly using AaaS (Analytics-as-a-Service) platforms, according to a Forrester Consulting report. Businesses benefit from AaaS solutions because they provide end-to-end capabilities that make it possible to accurately and rapidly turn insights into actions. Additionally, more than 90% of the leaders polled concurred that fast, accurate, thorough, and accessible data is essential for their company’s overall performance.
Evive Nutrition used consumer insights to take the States by storm
Healthy eating was revolutionized by Evive Nutrition in Canada, and the US was their next stop. The company knew it was time to start exploring the American market after five years of creating a strong brand.
Amal Proulx, brand manager for Evive, stated: “We grew with the blue ocean strategy, meaning nobody in the US is doing precisely what we are doing, therefore we wanted to leverage on our creativity and originality with our cross-sales channels.
The awareness.
Evive Nutrition resorted to Attest for customer insight in order to ‘wow’ their new target audience. And with achievement!
‘One of the most valuable learnings also had to do with the types of flavours the US found the most appealing. We were able to validate many of our assumptions when it comes to our communications.’
What worked, why, and what can you take away from it:
Not only did customer insights help Evive Nutrition succeed, but also the way they were put to use. They made sure everyone was informed and had access if needed.
Customer Loyalty
Data is undoubtedly useful information, but it must be examined and put to use in order to successfully help build customer loyalty and boost income. The secret to success is a clear target market and insights from the data.
You must understand and identify your target audience. Since not everyone can be served by your business, having a distinct customer profile enables you to distinguish between generic input and the insightful feedback from your actual customers. You can spot problems, spot possibilities, and evaluate ideas by viewing things from the perspective of the real client. The most effective companies have a thorough awareness of their core audience and a close bond with them that permits open communication.
The Importance Of Customer Analytics
Falling behind on digital transformation projects is one of the effects of ineffective customer analytics, according to 34% of respondents in the same study. A firm may suffer if it lags in its digital transformation at a time when both technology and consumer behavior are changing quickly. Additionally, 32% discovered that poor customer analytics might hurt client retention, loyalty, and lifetime value.
In order to determine whether a company is actually resolving a customer pain point, preliminary bottom-up research is required. Ask the customers what they require. From there, entrepreneurs need to feel comfortable changing and iterating; we accomplish this by listening to our customers. Customer insights are essential for a company’s success since, in the end, businesses are defined by their consumers.
Why Consumer Insights Should Be Pivotal to IT Transformation
Using text mining and sentiment analysis, you may use machine learning and text analytics algorithms to classify consumer feelings into positive, negative, or neutral. Consumer insights have become a veritable source of information for brands. You must make sure that your keyword is consumer-centrism in an era where the marketing landscape has grown extremely competitive as a result of globalization.
You have an advantage over the competition if you understand what your customers want, how they want it, and when they want it. In addition, it makes it possible for you to create a strategy for your IT transformation projects that is well thought out.
Consumer insights’ significance in the digital transformation
You have a target market, but regrettably you are not the only one doing so. You must therefore understand their perceptions of your good or service.
Your digital strategy is mapped out using consumer insights. What purpose does digital transformation serve if ultimately your clients don’t receive any added value?
The goal of IT transformation should be to increase value for your customers and business. Building your digital strategy on data-based consumer insights will guarantee that you are putting your customers’ actual needs first and will help your organization better understand the behavior, sentiments, and motivations of your target audience.
Which technologies must you use? Which corporate cultures need to be modified? A data-driven IT transformation improves your clients’ ability to shop in a more personalized way.
Customers are more likely to transact business with companies that are sensitive to their needs and concerns. According to Forbes, 74% of customers become irritated if a company doesn’t provide them with individualized content.
The resources you invested in have been wasted if you start a digital transformation project but end up losing 74% of your consumers because you won’t leverage their insights. You have the chance to find out how people feel about your brand and what the competition is doing differently thanks to consumer insights.
Restructuring the client experience (CX)
The first step you must take if you choose to make consumer insights the center of your IT transformation is to arm yourself with data. The only way you can fully concentrate on a meaningful change is to identify the actual pain issues of your customers, which this will show.
You can use techniques like design thinking and integrate digital transformation enablers like artificial intelligence and advanced machine learning to discover better ways of delivering a CX that will also add value to your business once you have the right perspective on your consumers’ patterns and preferences and a clear picture of where your brand stands on its CX.
Charting the customer experience and journey, service blueprinting, and the use of agile, a collaborative and iterative design process to creatively develop and differentiate user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX) in smaller and faster increments, are some of the crucial tools you will require.
The requirement for data-driven insights
Consumer insights that you gather from customer experience over the full customer lifecycle should inform your digital strategy. You must gather all information, from brand awareness to factors that influence clients’ purchasing decisions and what prompts a repeat purchase.
You must be aware of your company’s strengths and limitations as well as any factors that can cause clients to leave and turn to the competitors. Customers today are more keen to talk about and have their pain points handled, therefore it’s critical that you obtain the pertinent insights that will reveal what they require and how to interact with them.
Conclusion
You may achieve the ideal balance between creating value for the customer and the business by utilizing consumer insights for digital transformation. This can be accomplished by thoroughly analyzing your whole consumer base.
Knowing which market segments to focus on can let you consistently interact with those clients across the whole customer journey. Instead of utilizing a functional operational model, your digital transformation must focus on creating a journey-led model.
Organic valley uses consumer insights to find the right flavors
A quick-moving F&B company that constantly creates and offers new goods required assistance with their decision-making. Attest provided that assistance for Tripp Hughes’ team, Senior Director of Consumer Strategy at Organic Valley.
He makes use of it to spur invention, quicken iteration, and determine the most persuasive messaging. He created the delectable new breakfast product Egg Bites using consumer information.
The knowledge:
Hughes said: ‘We were able to identify the top three flavours that we then wanted to bring into the pilot labs. But while our primary customer insight was around flavours, we also got back a secondary, unanticipated insight around how the consumers were clustered around the naming of products as well.’
However, when they truly dug into the customer insight, they discovered that it wasn’t simply about picking the appropriate flavor; rather, it was about picking the right flavor within the framework of a more general moniker.
Customers were reminded of the Mexican meal huevos rancheros by the “spicy tomato salsa egg bites.” They could compare “spicy tomato salsa egg bites” to “Mexican egg bites with rancheros salsa” as a result. They conducted the same experiment comparing “pizza egg bites” to “New York pizza egg bites.”
What worked, why, and what can you take away from it:
Attest’s initial learnings are so swift that Organic Valley saves 10 to 20 times what it would have spent on delayed discovery.
‘The impact is coming in reduced time and improved next-round thinking that we’re taking into focus groups where we’ve got a high-cost factor.’
What are customer insights and how do you track them? Definition, types, and examples
Without considering consumer insights, operating a firm or meeting user wants is like trying to complete an obstacle course while wearing blinders. Just because you believe you are familiar with the course doesn’t mean you actually are.
For a detailed understanding of client demands and behavior, customer insights combine data from market research and customer analytics. By identifying patterns in the interactions between customers and competitors and giving context to significant consumer trends, they assist organizations in eliminating guessing.
This course manual is your introductory guide to customer insights; you’ll learn what they are, see examples of the kinds of insights you can track (and how to track them), and learn how using customer insights can help you avoid making educated guesses and instead produce a fantastic customer experience.
What are customer insights?
As previously mentioned, customer insights are a collection of trends in consumer behavior, data, and feedback that helps businesses deeply understand their customers and their purchasing decisions.
To generate definitive consumer insights, it’s critical to gather quantitative and qualitative data from sources like as website metrics, social media mentions, market research, and customer analytics. Customer analytics gives you measurable information on what your consumers do online, whereas market research gives you a broad picture of consumer behavior and market trends.
Businesses can better tailor their service and products to reflect the thoughts and feelings of their consumers by tracking the qualitative and quantitative components of a customer’s digital footprint and using them to highlight critical purchase habits.
Benefits of analyzing customer insights
Collecting and analyzing customer insights answers crucial questions like:
• Why are sales down for a particular product?
• How likely are you to succeed in a new target market?
• How is your brand perceived by your audience?
• How do you increase conversion rates?
• How do your customers think and feel about a potential product?
• How do you upsell to customers?
• What are your inventory requirements?
• How do you outperform competitors?
By providing answers to these questions, you may decide if you’re focusing on the proper market and develop strategically customer-backed product changes, such as broadening the selection of goods and services you provide.
To better highlight the precise characteristics customers are seeking for, present the correct product at the right price point, tailor message, and enhance the customer experience, organizations can redesign or create thorough customer profiles and customer journey maps using customer insights (CX).
Little Moons used consumer insights to identify their ideal customer base
Sales of the Japanese ice cream company Little Moons tripled after it became popular on TikTok.
How could they capitalize on the momentum once the growth in views ceased?
They needed to know precisely who would be willing to regularly purchase Little Moons. Is it the typical TikTok user? To learn who was in charge in the dessert aisle, they dug deep into their customer insights.
The knowledge:
In order to understand who their true client base was, Little Moons conducted a consumer profiling study with the goal of identifying the ice cream consumers who spent the most money.
Ross Farquhar, Marketing Director at Little Moons said: ‘Our social media following would suggest our audience were late teens/early 20s females. But Attest consumer profiling identified that the people driving most of the volume in premium ice cream are actually affluent 30+ year olds with more disposable income.’
