Digital Customer Experience Tips and Trends

Excited by talk of new digital customer experience trends, and never one to miss out on writing a good list, Capgemini decided to think about what New Year resolutions customer experience professionals should be thinking about to ensure they make 2011 a year to remember:

1)      Learn something new
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and TripAdvisor are no longer hamlets in the ‘land of the brave’ but rather regular features of day-to-day life for millions of people (for instance, did you know that Facebook has over 500million active users, 70% of which are outside the US (Facebook stats) whilst in April last year, the co-owner of Twitter announced at a press conference that the site had over 105 million registered users and was growing at 300000 a day).  The past couple of years may have been spent talking about Web 2.0 but 2011 is the year for doing and organisations need to get involved sharpish if they don’t want to be left behind.  Read Capgemini blog posts on  foundations for success with social media, looking to implement social media in 2011and six social media lessons from businesses from 2010 to get some ideas about how you can start if you haven’t already.

2)      Fight the fat
Quantity is better than quality right?Especially when it comes to channels and communicating with customers. Actually, no.  Getting the right channel mix is by far more important than simply offering lots of channels,  as shown by the success of First Direct, which was been named Which magazine’s ‘Best Financial Services Provider’ for the 21st year running in 2010 (quite impressive given that it has no branches and offers internet, telephone and mobile banking only).  If you’re interested in trimming your channel fat I’d recommend a recent blog on Delivering high-quality, low-cost Public Services across channels (which has implications beyond the public sector) alongside blog.channelmanagement.com  for  some interesting points that start to de-mystify the channel challenge.

3)      Spend more time with family and friends
Ok, a pretty fundamental one – it’s cheaper to retain current customers than it is to attract new ones.  Whilst this isn’t new, it is a worsening problem in the age of digital media.  The amount of ‘noise’ consumers are faced with everyday means organisations have to push harder to make themselves heard and even when they do win a customer, that individual is empowered to such a degree that securing loyalty is quite the battle.  Organisations need to crack it though, so why not look for tips from Loyalty 360’s top loyalty trends for 2011, advice from an author on the Social Customer website or a previous Capgemini posts on what Dutch insurance firms are doing in this area?

4)       Enjoy life more
Have you heard of Doritos’ ‘Crash the Superbowl’ campaign, Coke’s Expedition 206 or Jimmy Choo’s ‘Trainer Hunt’?  These are prime examples of organisations understanding that customer engagement today is about more than transactions and good customer service.  Today’s customers expect to be entertained and rewarded like never before and organisations need to embrace this.  The usual suspects can help with this (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc) whilst less known examples like FourSquare can help you differentiate but technology’s only half the battle – creating a killer campaign is really where the challenge lies.

5)      Get organised
Finally, if any organisation is to be truly customer-oriented and reap the rewards associated with this, they need to be set up accordingly.  This can be scary and will often require major transformation but without it, initiatives risk being confined to limited success.  Organisations need to understand that customer-centricity is not a buzz word, or the focus for one quarter, or something ‘we’ve got to do because everyone else is’ but rather a way of managing an entire business, motivating staff and delivering results.  How to take 5000 people on a journey, Forrester’s case study on Cardinal Health  and How to build a customer centric culture all  make for interesting reading and provide a starting point for thinking about how to implement a fundamental shift to a customer-driven organisation.

All that’s left is for organisations to start implementing some of the ideas above and for spectators to see if the predictions for 2011 come true.   Undoubtedly there’ll be winners and losers throughout the course of the year, now we just need to see who’ll end up where.