It is a well-established fact that for customer-facing companies, the customer journey is crucial. What is less well-known is that it plays an equally important role in the reputations of EPNG (electric-power and natural-gas) companies. These kinds of companies have not yet made wholesale changes to their customer servicing models as digital natives such as Amazon and Uber have. Their kind of servicing still relies on traditional offline systems, whereas customers today want their query to be serviced within five minutes. These companies are also tweaking their business processes towards the agile methodologies. On the B2B side, salesforce.com has an innovative and proactive method for customer servicing that EPNG companies could learn from. Customers, besides quick response time also make purchase decisions after due deliberation across multiple channels, including online platforms. That is why digital marketing should be a key proponent of connecting to the market. The best customer journeys must be set around three key proponents- Discovery, Design and Delivery. Discover includes the start with a cross-disciplinary team, quantitative marketing research before start, customer insights and their stories being shared. Design could involve hackathons, but also journey redesigns and rapid iterations using prototypes. At the Deliver stage, the minimum viable product is launched, through continuous customer testing. This has to be followed up by rapid scaling up. The first two phases must last for two and six weeks respectively. The last stage may be for a minimum of twelve or even more if needed.

Source:https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natural-gas/our-insights/digitizing-customer-journeys-making-a-radical-but-valuable-move-in-epng?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1807&hlkid=049c4a52a1484b0eb108a8d8bd761f73&hctky=2657824&hdpid=68764403-c28a-49bd-9556-78e14a54102e

Uploaded Date:25 August 2018

Bain and Company undertook a study to understand the most effective research tools used in 2018. It was realized that sensors in products,personalized experiences and predictive business analytics gave the best results to the users. Surprisingly even some newer tools with low adoption rates, actually gave high satisfaction rates. Examples of this include privacy management and drones. The best of results were achieved by firms which made persistent efforts with some tools, rather than go full-blast with trying things from a broader range. Three trends most excite executives. These are, a dropin cash transactions, automatic shipping of products and automated in-store checkout. Didi Chuxing is one example among many of companies generating huge quantities of data in terabytes on daily basis. This enormous data warehousing is giving way to more informed decision-making. The Net promoter feedback is taken as the final word to improve services. The twenty most effective customer tools were listed down under four broad categories which were- sensing, deciding, acting and managing. Under sensing came sensors, sensory tools and biometric tools. Deciding includes Episode Maps, experience dashboards, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and automated decision engines. Manging includes privacy management, blockchain and Net Promoter Score (NPS). Under the broad gamut of acting are included delivery drones, salesforce automation, natural language processing, augmented reality and omnichannel customer support.

Source:http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/customer-experience-tools-and-trends-2018.aspx

Uploaded Date:18 August 2018

Personalized content is nowadays one of the key differentiators between brands during their digital marketing campaigns. Personalized messages apparently make the viewer feel more valued rather than the traditional one-size-fits-all strategy. Thus, a study was conducted by McKinsey’s Periscope platform. Periscope is a software providing business analytics solutions in sales and marketing. It reported across the markets studied, the reactions of the users varied. US audiences felt most receptive, while those in Germany were least, with UK and France fitting in between. Receptivity also varied depending on gender and age. Women were more welcoming in the UK and France, but not so much in the other two markets. Generally younger customers were keener across the four than older ones. Accenture too did a similar study focusing on Europe and North America. Here a staggering ninety-one percent of respondents certified that they are more likely to purchase from brands with customized messaging than the others.

Source:http://customerthink.com/how-customers-really-feel-about-personalization/

Uploaded Date:21 July 2018

A key feature of the ongoing sales revolution is the rise of subscriptions. This emerged as a response to increasingly fickle customers and low costs of brand switching. Internet-based services led on this front, with Amazon Prime a clear leader having crossed a hundred million subscriptions globally. Across industries such as retail, insurance, telecom and automotive, sales personnel are relishing this opportunity. Marketers Though need to take care to not go all out for this model without rethinking strategy. Business model changes need to be incorporated alongside these marketing innovations. Unilever for instance went the merger path, by incorporating Dollar Shave Club’s mechanism back in 2016. Businesses are realizing the importance of retention, so focusing on that using the metric CLV (Customer Lifetime Value). This retention is best tracked using tools such as NPS (Net Promoter Score) or CSAT (Customer Satisfaction). Once data warehousing has been done, it is used to predict the amount a customer will spend on during the lifetime. Customer retention can best be choreographed keeping in mind the ease, cost and experience.

Source:https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Why-You-Need-to-Keep-Your-Customers-Close?gko=22a16

Uploaded Date:20 July 2018

Sales representatives are often over-burdened leading to reduced interaction with customers. Their seniors often heckle them to convert more accounts and generate increased business from existing ones. There is a need for separating the service staff from the sales. Need also exists to understand which all customers or segments are truly worth the time, so as not to be overwhelmed by queries or complaints. Data warehousing needs to be done on customer responses to separate the high-quality customers from the chaff. A study by Bain and Company revealed that only about a fifth of the respondents had any such data-driven approach to quantifying this. Data sciences and business analytics need to be applied to gauge the key pockets of potential growth. Marketers will also need to understand ways to increase the share of the customers’ wallet. A clear-cut strategy needs to be put in place on customer interaction.Source

http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/is-that-customer-worth-your-time.aspx

Uploaded Date:18 July  2018

Marketer across the board are grappling with ways to understand the customer journey better. This will help optimize the touchpoints in the journey. Designing such a journey is getting more realistic now with the availability of granular bits of data. The engagement channels provide enormous amounts of intelligence across the journey but optimizing all of it into a coherent picture is the challenge. A lot of this information resides in disparate groups such as with sales, marketing, customer care or product development. The traditional approach has been to perform as much of data warehousing as possible so that meaningful insights may be gleaned. But it is also important to have the right kind of data and appropriate analytics tools being used. To ensure the optimum results in the company’s digital marketing efforts, customer care has to take the lead. Within the omnichannel approach, it is this department that can extract the essential information from social media, chat data, self-service channels and service data. All forms of obstacles which impinge collaboration or information sharing need to be muted out.