What worked, why, and what can you take away from it:
Little Moons understood that they would need to take the story of what was happening on TikTok and present it to wealthy consumers who were possibly a little older in order to transform the trend into the economic outcomes they desired.
8 types of customer insights to collect and analyze
Utilize these data sources to fuel your customer insights strategy, stay abreast of changing consumer requirements and behavior, and identify areas for improvement. Pick and choose the insights pertinent to your particular business and user goals as not all of these insights may be applicable to your product.
1. Online reviews
You can use online reviews to gain direct access to voice-of-the-customer (VoC) data and gain genuine understanding of how your target market feels about your merchandise. Utilize internet reviews to determine what your brand or product is doing well, what it best enables people to achieve, and where you may make improvements.
To gather and put internet review insights to use:
• For ecommerce sites or startups: Look at user observations in product reviews on your website, as well as on Google, Yelp, and Facebook. Utilize their feedback to enhance your product offering and to guide the writing about your product on important conversion pages.
• For product teams or SaaS: Examine specialized review websites like G2, Trustpilot, and Capterra to keep up with customer feedback and grievances. Utilize your findings to direct the release of new features or products and to better train customer service representatives to provide product assistance.
2. Competitor reviews
Analyzing the ratings of your rivals might help you spot trends in consumer requirements and purchase choices, similar to online reviews. Use reviews from competitors to see how well your product compares to those on the market today and what holes you can fill.
How to get and use reviews of rival businesses:
• To better position yourself against competitors and find their weaknesses, look at review websites. A product team might give a’select all’ playlist function top priority in their upcoming update after reading numerous evaluations from users who are upset that a rival’s music streaming platform lacks it.
• To keep track of internet mentions of your competitors and their products, use tracking tools like Google Alerts. Use it to keep a close eye on changing client perceptions and spot any advantages your rivals may have over you.
• Use SEMrush or Google Adwords to conduct keyword research to determine whether your competitors are providing what buyers are looking for. Utilize your research to generate concepts for novel features or goods that are in line with the volume and intent of searches made by your target market. The next step is to locate relevant domains where you can develop backlinks and brand authority while focusing on related keywords.
3. Purchase activity data
You can determine which products are the most well-liked both among specific customers and as a whole by monitoring your customers’ purchase behavior.
You can better forecast which things to advertise and when when you have visibility into patterns like habitual purchases, impulsive purchases, and extensive decision-making purchases.
How to gather information about buying activity:
• Check your CRM: Track your purchases in your CRM to identify any seasonal trends in your buying behavior and adjust your stock levels.
• Utilize your e-commerce platform. If you run an e-commerce business, you may get metrics related to purchasing activities such as order history, top sales, average order value, and visitor information by using the reporting and analytics features of your platform. Utilize it to tailor communications and marketing initiatives and to suggest comparable products to your clients.
• You can observe what your consumers click on or scroll past, what they buy and how they buy it, and what prevents them from completing their transaction by watching recordings of user sessions on critical conversion pages like the product and checkout. Take advantage of these data to pinpoint products (or services) to expand upon and discover any issues with your checkout procedure.
4. Customer feedback
Collecting customer feedback through interviews and surveys gives you direct visibility into your customers’ micro experiences, journeys, and satisfaction levels. It also shows your customers you care about their experience.
Remember: use closed- and open-ended questions in your customer experience surveys and interviews to get granular insights into customer sentiment and drive nuanced user experience (UX) design changes and improvements.
How to collect customer feedback insights:
You can gain firsthand insight into the microexperiences, journeys, and levels of customer satisfaction of your consumers by gathering feedback through interviews and surveys. It also demonstrates to your clients how much you value their opinion.
To acquire detailed insights into customer sentiment and to inform subtle user experience (UX) design modifications and enhancements, always use closed- and open-ended questions in your customer experience surveys and interviews.
How to gather insights from client feedback:
• Segment survey campaigns by customer type, such as devoted clients, new clients, inactive clients, referrals, etc. To swiftly identify trends in your user experience and their opinions of your brand and products, ask them questions depending on their particular market niche.
• Create and distribute NPS surveys to find out how probable it is for your consumers to suggest your goods or services to others on a scale of 1 to 10. Use this to decide whether launching a referral program would be time and money well spent and to pinpoint areas where you can add additional value.
• Distribute customer satisfaction (CSAT) questionnaires asking your clients to rate their degree of happiness with your product in order to obtain your CSAT score. Use your score to identify the advantages and disadvantages of your product or service.
• Utilize feedback widgets at every stage of the customer experience. Utilize feedback widgets to covertly gather user thoughts as they are browsing your website and pinpoint micro-moments you can enhance. For instance, a SaaS business may utilize feedback widgets to poll consumers about what they think their program is missing in order to generate ideas for new features.
GoCardless used consumer profiling to get closer to customers
Finding out the difficulties your customers are having with your product or a related issue is another crucial component of customer insight. In order to improve the effectiveness of sales and marketing discussions, GoCardless looked into consumers’ payment difficulties.
The knowledge:
At the checkout, online buyers may experience some very unsettling pain spots. GoCardless sought to understand the situation in order to better express the brand’s value proposition and offer products that answer their payment-related problems.
What worked, why, and what can you take away from it:
The team identified pain spots in every aspect of the payments process through Attest research, ranging from the price firms pay for payments to international coverage and everything in between.
They now launch solutions that are all supported by research. This has increased the maturity of their value proposition articulation, which they passed on to their sales staff and which was reflected in satisfied customers, and is assisting them in becoming the market leader.
‘Before using Attest, that framework was used in around 5-10% of sales conversations; after using Attest it’s used in 25-30% of sales conversations.’,” stated Siamac Rezaiezadeh, Director of Product Marketing at GoCardless.
5. Social media
Social media is a great place to get client testimonials, grievances, and product use examples. You get access to well-liked remarks, videos, and product comparisons that aid in your understanding of the terminology people use to discuss your product, the reasons why it’s popular, and what customers find confusing.
Utilize your social media insights to establish emotional connections with clients, understand their viewpoints, and learn about their product interests and preferences. This is how:
• Surveying your audience To survey your consumers or target market regarding new features and upcoming items, use LinkedIn or Instagram’s “Stories” function. Find out their interests or desired traits by asking them. For instance, an online business may prioritize selling hats this season over boots after asking their followers about their preferred fall accessories on Instagram.
• To keep track of mentions of your brand or product, use social listening platforms like Hootsuite or Brandwatch. Engage with your audience, stay up to date on trends, and monitor popular remarks to determine exactly what needs to be improved.
• Utilize social media analytics by monitoring data like as engagement rate, impressions, conversions, response rate, and others to gain extra information into your target audience. Utilize this data to better personalize your product offering and align your social media feed and following with your ideal customer profile (ICP).
6. Website data
You can learn about the demands, motivations, and purchasing processes of customers by using the website data sources listed below:
• A customer’s age, location, work title, and other demographic information are included.
• The search terms clients use to find your product, the routes they take through your website, the pages they spend the most time on, and the content they interact with most are all examples of behavioral data.
• Key conversion pages and the factors influencing leads and sales are discussed in campaign data.
How to gather data from websites:
• Track and report website data, traffic, and trends with Google Analytics. Access critical data, such as conversion rate, time on page, or pages per session, to determine which websites and marketing channels work (and which don’t). Then, utilize your research to inform updates to your website and merchandise. For instance, your web design team may change the positioning of the CTA to encourage more clicks after noting that your new landing page is generating traffic but no conversions. Then, use analytics and heatmaps to evaluate if your new CTA design is working by determining whether or not your consumers are clicking on your CTA or if other aspects on your website are drawing their attention instead.
• Utilize Google Search Console to monitor the traffic and performance of your website and to make it more search engine-friendly. To see how well your site performs in comparison to the competition, look at the number of clicks you receive and your average ranking position. Next, decide which subjects and words will make your material easier to search.
7. Customer service data
You may better understand client annoyances, pain points, and friction points in your product or service by tracking customer service data. You can identify and prioritize possibilities for product enhancement by delving further into frequent customer complaints, questions, or support requests.
When collecting customer service data, you need access to:
• Customer support tickets: To gain insight into your main problem areas, check for patterns in customer complaints, troubleshooting, and product fixes. Utilize this knowledge to determine where to begin with product enhancements.
• Data from a chatbot or live chat: see patterns in customer service dialogues, including what resources clients require, what inquiries they make, and what they need assistance with most. To ensure that your customers have all they need to get the most out of your product, use this to develop a FAQ section for your website and offer helpful self-service resources like product guides and knowledge bases.
8. Case studies and testimonials
Different types of client feedback include case studies and testimonials, which outline the issue and demonstrate how your solution resolved it.
As a result, you can experience the buyer journey from their perspective and turn it into a repeatable process. They assist you in understanding the overall story behind your customer’s issue, how they discovered your solution, and how it helped them reach their goals.
How to compile information from testimonies and case studies:
• Send surveys to your customers via email, asking them specific questions about their experiences with the product or brand. Utilize their comments to improve the copy on your home, product, and landing pages. Alternately, you may publish them as case studies directly on your website.
