What is the customer lifecycle?

As an ecommerce business owner, you've likely heard a lot about managing customer relationships. Consumer appeal is probably a large aspect of your success in retail, so it's important to dedicate ample time and resources to ensure you're equipped with the right knowledge and technological arsenal to meet fluid demand.

It's often said that successful businesses have the most loyal customers. But for your business to create brand allegiance among your clientele, you must first understand your customers and the journey they took to get to your website.

What is the customer lifecycle?

In terms of customer relationship management, the customer lifecycle describes the various stages a consumer goes through before, during and after they complete a transaction. Simply put, it's the Point A to Point B journey a customer takes until they make the final purchase.

The phases a customer passes through during the course of an ongoing relationship with a brand vary on a case-by-case basis, but here are five basic stages of a customer lifecycle:

• Reach: Your marketing material and content needs to be in places where consumers will find it. Reach is the first step in the lifecycle because it develops awareness right away.
• Acquire: Ecommerce acquisition is very important. Reaching potential customers won't mean much if you can't offer relevant content or messaging. Understanding your brand, the products you offer and what type of person will buy them will help with acquisition. Contacting them directly with personalized communication improves the odds of a future conversion.
• Develop/nurture: Once that first purchase is made, your business needs to keep in contact with the customer. This is where you develop a relationship with the buyer, ensuring they're fully satisfied with their initial transaction. You can also use back-end analytics to predict what else they may like based on what they bought the first time around. Asking for feedback also helps develop the relationship; customers like that their opinion is valued.
• Retention: If you're able to continually send relevant and meaningful messaging to a customer, the chances that they return and make another purchase are higher. Retention begins with satisfying a consumer's needs, caring for them and cultivating the relationship. If you can take a customer's feedback and use it to improve a product or service, you make them feel as if they were a part of the process. Performing a customer feedback analysis is key in finding actionable insights that can lead to a stronger customer relationship. This type of trust is valuable to customer retention.
• Advocacy: Once the retention stage of the lifecycle is reached, you want these customers to become a brand advocate for your business. If they are truly satisfied, they likely won't have issues recommending your products or services to friends and family. Spreading awareness amongst social circles is easy to do once a customer is loyal to a brand, and if they continually spread positive recommendations, their extended network is more likely to convert as well.

The beauty of the customer lifecycle lies in the fact that it's nonlinear, meaning it follows a cyclical pattern at the end. Customer retention is the end goal in developing strong brand loyalty, but your business needs to continually offer relevant and timely messaging to prior customers, otherwise your top-of-mind awareness will quickly fade.

The customer lifecycle can help your business maximize the revenue potential for each client who makes a purchase on your website. Once a customer has become a brand advocate, the potential for upselling increases as a result. New product features, releases or exclusive offers are also a great way to progress consumers through the lifecycle. As long as your messaging is consistent, relevant and is in tune with their needs, you can turn one-time buyers into loyal customers quickly.

2019 Retail Trends

Richard Shapiro

If we don’t look ahead we risk being left in the dust, and perhaps nowhere is that risk greater than with the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a practical retail technology. AI has left the lab, and although its long-range impacts and unexpected consequences remain the domain of science fiction writers, brands and retailers have seized upon it to predict individual consumer behavior and laser-target their messaging. Those who begin coupling AI with the human touch in the year to come will have a huge advantage long-term. As my 2019 trends that follow demonstrate, the technology gold rush will go unabated but savvy retailers will never lose focus on people.

Specialty Stores Thrive; Department Stores Surrender

Department stores have become damaged through perpetual deep discounting and their failures to motivate staff and excite consumers. All around us, once-dominant chains are shrinking and shuttering at a frightening pace, with venerable Sears and Toys R Us among the casualties. At the same time, specialty shops offering unique merchandise, highly trained (and well-compensated) sales associates, and irresistible services and spaces are booming. No retailer better exemplifies the trend—or its staying power—than Mitchells, a “luxury brands specialty store” that’s set the bar with its exceptional customer service; exquisite designer clothing, jewelry and accessories; and multi-generational relationships with designers and consumers. Jack Mitchell, CEO of the company his parents started in Westport, Connecticut, went on to write Hug Your Customers and, later, Hug Your People—titles that concisely sum up his retail recipe for success in a world of unlimited choice.

