Convergence Required: Digital Transformation & Predictive Customer Experience
There seems to be both good and not-so-good news on the digital transformation/customer engagement front. The good news is that digital transformation and predictive customer engagement are on parallel tracks. The not-so-good news is that they are on parallel tracks. The danger? These tracks may continue in parallel without intersecting, creating fragmented, new digital infrastructures that do not consistently place the customer at the center. Predictive customer engagement requires at its heart a digital transformation.
I recently attended a three-day session held by the Consortium for Service Innovation (CSI) and learned about some transformational, “predictive” efforts underway by Customer Advocacy and Support departments within several large organizations, and I participated in the development of a model for Predictive Customer Engagement (more on that soon). These fledgling efforts display the critical and strategic thinking of CX executives and practitioners who live and breathe the customer.
One discussion thread proposed by CSI Program Director Melissa George brought the discussion back to Marketing & Sales: Service & Support organizations are becoming strong allies of Marketing and Sales through their strategies to analyze and predict customer behavior, which may include the perfect moments to upsell and/or cross-sell services and products, and which will certainly impact product adoption, customer lifetime value, loyalty and satisfaction.
Considering, in the technology industry as one example, the freemium model of distribution, support and service become the front-line of sales. Or, sales becomes adept at support and service. Either way there is convergence.
We at Coveo often talk with marketing people who are working to predict and influence customer behavior via web and social media experiences. They are moving towards mass personalization which also requires a digital transformation.
A recent, in-depth blog by Esteban Kolsky posits that operations (in fact, the COO) should lead the digital transformation, with CEO strategic support, in concert with the CMO and other CxO’s. In it, Esteban proposes a new model for the transformation effort.
Such leadership may form an optimal path to ensure that all areas converge in this transformation which will have tremendous impact on sales, marketing, support and product/service development – of course in lockstep with IT. Regardless of who leads the effort, placing the customer at the center of it requires strong participation from service and support. Small initiatives and experiments run by marketing, support, and development and their learning should fuel future success as companies plot their roadmap to a new technology infrastructure. Without the convergence of these efforts we risk duplicating efforts and expenses, digital silos and a non-customer-centric infrastructure.
How will your organization converge to ensure customer centricity in your digital transformation efforts?
Diane is chief knowledge evangelist with Coveo, a global leader in search & relevance technology. She conducts research, works with KM practitioners, speaks and writes about knowledge-driven business.
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Art courtesy of Tata Consultancy blog.
Not sure sales is going to do support and service anytime soon. Insightful organizations really need to tap into the collective experience and knowledge of the support group. There is a gold mine of knowledge out there, it just needs to be harvested in a meaningful way.
Divergent Thinking, Communications, Change R&D
10 年Hi Diane. Your post made me remember a couple of things... One is fairly recent: the impact of Big Data on operations. Oversimplified, significant correlations found in cross-functional analyses will influence how the COO believes the organization is performing or ought to develop (evolve). That should trigger convergence... and what I wonder about is which levels (systems, processes, departments) will offer converged environments in which to get work done. The other is old: the emergence more than 15 years ago of the "Consolidated Service Desk", which brought a unifying information model and set of technology systems integrations to the support functions provided to corporate IT users and sponsors.IT users increasingly was seen to include external customers. At one leading company in particular (name available if requested), the challenge of integrating the support of internal and external customers produced an architecture reliant on "pre-digital" (i.e., data input) capture of experiences and outcomes. It was hampered by some human factors, and by the cost of mitigating technology silos and transforming data types at sufficient speed and volumes. But the vision lives on, as your post reflects..