• Reward participants by rewarding your consumers. Select customers may be asked to give written or video testimonials outlining their achievements in return for a discount or loyalty points. To support your sales pitches and how you discuss your product’s unique selling feature, use B2B customer insights (USP).
Leverage customer insights to create delight
In order to give your users with an excellent customer experience, you can better anticipate and address consumer wants by gathering and evaluating customer insights. You can also make wise decisions about your website or product by doing this.
Obtain helpful customer information from a variety of sources, such as:
• online and from competitors
• Customer comments regarding a purchase
• Data from websites and social media
• Data on customer services
Use this guide to identify any gaps in the data you are currently gathering and to motivate client-supported improvements. Utilize solutions for product experience insights to contextualize your customer analytics data and determine exactly what must be done to satisfy customers.
Bloom & Wild used customer insight to increase Valentine’s Day sales by 4x
Are red flowers still desired on Valentine’s Day? Bloom & Wild had the guts to pose the query. And as a result, they experienced record sales growth and many customers had the most memorable Valentine’s Day in years.
The knowledge:
Is it cliché to give red roses on Valentine’s Day? Yes. And while it’s still wonderful to receive them, selling them can be exceedingly difficult. Will you actually try to outbid your partner on price by offering the least expensive option? Or would you prefer to provide them with something special?
Bloom & Wild learnt that it was the last choice through their customer insight research, which helped them differentiate themselves from the competition.
What worked, why, and what can you take away from it:
According to Charlotte Langley, Brand & Communications Director at Bloom & Wild, 79% of respondents stated they would prefer a thoughtful present to a conventional one, such as a bouquet of red roses. Red roses, according to 58% of respondents, are overused. This provided us the assurance that our developing skepticism of those Valentine’s Day clichés was accurate.
blooms for the spring? Groundbreaking. Valentine’s Day flowers? Shocking.
Due to the audacious No Red Roses Campaign, the data not only assisted them in improving what they supplied and ensuring customer pleasure, but it also helped them gain some significant news notice.
Course Manual 3: Design Thinking
Defining Design Thinking
Tim Brown of IDEO asserts that design “Design can help to improve our lives in the present. Design thinking can help us chart a path into the future.”
It is not necessary to be familiar with design principles or color schemes to engage in design thinking. It is a way that designers employ to resolve challenging issues. They subsequently locate a solution for the users.
Design thinkers explore options to produce desired results that benefit consumers using creativity, logic, and reason. Design thinking, expressed simply, is the act of creating tools and processes with the user in mind.
It is primarily appropriate for situations involving service design where evaluation and research are paired with domain expertise. However, it is not limited to design issues and may be applied in any industry.
User-centric and placing people first, design thinking puts people first. It aims to comprehend the end-needs user’s and identify suitable solutions to meet those needs. This motivates companies and brands to design memorable user experiences.
Benefits of Design Thinking
Applying design thinking to your operations and processes has a significant positive impact. It guarantees that the designed goods are both appealing to the end user and practical in terms of the resources and budget of the organization.
The following are some of design thinking’s main benefits:
• It has been demonstrated that design thinking has a ROI of 85% or more.
• Design thinking is primarily used to aid in problem-finding and the creation of workable solutions. As a result, the time needed for the design and development phases is cut down.
• Design thinking enables stakeholders to think creatively by challenging presumptions. It promotes an innovative culture that extends beyond the design team.
• No matter the team or industry, it promotes cross-team interactions and leverages group thinking.
• By putting users first, design thinking increases engagement and improves customer retention.
Rethinking a company’s use of technology, procedures, and personnel allows it to pursue new revenue streams and business models. It results from modifications in user expectations. According to a recent report by the World Economic Forum, digital transformation has the potential to boost the global economy by $100 trillion by 2025.
It entails creating digital items like an eCommerce platform or mobile applications for businesses that manufacture conventional commodities. For instance, consider DBS Bank. The bank improved the experience for Southeast Asians, making it one of the most innovative banks in the world. In 2010, DBS executives accepted the challenge after seeing how the digital revolution will affect the banking industry. DBS was consequently completely revamped, including the customer experience, internal processes, and data usage. The organization has integrated design toolkits across its value chain and altered consumer interaction through path mapping, co-creation, and design spaces.
Great Design Thinking Example: PillPack
The agony of taking medication might frequently be worse than the pain of the illness. It can be exhausting waiting in long lines at the pharmacy, checking expiration dates, and making sure you take this medication with meals and that one on an empty stomach.
To make it simpler, PillPack, an online pharmacy, was founded. In order to make the process painless, PillPack attempted to develop a prescription home delivery system. The company served as a startup-in-residence at IDEO’s Cambridge office, working with designers to hone their proposition and present it to the public.
This is how it goes: Your doctor sends your prescriptions directly to the pharmacists at PillPack, who presort and customise them into packets with all of your medications—including refills, over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and supplements. These neat little packages are sent to your house with date and time labels. An IDEO-designed sturdy dispenser that is intended to become a part of customers’ habits and blend in seamlessly with their houses can hold every 14-day supply of medication neatly. Additionally, IDEO created a travel pouch that makes it simple and covert to take medication while on the road. Pharmacists at PillPack’s pharmacies are available at any time by phone or email to respond to inquiries from people who prefer human interaction.
Designers used this framework to totally rebuild PillPack’s website, as well as its private customer dashboard, a range of physical items, and the company’s brand vision, strategy, and identity across channels.
As a result, PillPack developed a set of tools that demonstrated a thorough comprehension of its clients, a clearly defined product and service, and a human-centered methodology. The only independent pharmacy that offers nationwide service in the United States is still PillPack.
“PillPack has revealed the massive potential of combining design thinking and the drug market… This simple innovation makes life easier for seniors who can be a bit forgetful and have difficulty with bottles,” Wired wrote in an article about the company. “Younger patients with active lifestyles and chronic diseases can just pull as many packets as they need and go. All told, PillPack means you’ll never have to help your grandma sort pills into a tacky day-of-the-week organizer again.”
Amazon outbid rival shops in June 2018 to purchase PillPack for $1 billion.
Role of Design Thinking in IT Transformation
Pursuing a digital transformation strategy to place your business as the market leader is difficult. Both internal and external factors could impede the development. Lack of a clear vision, resistance to change, data overload, and strict development methods are a few potential barriers.
Design thinking has the potential to completely reinvent your business in the context of digital transformation. By integrating disruptive technology into your business processes and practices, design thinking can help you improve the user experience.
Prototyping and testing are essential components of design thinking. The little tests and experiments conducted throughout a product’s design and development process are a key benefit of digital technology. This guarantees a smooth and successful product launch. Furthermore, you can evaluate the outcomes. As a result, you can make the necessary modifications by considering the data gathered and consumer input.
Steps to Boost Digital Transformation With Design Thinking
Step 1: Empathize
Creating a fantastic customer experience is essential to IT transformation. It’s critical to empathize with them in order to comprehend their motives, needs, and pain areas in order to accomplish this effectively. We shouldn’t assume that we know how the consumer will behave because the problems we are tackling are rarely our own.
Instead, pay attention to how customers use your product or service. Consider what they are searching for on Google or the website, how they are interacting with your website or app, what questions they are asking your customer service representatives in chat logs, or even go one step further and conduct in-depth interviews with your customers to learn more about their expectations for the digital experience.
You may gather the knowledge you need to effectively address your customers’ problems by truly understanding where their areas of friction are throughout their digital experience.
Step 2: Define The Problems
The define stage makes the issues you’re attempting to tackle clearer. You will be able to focus your time and attention more effectively by using the knowledge you obtained from the empathize step.
Once you’ve examined this data, you should write a problem statement. For instance, if visitors are frequently contacting from step 13 of the problem-solving wizard, the problem statement can be something like: “We need to solve step 13 in the problem-solving wizard to increase customer happiness on our site.” The problem statement ought to be user-oriented and narrowly focused on a particular problem. Because we genuinely want our clients to have a positive experience, we are making an effort to assist them.
The define stage can be a little overwhelming because there are so many issues that need fixing. To make these issues palatable, this step prioritizes them into separate, manageable opportunities rather than trying to overwhelm.
Step 3: Ideate
We now know exactly what the issue is, so it’s time to come up with solutions. To generate a wide range of original ideas during this stage, it’s crucial to brainstorm. This is done by drawing on the collective wisdom of a group. Instead of relying solely on your team, engage in highly collaborative cross-functional work. During this stage, you shouldn’t overthink everything or come up with a single solution. The ideate phase is rapid, inventive, and collaborative above all else.
Step 4: Prototype
Here, the team will test a range of straightforward, low-cost models in an effort to swiftly evaluate your solution ideas. Usability testing or a chosen group of your website’s visitors should be used to test prototypes on a limited group of people.
Observe how users engage with the prototype, get feedback, and then utilize this data to tweak and improve the next model. The changes made during this phase should happen quickly and effectively. Establish a safe space where making mistakes is acceptable so that you can learn from them and move forward.
By the time this phase is over, you ought to have a solid concept of what works and what doesn’t, as well as what actual users of your service will think and feel.
Step 5: Test
Testing your different prototypes frequently gives you the chance to get better. Every time you connect with a customer, you have the chance to learn how to improve the customer experience. You gather the data required to go back and review earlier design thinking phases during the testing phase.