Consumers Spend As Channels Blend

Today’s customer is channel agnostic, switching effortlessly between online and bricks-and-mortar buying and employing a blend of shopping techniques: patronizing physical stores for tactile and social experiences, conducting product/pricing research via smartphone, and taking advantage of super-convenient online ordering and delivery options. “We don’t hear customers talk about channels very much,” James Nordstrom, president ofNordstrom Stores, told Diginomica. “Customers value experiences, and so the more successful we are in creating a great shopping experience, no matter how they’re choosing to shop, I think the better our business will be.” To exploit the trend, make your customer’s experience a good one no matter where he shops you.

The Circular Economy Expands, Retailers Go Sustainable, and Customers Approve

Serving the goal of sustainability, a circular economy is a regenerative human-managed system in which waste is minimized by slowing or closing energy and material loops. The economic model embraces durability, reuse, repurposing, refurbishing, recycling, and upcycling, and is being embraced by a growing cohort of environmentally-friendly merchants and manufacturers. Companies such as Unilever, Patagonia, IKEA, Lush Cosmetics, and New Belgium Brewing not only have the distinction of executives who can sleep at night, but legions of loyal, educated and affluent customers who reward environmental leadership at the cash register and like to tell their friends about it. Take Patagonia, the cultish outdoor clothing chain that has championed Earth-friendly practices and policies for over 30 years. The retailer’s Worn Wear program provides generous merchandise credits for returned Patagonia clothing in good condition. The returns are sorted into three categories: “Rewear” for clothes suitable for second-hand sale; “Reuse” for well-worn items to be turned into other products; and “Recycle,” which converts everything else to textile fibers and industrial products such as insulation. According to CEO Rose Marcario, Patagonia “wants everyone to become radical environmentalists by keeping our stuff in use longer.” Retailers with their eyes open won’t need a degree in climate science to know which way the wind blows.

Members-Only E-Commerce Becomes More Personalized

Amazon is far from the only retailer that’s innovating in e-commerce. Walmart describes Jetblack—a service launched from the retail giant’s tech incubator “Store No. 8” (not really a store) earlier this year—as “a new shopping service that combines the convenience of e-commerce with the customized attention of a personal assistant.” More pricey than Amazon Prime ($50 monthly for Jetblack vs. $12.99/mo. for Prime), the service is going after an upscale, busy clientele including “time-strapped urban parents.” A member simply texts her shopping request and Jetblack goes to work, delivering the appropriate merchandise within two business days—just 24 hours for popular items—at no additional charge. The launch publicity stresses an entrepreneurial, team-oriented approach to the question, “What if we doubled down on the customer experience and leveraged emerging technologies to build the most effortless, customized, and curated shopping experience possible?” The underlying system reportedly combines the skill and knowledge of expert human buyers with the speed and precision of AI and aims high to satisfy the unique needs of each member customer. If it flies, and it should, we’ll be hearing a lot more about this and other hyper-personalized services to follow.

Cashier-Less Checkout Expands Rapidly

As Amazon expands its Amazon Go chain of self-service convenience stores, dozens of startups are competing with established firms to master and lead this potentially game-changing retail model. An innovative Chinese entrant, BingoBox, has taken the cashier-less concept to another level, automating virtually every aspect of store operations in more than 300 unmanned outlets. BingoBox stocks snacks, beer, and just about any essential food or household item you might need in a pinch when other stores are closed. Shoppers scan a QR code to gain entry and pay for their purchases via mobile app. Other checkout-free startups include Zippin, with a recently opened concept store in San Francisco, Inokyo in Mountain View, and Santa Clara’s AiFi, which promises an affordable, flexible system for mom-and-pop stores and larger retail operations alike. This is an important trend that many of us will want to watch, but here’s the million-dollar question: Will automation that eliminates human staff find a home across the broad retail spectrum, or be consigned to the convenience store market where today’s innovation is occurring?

