Become CX Obsessed in 5 Easy Steps
Lessons learned from Informatica’s 2nd Annual CX VIP Summit
Do you wake up thinking about your customers? Are you obsessed with Customer Experience (CX)? Every time a customer engages with your brand—be it at a retail store, check-in counter at a hotel, registration desk at a hospital, online via your website or mobile device—they are forming opinions about the experience you are providing. As customers become more demanding, and the competitive landscape shifts to focus on CX, it is critical that everyone in your organization— from the CEO to the frontline worker—be laser focused on the customer.
Each customer interaction is fueled by data. Although it may not be obvious, data is the backbone of CX. Data provides information—about historical interactions and transactions, as well as preferences—to both systems and users about customers. The more you know about your customer at the point of contact—or even before a customer engages with you—the better.
So how can we use data to become CX obsessed? Last week at Informatica’s CX VIP Summit in NYC, Amit Walia, Informatica’s President of Products and Marketing, outlined 5 pillars of CX obsessed.
1. Design Obsessed – Being design obsessed goes beyond designing good products and services. It is about how the whole experience from the first interaction as a prospect to loyal customer, has to be both engaging and valuable. Good CX makes the customer as though they equally important throughout their journey, even after a purchase has been made or a transaction has been completed. That feeling then drives upsell and cross-sell opportunities, making CX not a once and done thing, but a continual relationship between customer and brand.
2. Best-of-Breed Technology – Creating meaningful experiences at every stage of the customer lifecycle cannot be done without technology. Today’s digital world needs a backbone of technology to support it. There are many components of technology that support aspects of CX, from CRM to web management to intelligent applications that leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). It is critical to select best-of-breed solutions that meet the needs of each requirement along the CX journey.
3. Data-driven – At Informatica we live in a world of data, and we see how the leading CX organizations are those that are obsessed with data. They’re also the ones who know that when their customers choose to do business with them, they’re providing significant amounts of data. Meaning that the organizations that can extract insights and manage that data are also able to create experiences that delight customers and win the CX war.
4. Privacy and Consent – Many industries and geographies have put regulations in place to protect consumers and their data. Even if you are not driven by regulation, adherence to privacy and customer preferences are critical for your brand and should be taken into account in any CX program, if for no other reason than the fact that customers do business with brands they trust.
5. People and Culture – In order to be truly CX obsessed, it comes down to the people and culture of an organization. Nothing happens by itself: rather, it’s people at every level of an organization that help to build a culture that puts the customer first.
In addition to Amit, guest speakers such as CX Futurist and author Blake Morgan provided more great insight on what it means to be CX obsessed. Blake’s keynote provided principles for winning tomorrow’s business: she shared stories about how organizations like Amazon have built a culture where every employee wakes up thinking about the customer.
If you’d like to learn more about principles for winning tomorrow’s business, you can listen to Blake’s recent webinar, 12 Steps to Digital Transformation.
I look forward to more CX conversations with Informatica in 2020.