The proverb “Art is never finished, only abandoned” is attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci.
Our desire to enhance the customer experience is ongoing, and we should always be testing and optimizing to find new ways to enhance it.
In the modern world, all company processes must incorporate IT transformation, and design thinking methodology is an efficient technique to address the challenges that this change brings. Adopting this user-centric approach will help as you integrate digital technologies into your company, whether you follow the suggested stages above or develop your own design thinking process.
Great Design Thinking Example: Air BnB
It’s 2009. On the edge of going bankrupt, is Airbnb. It was almost unknown, just like many of the businesses that were starting up at the time. The company’s three founders were suffering from losses as revenue barely reached $200 each week. What was going on? The founders started analyzing the behavior of their advertisements in New York to figure out what was going on, along with Paul Graham, the founder of the business incubator Y Combinator, who later invested in Airbnb’s venture. They discovered that the 40 published commercials shared a same pattern; the commonality was in the images. Since the owners took photos using iPhones, not all of the rooms in the residences were displayed, and those who were interested had no idea where they would be living, they weren’t very good. Because they couldn’t even see what they were paying for, people weren’t reserving rooms.
After identifying the issue, they came up with a non-scalable and low-tech solution: they would visit New York, rent a camera, and spend time with the clients in their homes taking quality photos of the properties. Without doing any research first, they just did it, following their gut. One of the founders, Joe Gebbia, had given up his job in computing to enroll in the Rhode Island School of Design, and the result was a creative approach that bears the label “design thinking.” He had heard of design thinking there and believed that in order to understand their consumers’ needs, they had to put themselves in their shoes. The team took a unique and imaginative approach, trying to understand what people using Airbnb were really searching for by getting inside their thoughts.
After visiting the New York houses and improving the photos, it took a week for Airbnb to start making twice as much money, or $400, per week. The group understood they were headed in the correct direction. Gebbia, who opted for a non-scalable solution, saved the company from the catastrophe that was about to put Airbnb out of business. Instead of using the business operating codes they had acquired in school, they adhered to the design thinking principles of empathize, define, design, prototype, and test. Paul Graham advised them that work may be carried out in a different way and that they should forget about computer codes in favor of thinking like other people do in order to solve difficulties. What the three founders had been unable to resolve in front of their computers for months was resolved during a visit to the residences. The most effective method for addressing the issues and developing clever solutions was speaking with clients in the real world.
For ideas to succeed, according to Gebbia, talking to clients and placing oneself in their shoes is essential. He instructed his team to think like customers in light of this. Everyone who joins the company is required to travel the first week and document it. The plan is for them to pose a number of queries so that the staff members may observe any potential issues firsthand and then come up with imaginative solutions. For instance, according to an interview with Firstround, one of its designers was instructed to research the purpose of the stars awarded to institutions. After thinking about it for a day, the designer opted to switch out the star for a heart, believing that people had been too harsh in their star ratings. But the heart went deeper. He was accurate. Just by switching a star for a heart, commerce rose by more than 30%.
With more than 1,500,000 listings in 192 countries and 34,000 locations and a total of more than 40 million roomers in 2015, Airbnb has transformed from a company that made 200 euros per week to one that is disrupting the travel industry.
Introducing Design Thinking into Business
Transworld Avana has used design thinking for digital transformation to great success. The Transworld Group has led the shipping industry on a global scale for more than 40 years. In order to provide consumers with the services they require, such as refrigerated logistics, coastal shipping, warehousing, etc., the development of the app assisted in the creation of their customer-facing portal.
The company was able to grow up operations and accelerate the digital transformation thanks to the creation of the Transworld Avana application. Here is how to incorporate design thinking into your company.
1. Barrier-free collaboration
Design thinking emphasizes the process, and if barriers to collaboration are removed, you can gain a lot. While having a facilitator along the route would be ideal, their purpose shouldn’t be to impose restrictions. The facilitator only needs to direct.
2. Everyone is invited to participate
Giving everyone the same opportunities to express their thoughts and voice is important to the digital transition. Long meetings may result from this, but it is important to hear everyone in your organization’s viewpoint. The best ideas can come from anywhere, so you never know. It can happen that your newest employees wind up shocking you with cutting-edge concepts.
3. No judgment
Make sure there is a safety net when thinking about giving your company a digital makeover. This will enable people to express their opinions without worrying about criticism. Encourage the creation of ideas by your entire team.
4. Accepting differences
Not everyone will be extremely creative and productive. Nevertheless, it would be beneficial if you collaborated despite your disparities in abilities. It’s possible that certain staff members require more support than others in order to completely embrace the shift to the digital world.
5. The focus is to be better, not perfect
Delivering a flawless product shouldn’t be the focus of design thinking and digital transformation. The emphasis should be on improving what already exists. Prototyping, testing, and the ability to continuously improve and optimize are all aspects of design thinking. You’ll need to continually improve your product in accordance with customer expectations as you proceed.
It’s time to integrate design thinking into your organization’s IT transformation in order to take advantage of emerging disruptive technologies for your business. By doing this, you’ll be able to better serve your clients and give them a top-notch user experience.
Four Examples of how Design Thinking can Accelerate Digital Transformation
Every IT professional is aware of the challenges involved in successfully planning and implementing digital projects. Even the most well-intentioned and promising IT initiatives may have trouble being realized due to the constantly evolving technology landscape, shifting consumer demands, growing possibilities and risks, as well as communication and project management difficulties.
Both small and large enterprises can solve these difficulties with the use of design thinking. It has been established that Designing Thinking is very beneficial when it comes to IT transformation.
As it makes use of human abilities like empathy, reasoning, imagination, curiosity, and systems thinking, design thinking is frequently defined as being grounded in the art of the possible. By swiftly and effectively prototyping concepts using paper or digital design tools and testing them with end users, it reduces the risk of failure.
For instance, this Design Thinking technique is built on six fundamental stages:
1. Discovery of an organization’s needs and articulating the design challenge to solve
2. Creating a deep Understanding of your end-user – whether it be a customer or employee
3. Ideating concepts through a range of activities and tools
4. Building out a minimum viable product through agile
5. Delivering through pilot or into production
6. And future proofing the solution
As you can see, Design Thinking necessitates close end-user proximity in order to pinpoint unstated or unmet demands, making it a potent competitive differentiator.
These four instances illustrate how Design Thinking may quicken the digital transformation.
1. Ecosystem Mapping
Ecosystem mapping, at its core, is a procedure to map out the networks of stakeholders and assess the strength of their interconnections.
Complex ecosystems are the setting for many businesses. Suppliers, clients, internal divisions, partners, and numerous other stakeholders are all connected to them. In this ecosystem, there are frequently both many hidden chances to create new service experiences or generate economic value. Organizations may spot these dangers and possibilities sooner by using Design Thinking approaches to map and evaluate their ecosystems.
2. Value Chain Analysis
Since Michael Porter, value chain analysis has existed. It involves taking a close look at the several ways that value is created within a business. Value chain analysis using Design Thinking methodology enables a business to pinpoint the most profitable activities it may undertake while also generating new ideas for value creation.
Consider a company that wishes to increase the value of its eCommerce platform, for instance. We would examine elements like cost-cutting, cost-stimulation, market expansion, and customer experience improvement with the goal of quantifying their potential impact. The features that will provide the most value are built first thanks to this procedure. As a consequence, businesses can be sure that their resources are being directed toward creating the elements that will have the biggest positive effects, fostering confidence and trust in the digital project right away.
3. Strategic Alignment Matrix
A technique that aids in ensuring efforts are objectively rated using a set of weighted criteria is the strategic alignment matrix. The Strategic Alignment Matrix is a great tool for analyzing and contrasting various strategic initiatives to determine which ones will be most beneficial and best align with the overarching corporate strategy.
It is ensured that all initiatives are evaluated and scored equally and that the appropriate scoring criteria are used by using Design Thinking approaches to design the matrix, jointly defining and agreeing on the scoring criteria, and jointly evaluating each individual initiative. To make sure you have a balanced portfolio of initiatives, these can then be mapped based on their relative value and color coded based on a variety of characteristics, such as technology or business function.
4. Importance/Difficulty Matrix
Finally, when it comes to prioritizing new capabilities, design thinking is helpful. Organizations can prioritize tasks based on their overarching objectives, strategy, and available resources by using a matrix that emphasizes both the significance of specific capabilities and their complexity.
The 4:2:1 strategy, which divides efforts into themes and prioritizes them based on business value and dependencies, or the value chain analysis, which ensures you’re maximizing business value, can then be used as a feed into other prioritization techniques.
These are but four illustrations of how Design Thinking may hasten the IT change.
Great Design Thinking Example: Clean Team – In-Home Toilets for Ghana’s Urban Poor
There aren’t many decent options when it comes to our bodies’ most fundamental needs for the millions of Ghanaians without access to indoor toilets. Clean Team is a comprehensive sanitation system that delivers and maintains toilets in members’ homes. It was developed by IDEO.org in collaboration with Unilever and Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP). In Kumasi, Ghana, Clean Team now provides services to 5,000 people, improving their quality of life and dignity.