Retail Metrics Shift from Store Sales to Various Touch Points

While the same-store sales metric has long served as a baseline indicator of retail success, a number of industry analysts are questioning whether the metric is appropriate to measure modern retailing, according to recent reporting in RetailWire and Retail TouchPoints. Stores don’t always serve the same function that they did in the past, when they had one job—to complete the sale. Today’s stores have taken on a number of new roles, including marketing to boost brand awareness. That may mean the store no longer carries and sells products; that it has become an experiential destination center, showroom, and/or distribution center. Clearly, when sales are frequently completed in a channel other than the store, judging performance based on sales numbers alone is misguided. This is a reality that Wall Street investors and shareholders are learning to accept as retailers convert their stores into something new.

AI Becomes A Valuable Tool to Personalize Service

Retailers are using AI to personalize customer service, and the trend is picking up steam. Fifty-five percent of retailers plan to leverage the technology within three years, according to the 2018 Customer Experience/Unified Commerce Survey from Boston Retail Partners (BRP). Among the many applications: merchandise recommendations based on a customer’s response to a short survey, and the ability to contact a given client at the most favorable time of day. In April, Starbucks rolled out voice recognition ordering in South Korea, extending its mobile order-and-pay technology by integrating with Samsung’s AI chatbot, Bixby. Customers can use their phone in a conversational way—as if speaking with a real-life barista—to learn more about available beverages. Meantime, The North Face has adopted IBM Watson’s cognitive computing technology to help consumers find just the right jacket. But here’s the thing. While AI implementations will permit innovative businesses of all kinds to increase client satisfaction, Starbucks and The North Face know full well—as any customer-centric organization should—that connections made between two people will always trump “equipment” no matter how many bells and whistles are thrown in.

Mall Brands Enter the Subscription Service Rental Market

Ann Taylor and Express are notable among the fashion retailers that offer rental subscription services—an innovation that helps to offset reduced in-store traffic and create a new revenue stream. With Ann Taylor’s Infinite Style program, for $95/month subscribers receive up to nine garments every four weeks. “Wear it. Send it back. Get more. Exchange as many times as you like with free shipping, both ways.” Meantime, Express Style Trial works on a set-of-three basis and looks attractive at a flat monthly cost of $69.95. “This service allows our closet to become your closet. Start closeting items by browsing our site and viewing everything Express Style Trial has to offer. Check out New Arrivals for new styles each week.” In addition to helping clothing retailers maximize their inventories, affordable monthly rental programs such as these hold particular appeal for younger customers who may not have otherwise recognized the brand. Now it’s something they’ll want to talk about. According to Allied Market Research, the online clothing market rental market will exceed $1.8 billion by 2023.

In recent years, retailers have increasingly overlooked employees as their most important competitive differentiator, instead focusing on technology solutions that promise to reduce overhead and automate every conceivable aspect of the business. AI is a remarkable tool with capabilities we’ve only just begun to unleash, but as an executive obsession I fear it will further devalue our people. As enthusiasm for AI, unmanned stores, and ingenious self-service options swells in 2019, remember that when (not if) the machines drop the ball, customers will be most grateful for the human being in the room.

And consider the philosophy of MM.LaFleur as articulated by Rachel Mann, director of offline retail, when she said, “for us it’s all about the human experience—a refuge from Alexa and all of the choice and robots … it should be like you’re meeting your friend and she’s giving you good advice.” Now that’s a trend you can bank on.

