#8 - Ride the Wave! Ensuring Trust and Building Loyalty through Predictive Experience Management

In light of ongoing reports of digital hacks, cyber attacks and system outages, continuing the theme of trust in the experience economy seems incredibly relevant.

And, although I lean bias toward conversations about our 'good ole days' of the analog life, a solid organizational strategy that focuses on the human factors impacting customer and employee experience must of course include the realities of our digital world.

In true optimist fashion, tying analog and digital together in a positive light is an area of customer experience (CX) I've enjoyed learning more about:

Predictive Experience Management - a.k.a. the 3rd Wave of CX

This area of CX management focuses on leveraging technology to proactively predict and personalize individual experiences.?

Key word - Individual.

Done right, individualized predictive experiences accentuate the unique ways an organization I do business with can leverage data to show they care about me as a customer through proactive service and personalized suggestions.

It's no secret businesses track mountains of consumer data, so wisely using technology in a trustworthy way to keep up with preferences, flag any issues and proactively personalize experiences is smart strategy.

Said another way: Breaking down big data into actionable little details consumers care about to build trust and loyalty is smart human-ing.

The Third Wave of CX

In experience management, it's excellent practice to gauge general customer satisfaction in surveys and map journeys for broad persona groups.? Businesses taking CX strategy seriously are also strategically diving into this third wave: predictive experience management

According to the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA), we have encountered two "waves" of customer experience management over the past 2 decades:??

• customer metric management (measuring satisfaction), and
• customer feedback management (listening to feedback and addressing pain points).?

Beyond the rapid development of digital stacks to track and manage customer data and the accelerated adoption of self-serve consumer behavior thanks to Covid, the cool thing about this third wave of predictive experience management is the human element of employee engagement.

Humans! Impacting digital strategy?

YES!

How?

• Leaders operationalize the strategy, communicate expectations, listen to feedback and inspect the processes for continuous improvement.
• Employees follow standard operating procedures and develop a discipline of excellence to ensure predicted experiences are actualized through a personalized touch at service delivery.

Predictive Experiences in the Wild

Hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues and retailers have a long history of using predictive technology to personalize experiences.

Savvy hospitality leaders leverage information gained through repeat visits, seasonal demand, special occasions, reported service and maintenance issues along with other data gold captured at the point of purchase to create trustworthy relationships and proactively offer customers what we're looking for (sometimes even before we know we need it!)

Magic like this doesn't happen by accident.

It's also not predicted with a crystal ball.

Success is by design ... by humans leveraging the digital tools at their fingertips to create customer experience magic.

Ride the Wave!

Much like the ocean, each experience wave builds on the one before it, pushing forward momentum in business CX strategy. This third wave is approaching whether you like it not.

As a leader, you can choose to turn your back annd let this wave crash in, creating a tsunami effect on your customer experience or be bold and choose to ride it like an olympic surfer with focus, fun, poise, personal style ... and a little bit of magic.