The outcome:
In order to meet the needs of Ghanaians with limited resources, the IDEO.org team created a comprehensive sanitation system. The Clean Team service consists of a specially created standalone rental toilet and trash pickup system, but the design work also included branding, uniforms, a payment strategy, a business plan, and essential messaging for the complete service ecosystem. Before starting in 2012, Unilever and WSUP piloted the concept with roughly 100 families in the Ghanaian city of Kumasi.
The process:
INSPIRATION – Numerous interviews were required throughout the project’s rigorous Inspiration Phase in order to fully comprehend the design issue. According to team member and designer Danny Alexander, “Because sanitation is a systems-level challenge we knew that we couldn’t just design Clean Team’s toilet,”
After six weeks of speaking with sanitation specialists, observing a toilet operator, researching Ghana’s history of sanitation, and interviewing countless Ghanaians, important ideas regarding the design of the toilet and the collection of waste emerged.
A significant historical fact was also revealed: Night soil collectors, who cleaned out bucket latrines every night in Ghana for many years. However, night soil gathering was outlawed in the 1990s as a threat to public health because many night soil collectors discharged human excrement on the streets. This meant that the team could take advantage of an established practice related to the removal of rubbish from homes, but they would need to avoid any associations with illegal dumping.
IDEATION – In just seven weeks, the project moved from learnings to prototypes during this incredibly quick phase. The team decided which path to go in and started testing its ideas after discussing with its teammates and regular Ghanaians. Which aesthetics were popular? Would a toilet that diverts urine work? Were people at ease with military personnel entering their homes? Where would the toilet be located in the house? Is it possible to create a toilet that can only be emptied at a waste disposal site?
The team provided tangible components of the service to Ghanaians by constructing a few prototypes and adapting pre-existing portable toilets. They learned how the service should be positioned, early marketing and promotion theories, as well as certain technical limits, such as the fact that although flush functions first seemed to be popular, water scarcity was a significant issue to be dealt with.
IMPLEMENTATION – After the service options and restroom design and feel had been roughly developed, WSUP ran a live prototype of the Clean Team service. Due to the high cost of the machinery needed to make toilets, WSUP used off-the-shelf cabin toilets that roughly matched 80% of the toilets that IDEO.org would design to test the service. They achieved excellent results, moved forward with production, and as of 2012, the toilets are in use, have the branding of IDEO.org, and have entered the homes of more than 5,000 individuals.
Course Manual 4: Data Governance
Data governance (DG), which is based on internal data standards and policies that also regulate data consumption, is the process of regulating the accessibility, usability, integrity, and security of the data in corporate systems. Data governance that is effective protects against misuse and maintains data consistency and reliability. As businesses increasingly rely on data analytics to help them run more efficiently and inform business decisions, it is becoming more and more important.
A steering committee that serves as the program’s governing body, a governance team, and a group of data stewards are often included in a well-designed data governance program. They collaborate to develop the rules and guidelines that govern data, as well as the methods for implementation and enforcement that are generally handled by the data stewards. In addition to the IT and data management teams, executives and other representatives from the business operations of a firm should participate.
Although data governance is a crucial part of a comprehensive data management strategy, independent consultant Nicola Askham noted in a January 2022 blog post that for a governance program to be effective, firms must concentrate on the anticipated business benefits. The Bank of New York Mellon Corp.’s chief data officer, Eric Hirschhorn, brought up the same issue during a session of the 2022 Enterprise Data World Digital conference. “Outcomes can’t just be good governance,” he said. “Outcomes have to be running better businesses.”
Customer Success Story: Amgen Becomes Patient-Centric by Leveraging Artificial Intelligence
Amgen, one of the top biotechnology firms in the world, is dedicated to finding, developing, and providing cutting-edge therapies for patients with life-threatening illnesses. Since heart disease is the world’s top cause of morbidity and mortality, its advances in cardiovascular treatment have made a positive impact on the lives of patients who suffer from the condition. Amgen is able to reach more patients with potentially life-saving medications by using AI and machine learning to high-quality data about providers, products, and payers. Amgen is able to alert a care provider and offer a patient preventive treatment before a health crisis happens thanks to its patient-centric approach to analytics. Amgen is also able to shorten the time to market for new product launches because to this new data-driven methodology.
Why data governance matters
Data inconsistencies in various systems throughout an organization might not be handled in the absence of proper data governance. In the sales, logistics, and customer service systems, for instance, customer names could be listed in a different way. As a result, data integration projects may become more challenging, and problems with data integrity might arise that would impair the accuracy of business intelligence (BI), corporate reporting, and analytics systems. Additionally, data inaccuracies might not be found and corrected, which would reduce the accuracy of BI and analytics.
Initiatives for regulatory compliance can be hampered by poor data governance. For businesses that must abide by the growing number of data privacy and protection rules, including the GDPR of the European Union and the California Consumer Privacy Act, this could provide issues (CCPA). Develop common data definitions and standard data formats that are used in all business systems as part of an enterprise data governance program to improve data consistency for both business and compliance purposes.
Who’s responsible for data governance?
The data governance process involves a variety of people in the majority of firms. This includes end users who are acquainted with pertinent data domains in an organization’s systems, business executives, data management specialists, and IT personnel. These are the main players and what their main governance duties are.
Chief data officer. The senior executive who leads a data governance program and bears primary responsibility for its success or failure is frequently the chief data officer (CDO) — if there is one. In addition to taking the lead in building up the program, overseeing its development, and acting as an internal advocate, the CDO’s responsibility also entails gaining approval, money, and staffing for it. Another C-suite executive will typically act as an executive sponsor and carry out the same duties if a firm doesn’t have a CDO.
Data governance manager and team. In some circumstances, the CDO or a comparable executive, such as the director of enterprise data management, may also serve as the direct program manager for data governance. In other instances, organizations designate a manager or lead for data governance explicitly to oversee the program. In either case, the program manager often oversees a data governance team that is devoted exclusively to the project. It maintains internal communications, tracks metrics, facilitates meetings and training sessions, and performs other management duties. It is occasionally more formally referred to as the data governance office.
Data governance committee. However, decisions on policies or standards are typically not made by the governance team. The data governance committee or council, which is primarily composed of company leaders and other data owners, is in charge of that. The core data governance policy, as well as related policies and guidelines on things like data access and usage, as well as the processes for applying them, are approved by the committee. Additionally, it settles conflicts like disagreements over data definitions and formats across various business divisions.
Data stewards. Data stewards are responsible for keeping data sets organized by monitoring them. They are also in responsible of making sure that the end users abide by the norms and guidelines that the data governance committee has established. The data stewardship function is typically handled by staff members who have expertise in a particular collection of data assets and domains. In some businesses, that is a full-time role, while in others, it is a part-time one. A combination of IT and business data stewards is another possibility.
Customer Experience Fails: American Airlines
Fail: Not Having a Dedicated CSM Leader.
An effective customer experience strategy is driven by CSM leadership. These workers oversee team performance and provide CSMs with all the resources they require to help clients. Make sure you get the best manager possible if you want your company to grow.
When it comes to providing excellent customer service, airlines have a famously poor image. After all, personnel of airlines must be skilled problem solvers because they operate in stressful circumstances. It is understandable that some businesses will make errors given the strict rules and regulations that are enforced at airports.
When a flight attendant instructed a customer to exit a plane, that is exactly what occurred to American Airlines. The guy was carrying a cello worth $30,000 that was reportedly “too big” for the plane. She was then ordered to board a another plane that was leaving one hour later. However, the crew of that plane refused to allow her board, and shortly airport police surrounded her because they believed she was “not intelligible.”
The customer was correct all along, it turns out. The instrument was allowed under the airline’s rules, and she could have taken off on her original aircraft.
This circumstance demonstrates the need of having a committed CSM leader. Your workforce should be familiar with every one of your company’s policies, procedures, and rules. If not, you should have at least one manager who is available right away in the event that a disagreement like this arises.
10 Business Silos Impact Customer Experience
Do you have a customer experience silo detective at your company? Your customer experience council, chief customer officer, chief operational officer, or better yet, every employee, may believe that this is their highest-ROI endeavor. Silo-ization is usually always the cause of issues with how company is conducted. And whether an employee or a consumer, everyone is aware of the pain caused by corporate silos.
Don’t, however, discard the infant along with the bathwater. Like most things in life, corporate silos have “two sides to the coin.” The good news is that we do require variety, ownership, accountability, expertise, and efficiency. The drawbacks include blind spots, egotism, inaccessibility, and inefficiency, all of which are very uncomfortable. When deciding whether to remove a silo, exercise caution. Elimination occasionally has drawbacks of its own.
Overall, the key to dealing with business silos is in expanding our perspectives and motivations in the work we do. This is the genesis of collaboration and universality (i.e. compatibility) needed to overcome the negatives while benefiting from the positives.
When a silo is found, your silo detectives should look for ways to broaden viewpoints, motivations, collaboration, and universality.
Operations Business Silos
Did you know that the customer experience is impacted by at least 10 different business silos?
1) Organizational Silos
“Another department handles that” is all-too-common for customers to hear. In customers’ minds, “You have to go to X to get that” or “I’ll transfer you to Y” means delays in getting on with their objective. It means hassles: having to re-explain the situation, or worse, having to recite yet again account numbers and security answers.