B2B Customer Experience: Do This, Not That

Lynn Hunsaker

 

Is business-to-business customer experience management (B2B CXM) a watered-down or a souped-up version of consumer experience management? Does the answer differ when the business you’re selling to is a manufacturer versus a professional services company? Or when your company provides specialized industrial goods, ingredients or components for customers’ products, enterprise software versus desktop software, or business services? All these questions are worth exploring. They’re important questions because customer scenarios differ in each case. Ideally, how you manage customer experience custom-fits your customers’ needs, preferences, and circumstances.

This series of monthly B2B CX articles explores the nuances of business customer experience. The questions above will be addressed in future installments.

Universal to most B2B CXM scenarios is the existence of a “village” of people who influence B2B buying decisions. This single fact means a lot. If the purpose of customer surveys is to accurately monitor customers’ likelihood of rebuying, then you must gain an understanding of each influencer’s expectations and sentiment.

A logical follow-up to this is the need to integrate the viewpoints of the “village” to paint a realistic picture. In consumer situations, there are usually only a couple of viewpoints to integrate for any purchase: husband and wife, parent and child. But for B2B situations, you may be grappling with integrating the views of the user, purchasing agent, plant manager, and gatekeepers for IT, safety, facilities, and quality, among others.

And another commonality among many B2B relationships is extensive post-purchase interaction. This may be related to a complicated deployment such as enterprise software, or peer-to-peer, such as engineers from the supplier and customer companies meeting to work out usage details, or a customer appointee who interfaces with multiple locations of the supplier company in a single morning.

Here are 3 keys to getting B2B customer experience management right: capture the whole buying decision equation, integrate influencers’ inputs to paint an accurate picture, and ensure post-purchase customer experience consistency.

1) Capture the Whole Buying Decision Equation: Why try to tie CX to financials without fully understanding who’s driving what?

DO THIS: Identify all parties within a customer account with the power to kill a buying decision. Characterize each party’s expectations and design your customer-listening portfolio to keep a radar on their sentiment. Quantify the consequences of meeting or missing each party’s expectations.

From the ClearActionBusiness-to-Business Customer Experience Management Benchmarking Study

NOT THAT: Assuming that whoever signs the contract or transacts with your service organization is a spokesperson for their company, or that a series of transactions represents the customer experience that can be reasonably tied to bookings.

2) Integrate Influencers’ Inputs to Paint an Accurate Picture: Simplification of the complex picture is essential for tackling the issues and formulating better strategies to capitalize on opportunities.

DO THIS: Weight and nest the parties’ inputs for more realistic linkages to bookings. Make your customer intelligence reporting compelling: consider show the parties’ interests through flow-charting, cause-and-effect diagramming, activity network diagramming, or interrelationship diagraphs. Make sure action plans reflect inputs from all influencers.

From the ClearActionBusiness-to-Business Customer Experience Management Benchmarking Study

NOT THAT: Assuming that averages and bar charts convey what’s needed to be actionable and effective. Don’t ignore the opportunity to get valuable insights from your dedicated sales team. And don’t let the account teams obscure insights that can help the rest of the company help them.

3) Ensure Post-purchase Customer Experience Consistency: Why work so hard to manage perceptions but ignore these vital touchpoints?

DO THIS: Make it easy to capture informal comments. Then stream informal feedback to relevant groups throughout your company. Establish cadence & methodology for originators to prevent issue recurrence. Motivate actions and follow-through on informal inputs. Set the stage for streamlined re-purchase decisions: share actions and progress to proactively influence rebuying.

From the ClearActionBusiness-to-Business Customer Experience Management BenchmarkingStudy

NOT THAT: Assuming that inconsistencies will naturally work themselves out, or aren’t important to building trust and relationship strength. Waiting to send a survey when you’re already getting a goldmine of insights that you can work on right away to be more proactive in influencing repurchase decisions.