Source:https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/the-role-of-customer-care-in-a-customer-experience-transformation?cid=other-soc-twi-mip-mck-oth-1803&kui=AAaS04nmhPlnTRPjqvoARw

Uploaded Date:10 July 2018

Great customer experience can have multiple positive ripple effects. While every company desires it, not all get it right, letting many customers feel disappointed. Since very few get it right, the price premium is extremely high. Management consulting giant PwC has undergone a complete study to assess this. Coffee for example has a price premium of merely sixteen percent, but winter coats have even less at seven percent only, implying lower rates of satisfaction. Most US consumers are loathe to sharing their personal data, but the proportion rises significantly when it is for receiving more curated personal experiences. Poor customer experiences on the other hand are driving them away in large numbers, this being especially high in the US and Latin America. People most value efficiency, personal service, unique experience, human interaction and convenience. The need for personal interaction is highest in Germany, while companies in Japan can get away most without the same. But for all this to succeed, companies need to have more proactive talent management practices in place. This is because companies with superior employee experience invariably end up having the best of customer experiences.

Source:https://www.pwc.com/us/en/advisory-services/publications/consumer-intelligence-series/future-of-customer-experience.html?WT.mc_id=CT1-PL52-DM2-TR2-LS4-ND30-TTA5-CN_FutureofCX-OTW&eq=twi_or

Uploaded Date:04 July 2018

Digital transformation is often just a buzzword, especially if it is not targeted towards smoothening the customer experience. Just because people are increasingly spending greater time online, companies are striving hard to position themselves as ‘digital first’. Several business models have failed as they rushed towards new digital gadgets. Simply possessing AR, VR, IOT, AI, 3-D Printing, or using social media for digital marketing is not going to solve the problems if the entire ecosystem has not been thought out critically. The ones most successful in the digital age have been the ones who have strategized over time and created a holistic experience to benefit the customers. Examples of this includes Netflix, GE, Disney, Amazon and Starbucks. One needs to act on strategic insights and seize the right moments as done by Dunkin’ Donuts. There are three main criteria for knowing when to enter- novelty, credibility and the insight being actionable in real time.

Source:https://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/leveraging-digital-to-optimise-the-customer-experience-7431

Uploaded Date:16 March 2018

A school of thought has existed long in Europe, but now spreading out known as service design. This challenges the notion that product design needs greater care, insisting that so do services. Three key philosophies are embedded into this idea, beginning with what the seller wants in accordance with the company’s core philosophy and subsequent corporate strategy. It is a proactive, not reactive strategy involving choices, actions and subsequent consequences. The overall aim is to ensure consistency in delivery. Experiences shape the way the companies involved take the decisions. Some elements have been identified that help in ensuring customer delight. They involve an empathy towards the customer, understanding their emotions, matching their expectations, elegance in offering and constant customer engagement. The execution needs to be neat, must make economic sense for all concerned, the service must be engineered to meet solutions, with constant experimentation at the heart of all decisions. Service design does not consider surprise as a great strategy, instead just wants to delight the customers. An important tenet is that the service design and its delivery must be consistent across all the platforms. The chain must involve anticipation, creation, innovation and finally iteration.

Source:https://www.strategy-business.com/article/The-Art-of-Customer-Delight?gko=e9da8

Uploaded Date:14 February 2018

Online shopping has changed the world of business for ever as now competitors face-off across clicks, swipes or taps away. That is why consulting firm McKinsey thought of and developed the consumer decision journey to map the shifting consumer behaviour. It is divided into four stages, beginning with the initial consideration set that is the trigger. Then there is the active evaluation of all brands for consideration followed by the moment of purchase, culminating in fulfilling loyalty by being again. Sadly, for most brands the research conducted clearly gives that ninety percent of categories lacked customer loyalty. Social media has become a very powerful tool for digital marketing with potential customers getting highly influenced by influencers. The study also found out that more than half of customers shift brands at the next purchase cycle. Also, seventy percent of brand choices are made at the beginning of the journey. Thus, McKinsey has now curated the customer growth indicator to gauge business intelligence post study of the huge chunks of data now generated.

Source:https://www.mckinsey.com/about-us/new-at-mckinsey-blog/ten-years-on-the-consumer-decision-journey-where-are-we-today?cid=other-soc-twi-mip-mck-oth-1711&kui=oREs47JTH9TaSTzSdwUlpg

Uploaded Date:28 November 2017

In spite of the exponential growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI), there exist several limitations in that that can only be met by traditional means such as phone calls. Business research conducted by Google showed that more than three-fifths of respondents use the medium of phone calls to finalize their purchase. Reasons for this are plenty, but most commonly were due to quick response time and their desire to speak to a real person. The rise of the “conversation economy” can best be summarized by a statistic provided by BIA/Kelsey that states that phone calls to businesses will rise by one hundred and sixty-nine million in just a few years by 2020. For high-value purchases such as for automobiles, travel or insurance, people wanted to speak to real human experts and not machines. Alexa, Siri ad Google Assistant can now even do Voice recognized payments so eventually their role could rise. Smartphones are also increasingly being used to operate social media channels. Photography has also become a common use point.

Source:https://hbr.org/2017/07/your-customers-still-want-to-talk-to-a-human-being?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29

Uploaded Date:31 July 2017