Of course companies need departments to organize work and specialize knowledge. Information-sharing, empowerment, and departmental collaboration are needed to improve customer experience and reduce holdups and headaches. Additionally, persistent consumer complaints frequently include numerous businesses, underscoring the urgent need for inter-organizational cooperation.
2) Channel Silos
“We only handle in-store transactions; you’ll have to contact the dealer you bought from, or our online group.” In customers’ minds, this means extra costs, delays, premature roll-outs, and lack of brand integrity: am I dealing with one brand or a mish-mash of opportunists?
Customers may get the assistance they need when they need it thanks to a number of sales and service channels. Integrated data, policies, and processes, as well as experience continuity between sales and service channels and between sales and service channels are what the customer experience is lacking.
3) Systems Silos
“You’ll have to log-in to our other site” or “That mobile app isn’t available for the type of account you have” or “That went to the fax machine at our national site”. In customers’ minds, this means red tape nuisances, mustering patience to understand the lack of logic, chasing things that fell into a black hole, and tiresome delays.
It takes time for businesses to consolidate or integrate once they acquire other businesses and embrace new technologies. Proactive communication about what to expect, taking the initiative to stop black holes, and absorbing the burden of the annoyance for the consumer are what are lacking from the customer experience.
4) Data Silos
Thank you for being moved to me; what is your account number and status once more? or “That’s in another database” Customers associate this with monotony, wastage of time, and uncertainty.
Businesses collect data in a variety of sources and forms throughout the customer life cycle. The reduction of tedious and time-consuming steps required to obtain what they require is what is lacking for the customer experience.
5) Process Silos
While messages like “welcome from your dealer” and “welcome from your success manager” from so many different departments may highlight how enthusiastic you are about the client, the fact that so many different groups are sending onboarding notes, asking for survey feedback, and so forth is an indication of broken processes. Customers may view this as adding to their already busy lives by adding additional reading, redundant interactions, and confusion about where to turn for what.
Businesses have a lot of moving elements that serve customers and seek feedback from those customers. The customer experience is lacking simplicity and a focus on their own lives and businesses rather than spending a significant amount of time thinking about the supplier’s business.
Execution Business Silos
6) Vision Silos
The customer experience strategy is seen differently by various individuals in charge of various aspects of the customer experience. The goals of marketing, information technology, and other departments inside the C-suite might not all line up. Additionally, loyalty managers imagine renewals that meet monthly quotas, digital marketing managers envision individualized encounters, and customer service managers envision first contact resolution. All of these managers anticipate survey responsiveness that boosts referrers. In the eyes of the customers, this entails bribes to act when and how the business desires, as well as rules and demands that don’t always seem to be in their best interests.
Businesses set goals for expansion, cost control, and risk mitigation that are modified for each functional area. When and how it best suits their aims, an unshakeable sense that the client’s needs come first, as a trust-builder and a forerunner to organic growth, cost minimization, and risk reduction, is what the customer experience lacks.
7) Assumption Silos
The realities of a company’s consumers are understood differently by different people throughout the organization. Journey maps that are centered on a single touchpoint, the emphasis on survey scores rather than the actual customer survey responses, and other widespread practices obfuscate the true overall picture of the entire customer life cycle. Customers interpret this as inconsistent experiences across their entire trip or life cycle, as well as inconsistent empathy for their suffering.
Businesses are busy conducting their operations, so establishing a shared understanding among thousands of employees requires a dedicated effort. The customer experience is lacking in “performing the full job” across customers’ needs and making long-term customers feel as important as or more so than new ones.
8) Goal Silos
Staff who interact with consumers have customer experience goals, but staff who don’t see much of a relationship between their work and the customer experience are often more concerned with productivity or other internal standards. Customers interpret this as meaning that certain items, procedures, regulations, and business strategies don’t always meet their expectations.
Businesses have a variety of responsibilities, including those to their consumers, shareholders, and market analysts. The fundamental significance of consumers as the source of funding for all that a business undertakes can be easily overlooked. To the extent that it is humanly possible, getting things right the first time and every time would improve the customer experience and reduce the need for customer-facing people and incentives.
9) Metrics Silos
Performance measurements for organizations, people, and teams may not be the same as those for businesses. especially in relation to dashboards, incentive compensation, and recognition. Customers interpret this as the supplier being satisfied with industry-leading survey scores rather than permanently resolving persistent issues, as heroics are prioritized over issue prevention, they are instructed to give a particular rating when the survey is administered, and issues are resolved for specific customers rather than the entire customer base.
Businesses track what is connected to goals; this may be effective if the goals are precisely connected to accurate assumptions and have a solidly established unified vision for excellent customer experience. Preventing problems and anticipating customers’ needs and behaviors are what the customer experience is lacking.
10) Handoff Silos
Anywhere in a firm, throughout a customer experience journey, or during the customer life cycle, you might hear, “That’s not my job.” Customers frequently hear “That’s the fault of Y” when shoddy handoffs take place between software, hardware, or services, or between headquarters and branches, or between alliance partners, etc. Customers associate this with difficulties in achieving their goals and a potentially endless amount of time and effort spent attempting to figure things out on their own.
To ensure efficiency and return on investment, businesses must define scope and limitations. The customer experience is lacking actual solutions that will help them achieve their goals and the prevention of surprises.
Solving Business Silos
These ten silo categories will no doubt keep your silo investigators busy spotting missed possibilities. Missed opportunities result in the loss of valuable resources, unrealized growth potential, money left on the table, preventable customer and employee churn that negatively impacts the entire company, and lower return on investment across a wide range of commercial initiatives.
Data Governance: Where Does it Fit in Your Customer Data Management Plan?
Thanks to new privacy rules, browser and device restrictions, and restricted digital platforms, the digital world is in a state of upheaval. The noise has increased as a result of Google’s recent declaration that it won’t switch third-party cookies for other user-level identifiers.
The significance of owned consumer data is a prevalent theme throughout these ongoing challenges. First-party data, however, won’t serve corporate goals if it’s of poor quality and the processing of such data doesn’t respect individuals’ privacy. Brands must modify their customer data strategies and organize their data “houses” in order to manage the seismic upheavals occurring in digital advertising and remain competitive in a consumer-centric environment. Data governance and data management play a role in this.
Although they are frequently used synonymously, data governance and data management are not the same. With a reference to some of their differences and how they are connected, this piece concentrates on the former. The objective is to provide brands with a framework for data governance that will allow them to make quicker, more informed decisions that will lead to corporate growth. Adopting this framework will improve your company’s performance and the interactions you have with your clients.
Data governance is a requirement for modern businesses, but it is also one of the biggest problems chief marketing officers have when looking for ways to deliver compliant, moral, and individualized marketing that produces results for their companies. According to a recent Forrester Consulting survey commissioned by Neustar, just 31% of B2C firms have strong governance frameworks that guarantee the security, dependability, and reliability of their consumer data.
We frequently use the following analogy to illustrate data governance: Before playing a game for the first time, We like to read the rules so in order to be aware of how to proceed, what steps to take, what obligations We have to the other players, and how other moves will impact us. Data governance is similar to a collection of rules that are centered on ensuring the accuracy and consistency of data. It addresses how information assets are acquired, used, and protected. Data governance policies must be adaptable and nimble in today’s changing digital environment, not a collection of rigid guidelines.
That sounds like data management, no?
In contrast, it is best to approach data management as an IT discipline. Data management, for instance, is when your business uses a CRM database to hold client information. Data governance would define the procedures your IT teams use to gather, verify, store, arrange, safeguard, and otherwise maintain the data.
An email marketing campaign’s use of data from a CRM system can be decided using, for instance, a data governance framework.
Is ethics part of data governance?
Following certain high-profile privacy issues in recent years, ethics is a factor that is becoming more and more crucial. For employees to be aware of suitable data standards before pursuing new data-driven initiatives, a governance structure must include regulatory compliance and ethical data use practices. Making an ethical data use approach could be one of the most difficult aspects of a data governance plan because it isn’t always obvious what is morally proper to do or how to benefit all stakeholders.
Why does my marketing organization need to have a data governance framework?
Brands that don’t close the data and partnership gaps brought on by organizational silos continue to be unprepared for changes in the world of digital marketing, and the stakes associated with that unpreparedness are rising. How do we interpret that? According to this perspective, marketing and analytics teams stay in their own lane and use data without paying attention to the privacy implications of data use, while privacy teams are in charge of handling compliance and data ethical issues. As a result, privacy concerns are frequently viewed as impeding marketing rather than guiding how privacy, marketing, and analytics operations fit.
Dismantling data silos inside an organization is one of the main objectives of a data governance system. Through a collaborative process, it seeks to synchronize data across all three pillars of data-driven marketing. According to the Forrester study, a holistic marketing strategy needs collaboration between marketing management, privacy, and analytics teams to succeed in a contemporary B2C industry where client data environments are frequently disturbed.
Data governance may provide decision-makers with more accurate information and assure compliance with new data privacy laws and other requirements by developing universal policies on the use of data and procedures to monitor usage.
What are some other benefits of a data governance framework?
You’ve probably heard the old adage “garbage in, garbage out.” It was first used by computer programmers to illustrate the link between subpar input and flawed output. Data quality is still a problem, particularly as businesses gather more unstructured customer data via text messages, voicemails, and IoT.