B2B CXM has parallels with consumer experience management, but there are definite realities in B2B CXM that should be addressed in order to make the most of your efforts and investments. Experiment with these 3 B2B “musts”, or better yet, design them into your B2B customer experience management from the beginning. As the graphics above show, you’re likely to stand out from the crowd in your industry in doing so, and these methods may be an important customer experience differentiator for your company.

Note: The concept of "Do This, Not That" is borrowed from the popular book "Eat This, Not That", where the weaknesses of common practices and myths are brought to light and sensible replacements are recommended.

Other articles in this series:

• Business-to-Business Customer Experience: What’s It Like?
• Understanding Business-to-Business Purchase Decisions
• B2B Voice of the Customer: Integrating Decision Influencers’ Views
• Customer Experience ROI Opportunities in B2B Touchpoints
• State of Business-to-Business Customer Experience Management

Customer Experience Planning: Do This, Not That

The annual planning cycle is an opportunity to review pluses and minuses in what’s currently in play, take a look at what’s new, and request resources to take your customer experience performance to the next level in the new year. And it’s more than that: it’s the time when you should step back and assess alignment. Make sure your approaches are aligned with what customers want, and make sure your strategy is aligned with your enterprise objectives. Be courageous to scale back or drop anything that is out of alignment. Be brutally honest in your assessment of what is helping customers help you.

In the spirit of the best-selling eating guide — Eat This, Not That — which spells out popular misconceptions about sensible choices, here are 3 recommendations for your customer experience planning: (1) Drive significant change in order to drive significant ROI, (2) Align methodologies with what customers want, and (3) Expand shared vision for customer experience excellence enterprise-wide and beyond.

1) Drive significant change in order to drive significant ROI: most customer experience efforts start out with a technology buy, taking cues from vendors about what customer experience management entails. In truth, it boils down to making your company irresistible to customers and prospects. That can’t happen by virtue of asking more questions, incenting more purchases, enticing referrals, and other typical customer experience management practices. And it can’t happen one survey respondent at a time, or through one department’s actions at a time. Making your company irresistible to customers and prospects requires significant change. Plan for it in your new year.

DO THIS: put the majority of your effort into cross-functional collaboration that will align processes, policies, and culture with customers’ well-being.

NOT THAT: over-invest in customer listening and engagement when you haven’t yet resolved what customers have told you to fix.

2) Align methodologies with what customers want: ease of doing business, robust solutions, and good all-round value while achieving their business/life needs. It’s ironic that most customer experience management techniques are far removed from this list: they may come across as invasive, remedial, ill-timed, self-serving, or illogical. Nobody thinks when they buy something: I hope I’ll enjoy the survey they send me, or the 800-number call I would prefer to never have to make, or the offers to engage me in downloading stuff and participating in social media with them. Yet, for customer experience professionals, those things are typically what we eat, drink and sleep.

Minimize invasion by making it easy for customers to give you feedback whenever and however they want, and by requesting specific feedback only as often as you make change happen. Minimize remedial, ill-timed, self-serving, and illogical methods by focusing on becoming preferred, not just referred. Preferred companies earn that status through trust-building, doing things right the first time and every time, giving the customer a hand-in-glove feeling of “right fit” for them. Human nature takes the path of least resistance and rewards “right fit”. Plan for it in your new year.

DO THIS: focus on doing things “for” customers to earn their long-term confidence (i.e. do things “to” your company that better serve customers’ well-being).

NOT THAT: over-rely on customer experience management technologies or over-rely on doing things “to” customers (i.e. getting them to do things “for” you).

3) Expand shared vision for customer experience excellence enterprise-wide and beyond: it not only “takes a village”, but also requires upstream prevention of issues for customers and front-line staff — the most awesome customer experiences are hassle-free. And that means every functional area and every managerial level plays a role. Nobody is excused from having a ripple effect on customer experience.

Think of customer experience excellence as a managerial context, just like stewardship of people and resources is a universal managerial context. This outlook alone will get you more mileage than you ever dreamed toward becoming a preferred, irresistible company. Plan for it in your new year.

