Experience-as-a-Service : Transforming domain experience into boutique services

"In the experience economy, every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to build a relationship. Experience-as-a-service is the key to unlocking that potential." - Jeanne Bliss

As the world becomes increasingly digital, businesses have to adapt to changing customer expectations. One trend that has emerged in recent years is the focus on experience-as-a-service, where companies prioritize the customer experience in every aspect of their operations. As our IT Company celebrates its 25th anniversary, it's worth examining how we can provide experience-as-a-service to our clients.

When I look back to the history of CSM and its project delivery, I have been amazed to know how from day-one of business this organization has embedded the customer-first approach in the delivery of projects or services. The bottom line has always taken the last in the priority list. Be it a small experimental project such as a static website to an enterprise end-to-end automation such as I3MS or SAMS.?

First, it's essential to understand what experience-as-a-service means. It's about creating a seamless, personalized experience for customers across all touchpoints. Whether they're browsing our website, interacting with our chatbot, or speaking to one of our agents, customers should feel that we understand their needs and are committed to helping them achieve their goals.

As we are in the e-Governance domain, product implementation is too ambitious to take, hence we got into bespoke application development where we team up with the customers and develop an application that is realistic in terms of development, implementation, change management and at the same time sustainable solution. When we started developing the Kwantify solution for a middle east company, we co-create the solution by interacting with the end users on regular basis. Not only that we also used the same solution in our organisation to see how practical the solution is to implement.?

To deliver experience-as-a-service, we need to invest in technologies that allow us to collect and analyze customer data. This could include data from social media, website analytics, and customer feedback. By aggregating this data, we can gain insights into customer behaviour and preferences, which can inform our product development, marketing, and customer service strategies.

"Experience-as-a-service is not just a new business model; it's a new way of thinking about customer engagement." - Blake Morgan

Another key component of experience-as-a-service is personalization. Customers don't want to feel like they're just a number; they want to feel that we understand their unique needs and can tailor our offerings to meet those needs. I strongly believe we have been successful in most of our projects by engaging the customers and end users understanding their pain points and aligning the solution accordingly.

Addressing customer experience in different parts of the world can present a variety of challenges for businesses.

1. Cultural differences:?Different parts of the world have different cultural norms, values, and expectations. These differences can affect the way customers perceive and respond to products, services, and marketing messages.?
2. Language barriers:?Language barriers can hinder effective communication between businesses and customers.?
3. Technology infrastructure:?Technology infrastructure can vary greatly between different parts of the world. For example, some regions may have limited internet connectivity, which can make it challenging to provide online services.
4. Legal and regulatory differences:?Legal and regulatory differences can affect the way businesses operate in different parts of the world. For example, data privacy laws may vary between countries, which can impact the way businesses collect and use customer data.
5. Economic differences:?Economic differences between regions can affect the buying power of customers and their willingness to spend on products and services.?

The above challenges we face on a day to day operations and able to handle the situation through regular communication online as well as face-to-face wherever possible.?

Emotional attachment with customers is crucial for experience-as-a-service because it creates a strong bond between the customer and the brand. When customers feel emotionally connected to a brand, they are more likely to remain loyal, engage in positive word-of-mouth marketing, and even pay more for products and services.

We create that emotional attachment by understanding the customers' needs, preferences, and aspirations and creating experiences that speak to those needs and aspirations.?

Finally, experience-as-a-service is about creating a culture of customer-centricity throughout our organization. Every employee should be trained to understand the importance of delivering a great customer experience and should be empowered to make decisions that prioritize the customer. This could include providing additional resources to help a customer achieve their goals or offering a refund for a product that didn't meet their expectations.

In summary, experience-as-a-service is an approach that puts the customer at the center of everything we do. Recently one of our esteemed customers praised the effort of our people who delivered a fully functional portal in just 13 hours that helped government take an important decision during the Covid-19 period.?

"Experience-as-a-service is the secret sauce of modern business. It's not just about what you sell; it's about how you sell it and the experience you create for your customers." - Joey Coleman

By investing in customer data, personalization, and a culture of customer-centricity, we can create a seamless, immersive experience that sets us apart from our competitors. As we celebrate our 25th anniversary, let's commit to providing experience-as-a-service to our clients and continuing to innovate and adapt to meet their changing needs.

Author: Pradyut Mohan Dash