A data governance framework encourages improved data quality as well as confidence in the reliability and accuracy of the data. How? It contributes to:
• Definitions of data quality that assess the state of the data and its adherence to data policies.
• A company lexicon that keeps track of each word’s definition, assuring consistency and avoiding repetition.
• roles and duties for who is in charge of maintaining particular data.
• catalogs of data that are used to find and interpret data
What are some successful data governance principles?
Data governance principles have been developed by George Firican, director of data governance and business intelligence at the University of British Columbia and a major authority on the subject:
1. Data is a strategic enterprise asset and should be managed as such
2. Data governance is a program and a business discipline, not a project, which needs an ongoing investment, support, and exposure
3. Data governance is the foundation upon all enterprise information initiatives are built
4. Data governance and stewardship are a shared responsibility between business and IT
5. There is a common glossary with shared and approved business term and data definitions with a clear stewardship and ownership process
6. There is only one version of the truth for enterprise data which is actively managed and trustworthy
7. Data management needs to comply with legal and regulatory requirements, internal policies, and follow industry best practices and standards
8. Enterprise data are accessible and understood by relevant roles as needed in order to carry out their duties
9. Accountability for different data management practices is clearly defined, assigned, and managed
10. Data governance efforts, goals and objectives, priorities, decisions, and deliverables (procedures, processes, standards, policies, framework, etc.) are always communicated and made available to the entire enterprise
Because CMOs are under pressure to produce quantifiable results, data governance needs to be elevated to a strategic priority. In a recent CMO Council report, 91% of marketers stated that senior management and board members expected them to create measurable growth. One-third of these marketers stated that their company leaders believed this to be the primary responsibility of marketers today. In order to give actionable insights for a better customer experience and decisions that promote corporate growth, CMOs and other marketers must leverage data that has been collected from across departments.
Companies that went above and beyond for their customers: Rackspace
A provider of cloud infrastructure, Rackspace, bases its hefty rates on excellent products and much better support. The company consistently receives accolades from the sector, and for good reason. They refer to it as “fanatical support”
Here is an illustration of the attitude at work: In the midst of a protracted troubleshooting session, a Rackspace employee overheard a customer mention to a colleague that she was hungry. They were placed on hold while the support agent placed a pizza order for her clients.
When it finally arrived 30 minutes later, they were all still on the phone. The clients were ecstatic, and the support agent understood that everyone would be motivated to persevere until everything was resolved.
Conclusion: Not all instances of excellent customer service involve lavish spending. When you spontaneously perform an act of charity and meet the consumer where they are, you can turn a challenging situation around. A pizza was all that was necessary to restart this relationship—not a multi-course meal.
Course Manual 5: Harmonized CX
A multi-channel experience that is consistent and seamless takes into account the expanding channels and client touchpoints. Offering a unified CX and UX is essential in this hyper personalized era. To enhance such experiences, a comprehensive customer perspective that incorporates information from all points of contact is necessary. There should be consistency in the message and experience across all channels because customers may interact with your company through mobile applications, websites, social media, and virtual assistants.
The businesses with the highest chances of success with a digital transformation program are those that prioritize the consumer and adopt a data-driven mindset. Start your IT changes by focusing on the customer experience, leverage consumer data to influence your decisions, use a design-thinking strategy to develop customer-centric experiences, and synchronize your CX to develop a solid business case to support the investment. The path to IT transformation is not simple, and it lacks a clear end point. Companies must constantly adapt and learn about their customers in order to maintain a competitive customer experience (CX) in light of shifting consumer preferences, behavior, and demography.
In just three months, e-commerce in the United States has experienced a 10-year growth rate, and 29% of consumers said they might never feel comfortable making an offline purchase again. 17.2 million people, or nearly 25% of the population, in the UK plan to continue doing all of their shopping online. E-commerce is therefore here to stay and to rule, even as brick and mortar establishments are reopening.
Retailers must reconsider their strategies for producing a satisfying shopping experience in light of this. Customers now view all available sales channels as one, so they anticipate being able to easily place an online order through a website or a mobile app and pick it up at a store at a time that works for them. And retailers ought to be able to meet these demands.
Pricing, supply chain management, and in-store experience are the three “bricks” that make up the “bridge” of the ideal customer experience between retailers and consumers. The lack of anticipated products, unfair prices, and chaotic in-store operations are the three things that irritate customers the most.
As shoppers’ expectations evolve, these “bricks” need to be optimized.
1. Use technology to optimize pricing
40% of US customers claimed in a recent McKinsey study that they had switched brands or shops in the previous few months. Lower prices and a better price-to-value ratio were the first two justifications they gave. Retailers should therefore concentrate on developing the correct price perception across all of the selling channels.
Maintaining the price perception you require will be a real problem if you are an experienced retailer with thousands of products under management and a number of selling channels, especially in today’s environment where everything is changing at an incredible pace as online is gaining traction. If you will, price and category managers face an impossible task. Here, employing cutting-edge technology like artificial intelligence might be a viable alternative. AI has demonstrated its capacity to optimize pricing in a way that would allow retailers to offer rates that would be profitable at any given time and through any channel while still being seen as fair by customers. Since AI can analyze billions of data points and offer a combination of ideal prices across the entire variety in almost real-time, it is feasible. According to research, utilizing AI can increase gross profit by 4.5%.
But once more, it’s only a practical choice for assortments that are too big to manage by hand.
2. Make your supply chain management more flexible
Excellence in inventory management results in a better client experience and a rising turnover rate. The retail organization becomes significantly more competitive as a result, increasing consumer satisfaction and loyalty.
Unfortunately, it’s getting harder and harder to manage inventory. Nobody can foresee the availability of products at the supply side or the demand with 100% accuracy.
Therefore, I advise emphasizing flexible ordering, which is the flip side of the coin. This means that when demand changes unexpectedly, retailers should be prepared to place a legitimate order at any time. Other recommendations include investing in automation and placing smaller orders for fewer items more regularly. Retailers’ efficiency will increase, and this will improve their financial success.
3. Switch to data-driven digitized in-store operations
Online shopping has altered consumer behavior because it offers a streamlined, personalized, and customer-focused experience. The pandemic’s effects and the subsequent reliance on online shopping during the lockdown have only served to raise customers’ expectations for their next visit to a store. But how prepared are retailers for this change in expectations, and more crucially, how prepared is their sales force?
Giving workers immediate access to product details, corporate inventory, digital content, customer profiles, and wish lists should be the initial step in this process. They will then be able to deliver greater customer experiences by utilizing this rich supply of information.
The black box of in-store data is opened by using technology to put this information in the hands of sales representatives. By revealing consumer behaviors, staff performance, and product funnels, businesses may comprehend what actions contribute to a sale (or a lost basket) in a customer’s path-to-purchase. Using these insights will lead to larger baskets, more engaged and devoted customers, and fewer missed transactions.
The next step would be to increase in-store capabilities (like clienteling, self-serve devices for customers, and mobile POS) and extend their reach outside of the store by enabling store staff to sell remotely to customers unwilling to return to offline stores following the lockdown (like 121 email or SMS communications with customers, appointment setting, or chats on their websites), further increasing store staff productivity.
In the end, the rise of internet shopping during the shutdown has created a new type of consumer with a completely different set of expectations. Retailers must improve their processes in a number of business sectors if they are to meet their needs and provide the “bridge” of a consistent consumer experience across all selling channels. It might be possible to do that by concentrating on pricing, supply chain management, and digitizing in-store operations.
The Omni-Channel Experience
Technology is becoming more and more ingrained in our daily lives as it develops. Our online and offline activities are increasingly blending together. Marketers, salesmen, and customer service representatives will need to respond as people’s behaviors change. We will need to pursue one, comprehensive strategy — an omni-channel experience that customers can use whenever they want — rather than thinking of a desktop experience, a smartphone experience, a tablet experience, and an Apple Watch experience.
In this section of the course manual, we’ll go over what omni-channel means and how you can use omni-channel experiences to create profitable marketing, sales, and service strategies during your IT transformation.
Omni-Channel
Omni-channel, often called omnichannel, is a lead nurturing and user engagement strategy in which a business gives consumers and prospects access to its goods and services across all platforms, channels, and devices.
For instance, a business might provide service via Facebook Messenger, live chat, email, and phone in addition to its desktop website.
There are many advantages to using an omni-channel strategy in your marketing, sales, and service plans. The benefits comprise:
Greater reach.
You will be able to contact your customers wherever they are if you have an omni-channel retail, marketing, or service plan in place. They are no longer required to look far and wide to find you. Your staff or your products are accessible to everyone, everywhere, with just a click, an email, a direct message, or a phone call.
Increased profits.
If and when your prospects are prepared to buy, it will be much simpler for them to do so if they can find your goods across a variety of channels and platforms. By providing a multi-channel shopping experience, you may increase the likelihood that customers will return to you or renew their subscriptions, generating recurring income.
Boosted customer satisfaction.
If your customers believe they have multiple ways to contact your sales and customer support personnel, they will be happy over time. Or if consumers can easily buy your stuff no matter what device or platform they prefer. Customer happiness is the secret to lowering customer churn and retaining them as loyal customers.
As you can see, providing your clients with an omni-channel experience is essential for the success of your company. After that, describe the omni-channel experience.