DO THIS: ask every member of the C-team to specify their contribution to customer experience excellence goals, and weave customer experience insights into everything the company does.

NOT THAT: assume the C-team is fully engaged, relinquish customer experience management to certain people, build silos into the way customer experience is managed, or allow any process or ritual to operate without a customer experience context.

Carpe diem! Seize the day for turning a new leaf in the business results your customer experience management efforts produce. This is not a plug-and-play endeavor. It’s not an assignment that a critical few can pull off. It’s not about manipulation or enticement. Customer experience excellence is a way of life. Embed it in your company through-and-through for maximum profitable growth.

Notes:

1. Customer Experience Strategy is one of the six domains in the body of knowledge advocated by the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA). (ClearAction offers a CXPA officially Authorized Resource & Training CCXP Exam Prep Course.)

2. The concept of “Do This, Not That” is borrowed from the popular book “Eat This, Not That“, where the weaknesses of common practices and myths are brought to light and sensible replacements are recommended.

3. Other articles in this series:

• Customer Experience Governance, Do This, Not That
• B2B Customer Experience: Do This, Not That
• Customer Experience Strategy: Do This, Not That
• Customer-Centered Culture: Do This, Not That
• Voice of the Customer: Do This, Not That
• Customer Journey Maps: Do This, Not That

https://goo.gl/eZwnjc

Voice of the Customer: Do This, Not That

Voice-of-the-customer (VoC) is often the start and focus of customer experience management, as well it should be in several respects. It’s about paying attention to “the hand that feeds you”. But stop to think about the customer experience return on investment (CX ROI) implications of this emphasis:

1. 1. By starting your customer experience management (CXM) with VoC, you’re probably side-stepping the all-important foundation of CX strategy and customer-centered culture. Ask any VoC manager what their biggest concern is after a few years of conducting surveys and most will tell you that gaps in strategy and culture plague their progress.
   2. By focusing CXM on VoC you’re likely to be so busy updating/selecting samples, driving response rates, poring over data, and packaging graphs and presentations that most of the other internal engagement efforts needed to fix broken things get short shrift. Ask any customer who’s participated in surveys what their biggest concern is, and most will tell you they feel like not much changes for the good after they generously share feedback.

These weaknesses in VoC are evidenced in Temkin Group’s 2013 State of VoC Programs study:

1. 1. • 7% of companies are VoC novices, in the very early stages of VoC development.
      • 37% are VoC collectors, focusing on listening post selection, which questions to ask, and which metrics to use.
      • 37% are VoC analyzers, spending the majority of their time finding insights from VoC data.
      • 16% are VoC collaborators, tailoring customer feedback to stakeholders who are engaged in continuous improvement.
      • 4% are VoC transformers, linking customer insights to operational data and processes, as well as strategic planning throughout the company.

With statistics like that, it’s no wonder that executives are frustrated about CX ROI. How many other business efforts are allowed to stay in the non-transformation phase year-in and year-out? VoC is not an end in itself. It’s a means to an end.

Here are 3 keys to getting it right: respect existing customer feedback, understand the whole customer experience, and align VoC to customers’ preferences.

1) Respect Existing Customer Feedback: Remember the purpose of CXM is to build strong relationships that yield better results for the company and for customers.

DO THIS: Collect customer comments from your front-line employees, CRM, service call and sales call reports, complaint logs, social and other sources. Historically, comments were unwieldy, but now we have technologies that help consolidate, sort, prioritize, and deliver relevancy. Like any human-to-human relationship, let’s respect what customers have already told us before asking them to say it again.

NOT THAT: Surveys are often “jumped into” because “everybody’s doing it”. If you want to stand out from your competitors, think carefully about what’s best for your customers and for your unique culture. Scores and indexes are typically over-emphasized to the exclusion of reading, studying, and acting on customers’ comments. Is that what you’d do in any other type of relationship in your life or business?

2) Understand the Whole Customer Experience: The whole experience is whatever the customer defines it as — and typically has an earlier starting point, a later ending point, and more behind-the-scenes efforts by customers than managers tend to define it.

DO THIS: Allow customers to give you feedback about their experience, and their world. Make sure you’re understanding their challenges and journey before any touch-point occurs, as well as post-purchase, and behind-the-scenes among their decision-makers. What does your product/service get combined with in the customers’ use, and what implications does that have for customers? These are essential sources for performance improvement and innovation ideas, if you’re aiming to differentiate customer experience and improve business results.

NOT THAT: Resist the temptation to copy someone else’s survey questions, design surveys as a means to determine departments’ bonuses, or enable your survey to support your planned public relations and marketing claims. What a waste of everyone’s time and investment. Don’t confuse your world with the customer’s world. When you ask customers to rate you, that’s not necessarily indicative of how well their needs were met. And when they answer in terms of their world, you not only gain context that illuminates their expectations, you also increase the likelihood of higher response rates. Everyone likes to talk about themselves. Let them.

3) Align VoC to Customers’ Preferences: Allow customers to provide you feedback when, where, how, and on what they prefer. After all, VoC is intended to improve — not detract from — customer experience.

DO THIS: Find out what feels most comfortable for customers, and what draws them out to gladly share their world with you. Build-in some flexibility to adapt your methodology over time. Or be willing to abandon non-customer-friendly methods when you discover what works best for customers’ experience. Only ask for more feedback as quickly as you can act on what you already have, or when things may have changed. Enable customers to volunteer feedback anytime, any place, and put processes in place to capture it and channel it to departments in your company (or your external partners) with emphasis on acting on it.

NOT THAT: Resist the inclination to stick with a methodology purely for internal reasons. While ratings continuity is desirable, what’s the point when the very thing you’re aiming to improve is hindered in the VoC process? New technologies make it easier now to customize questions, allow substantial comments, and translate customers’ world context to actionable information in your world. Get out of the old-school rut of stock-piling or vaporizing customer feedback in your CRM, contact center, and other sources; the originators of those problems, wherever they may be, need to receive that customer feedback and be held accountable to prevent recurrence.

A sensible approach to voice-of-the-customer is what’s needed for sustained customer experience business results. Make VoC the central focus for CXM — and for everything the company does! To do this, make sure your CXM resourcing enables facilitation of strategy, culture, employee engagement in continuous improvement, and everything else that’s needed to respond to and build upon inputs from “the hand that feeds you”. For long-lasting customer experience ROI, respect existing customer feedback, understand the whole customer experience, and align VoC with customers’ preferences.

Notes:

1. “VoC, Customer Insight & Understanding” is one of the six domains in the body of knowledgeadvocated by the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA).
2. The concept of “Do This, Not That” is borrowed from the popular book “Eat This, Not That“, where the weaknesses of common practices and myths are brought to light and sensible replacements are recommended.
3. Other articles in this series:
   • Customer Experience Strategy: Do This, Not That
   • Customer-Centered Culture: Do This, Not That
   • Customer Journey Maps: Do This, Not That

​​​Megatrends changing the world as we know it​​​

​Disruption affecting our lives and businesses is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. Today any movie we want to watch is just a few clicks away. We can buy a new pair of shoes, get takeaway, hire a cleaner, by simply using our smart phones and have it conveniently arrive at our door. Businesses like Spotify, Uber and Facebook are thriving while many well-known brands such as Blockbuster and Borders have disappeared. Here are the six global megatrends that will continue to change the world in 2017 and beyond.  