Omni-Channel Marketing Example: Starbucks
The Starbucks rewards app is one of the best omni-channel experiences out now, as can be seen by taking a brief look at it.
To start with, you receive a rewards card for free that you can use each time you make a purchase. However, Starbucks has made it possible to check and reload your card through phone, website, in-store, or on the app, unlike conventional customer loyalty programs. Real-time updates are made to the card and your profile on all channels.
Realizing while waiting in line for a coffee that your balance is insufficient? By the time you swipe your card, the cashier will be aware that it has been updated if you reload it.
Why It Works:
• A customer’s mobile experience is more important than ever, so having a great app goes a long way.
What is the omni-channel experience?
The omni-channel experience involves marketing, selling, and providing customer service across all channels to provide a seamless and integrated customer experience regardless of the method or location of a customer’s contact. Customers should receive the same service regardless of the platform or method they select.
The experience should be smooth regardless of whether the customer is purchasing online from a desktop or mobile device, over the phone, or in a physical store.
It’s crucial to distinguish between an omni-channel experience and a multi-channel experience in this context. In essence, it depends on how thoroughly your company’s channels and platforms are integrated.
Omni-Channel vs. Multi-Channel
In a multi-channel environment, the user has access to a variety of communication options that aren’t necessarily synchronized or connected. However, during an omni-channel experience, there are not only multiple channels, but the channels are connected so you can move between them seamlessly.
The difference between omni-channel and multi-channel experiences comes down to two distinctions:
• All omni-channel experiences will use multiple channels, but not all multi-channel experiences are omni-channel. You can have amazing mobile marketing, engaging social media campaigns, and a well-designed website. But if they don’t work together, they don’t create an omni-channel experience for customers.
• Omni-channel experiences account for all devices and platforms. Whereas a multi-channel strategy might include two or three channels, an omni-channel experience includes all channels, platforms, and devices.
The majority of firms are now making investments in the multi-channel experience. They operate a blog, website, Facebook, and Twitter account. They interact and communicate with clients via each of these platforms. The client still typically doesn’t have a smooth experience or consistent messaging across all of these platforms.
Every platform and device a customer will use to contact with the business is taken into account by an omni-channel experience, which also delivers a consistent, effective user experience across all platforms.
In retail, it’s crucial to create an omnichannel experience. How much you sell depends on whether you have an omni-channel retail strategy in place.
How to build an omnichannel customer experience
Are you unsure about where to begin with an omnichannel consumer experience? Here are some pointers for incorporating various channels.
Map the customer journey
It makes sense that in order to build a seamless omnichannel customer experience, you must have a thorough understanding of your customer journey, including all of the touchpoints that before and follow the purchase decision.
By mapping the client journey, you may also see where there are gaps and problems. Once these are public, you can modify them and enhance the simplicity of purchasing across channels while also boosting revenue.
Listen to feedback
You may use customer feedback to gather the knowledge you need to streamline the customer experience and enhance the customer journey.
Therefore, gather reviews and solicit feedback from your clients. Take advantage of the chance to learn how customers want to interact with your company. By doing so, you may create an omnichannel strategy tailored particularly to the requirements of your clients.
You can distribute surveys by email or mobile apps, or you could even create a popup on your website that asks visitors to assess their experience and offer feedback.
Use the right technology
Without the proper technology, it is hard to provide seamless user experiences. Depending on the customer’s preferred means of communication, support staff should be able to get in touch with them via live chat, video and phone conversations, mobile apps, and more.
But you need to combine all of this information into a single customer view in order to deliver a real omnichannel consumer experience. In this way, your team will always have access to all the information they need to continue working where they left off, regardless of the channel a consumer accesses through.
In order to entice users to make repeat purchases, websites should leverage technology to provide tailored experiences in the form of product recommendations.
Identify the stakeholders
It takes time to implement an omnichannel experience. You’ll need to collaborate closely with a number of divisions, including your product, sales, marketing, and customer service teams. In the end, a successful customer journey depends on a coordinated internal strategy.
Start small and gradually change the client journey across other platforms if it all seems too daunting. Experiences can first be synchronized in your primary channels before being expanded across other auxiliary platforms.
Creating an Omni-Channel Experience is the Key to Future Success
Every business needs to create its own distinctive omni-channel experience architecture, and to create this effective plan, you’ll need to collaborate closely with a number of different company divisions.
While building your program, look to the following stakeholders:
• Product
• Marketing
• Sales
• Customer Support
• Customer Success
You can begin preparing for the switch to this model after everyone is aware of the aims and goals of your omni-channel initiative. As you strive to transition to an omni-channel method of doing things, including these departments early on will help; it’s less of a hassle later on when you get employees interested.
In the end, your strategy should include a tactical approach for creating a seamless, consistent experience across many platforms. There is still time to start small and grow later because this idea is still in its early stages of development.
Undoubtedly, omni-channel user experiences still have a ways to go, and smaller businesses may feel as though the project is out of their reach due to the size of some of the integrations mentioned above.
But I don’t think we’re that far off from a future where brands of all sizes can use omni-channel. Over the past ten years, technology has advanced significantly, and I have no doubt that forthcoming developments will enable even the tiniest businesses to interact directly with customers – regardless of where they are, what they are doing, or what device they are using.
Omni-Channel Marketing Example: Bank of America
Bank of America is serious about its omnichannel development. As one of the most well-known companies in their sector, they’re establishing the benchmark for a dynamic experience that, as of right now, enables the company’s mobile and desktop apps to handle everything from check depositing to appointment booking.
Bank of America still has a ways to go, for sure. Users still cannot utilize their phones to handle more complicated financial demands, such as loan applications. The company’s dedication to the omni-channel experience guarantees that other tasks, like paying your bills on time or depositing a check, don’t involve that much hassle.
Why It Works:
• Allowing customers to complete tasks from multiple channels creates the ultimate convenience.
Workshop Exercises
Customer Experience Exercises
01. CX Challenges: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
02. Customer Insights: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
03. Design Thinking: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
04. Data Governance: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
05. Harmonized CX: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
SWOT & MOST Analysis Exercises
01. Undertake a detailed SWOT Analysis in order to identify your department’s internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats in relation to each of the 12 Customer Experience processes featured above. Undertake this task together with your department’s stakeholders in order to encourage collaborative evaluation.
02. Develop a detailed MOST Analysis in order to establish your department’s: Mission; Objectives; Strategies and Tasks in relation to Customer Experience. Undertake this task together with all of your department’s stakeholders in order to encourage collaborative evaluation.
Project Studies
Project Study (Part 1) – Customer Service
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Customer Experience process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. CX Challenges
02. Customer Insights
03. Design Thinking
04. Data Governance
05. Harmonized CX
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 2) – E-Business
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Customer Experience process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. CX Challenges
02. Customer Insights
03. Design Thinking
04. Data Governance
05. Harmonized CX
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 3) – Finance
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Customer Experience process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. CX Challenges
02. Customer Insights
03. Design Thinking
04. Data Governance
05. Harmonized CX
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 4) – Globalization
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Customer Experience process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. CX Challenges
02. Customer Insights
03. Design Thinking
04. Data Governance
05. Harmonized CX
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 5) – Human Resources
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Customer Experience process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. CX Challenges
02. Customer Insights
03. Design Thinking
04. Data Governance
05. Harmonized CX
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 6) – Information Technology
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Customer Experience process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. CX Challenges
02. Customer Insights
03. Design Thinking
04. Data Governance
05. Harmonized CX
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 7) – Legal
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Customer Experience process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. CX Challenges
02. Customer Insights
03. Design Thinking
04. Data Governance
05. Harmonized CX
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 8) – Management
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Customer Experience process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. CX Challenges
02. Customer Insights
03. Design Thinking
04. Data Governance
05. Harmonized CX
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 9) – Marketing
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Customer Experience process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. CX Challenges
02. Customer Insights
03. Design Thinking
04. Data Governance
05. Harmonized CX
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 10) – Production
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Customer Experience process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. CX Challenges
02. Customer Insights
03. Design Thinking
04. Data Governance
05. Harmonized CX
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 11) – Logistics
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Customer Experience process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. CX Challenges
02. Customer Insights
03. Design Thinking
04. Data Governance
05. Harmonized CX
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 12) – Education
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Customer Experience process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. CX Challenges
02. Customer Insights
03. Design Thinking
04. Data Governance
05. Harmonized CX
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Program Benefits
Information Technology
- Agile IT processes
- Improved value delivery
- Decreased defects
- Continuous improvement
- Modernized infrastructure
- Re-tooled staff
- Increased morale
- IT Business partnership
- Meaningful metrics
- Effective sourcing
Management
- Decreased costs
- Aligned strategies
- Servant leadership
- Clarified priorities
- Improved effectiveness
- Improved transparency
- Reduced risk
- Measurable results
- Satisfied customers
- Vendor partnerships
Human Resources
- Empowered teams
- Servant leaders
- Re-tooled staff
- Improved teamwork
- Enhanced collaboration
- Improved performance
- Reduced turnover
- Improved loyalty
- Leadership development
- Employee development
Client Telephone Conference (CTC)
If you have any questions or if you would like to arrange a Client Telephone Conference (CTC) to discuss this particular Unique Consulting Service Proposition (UCSP) in more detail, please CLICK HERE.