1. Countries growing and changing​

Geopolitical uncertainty will​ continue in 2017. We will see more dramatic changes increasing instability and fragm​entation, as we have seen last year with Brexit and the US presidential election. Currency fluctuations, differing regulatory environme​​nts and varying consumer views will provide challenges to businesses. More disruption and opportunities will be created from emerging economies in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Increasing middle class means higher spend on services, increasing competition and opportunities to create new markets. In dealing with this ever changing landscape, organisations need to manage risk through diversification, while becoming more nimble, and most importantly having a clear strategic focus.

2. Change in demographics

Population is growing at an unprecedented rate. In 2009 there were 7.4 billion people and by 2040 it is projected to be 9 billion. People will live longer and the ageing will outweigh the working population. By 2050 there will be only two working age people for every elderly person. There is an opportunity for businesses to encourage people over 50 to have greater participation in the workforce by developing digital skills and increasing workplace and retirement flexibility.​

3. New Technologies

As artificial intelligence accelerates, many industries will be at risk of automation. This will see future workforce focus on tasks requiring human strengths such as reasoning and emotional intelligence. Growth in the wearables market will continue and will be more entwined in everyday fashion. Conductive fabrics or sensor-clad smart garments will become more wide spread, while ingestibles will gather mass amounts of information on our health. 
Customer expectations will continue to increase with the acceleration of the Internet of Things (IoT). 50 billion devices are expected to be connected by the year 2020. The future is 'smart homes and cities' with near limitless network connectivity of everyday objects such as phones, appliances and cars. Organisations that are able to connect experiences through all touch points will continue to differentiate and engage consumers.

4. Customer experience and expectation​

Customer's expectations continue to increase. Experiences that surround a product or service are as important as the product itself. They expect these experiences to be personalised, consistent and available across all channels, both digital and analog, from anywhere at any time. A unified view is essential. Success depends on how well these channels are organized and connected to deliver a seamless experience.

Customers expect to be treated as individuals and have everything they need, when they need it. Their ability to self-service and customise the experience is crucial as they want to be more informed and in charge of how they engage. Not every customer wants to come to you for simple queries, and prefer to learn and help themselves. As a result businesses need to provide flawless support 24/7.

5. Big Data

'Big Data' will continue to play a key role in business' ability to deliver great customer experiences. The volume of data will grow even more with the increase in new technologies such as wearables, mobile devices and the IoT. However having big volumes of data isn't necessarily better. It's what businesses do with the data that's important. An opportunity exists for businesses to translate the data into actionable insights. One of the biggest expectations from customers will be receiving answers or an approval for an application straight away using real-time data collection and analysis. Businesses that are not quick to respond will lose new and existing customers to competitors.

6. New Business Models

Today new business models and disruption almost go hand in hand. In the last few years we have seen the rise of new models including:

Subscription and shareconomy based models which have created new forms of revenue generation. Think Netflix, Uber, Airbnb and HelloFresh.

The freemium model, which allows customers to have a basic service for free and then pay to upgrade, has allowed businesses to build a large customer base. We have seen this implemented successfully by Dropbox, LinkedIn and Spotify.

The democratisation of coding, crowdsourcing, peer-to-peer lending have enabled numerous start-ups with great ideas to take-off. More innovative and disruptive ventures are expected to develop, disrupting businesses globally. Businesses need to continuously be at the forefront by becoming disruption thought leaders.

At its core, the societal and technological shifts above are resulting in two things:

1. A consumer revolution sparked by their connectivity to everything, anywhere and anytime. As a result of which customers demand constant, convenient and personalised experiences

2. Tremendous changes in the ways businesses are conducted to stay ahead in the growing market competition

Regardless of your personal opinion these changes will and are changing the face and pace of business today. The question then remains is how your business can continue to increase their scale, offer security and stability, while being nimble and able to predict and respond to market opportunities.

Connecting the dots and being able to navigate change starts with awareness. Computershare has worked with many organisations on creating an appreciation of these macro trends and their implications, alongside solutions to ensure a relevant place for our clients now and in the future.​

GENERAL MANAGER DIGITAL & SOLUTIONS

Lisa McAndrew