Digital CX – delight the customer first

Improving operations

While many organizations have focused on strategy, design, and technology implementations, it seems that a significant part of CX delivery has not yet been fully addressed. I’m referring here to the service and business operations part of things.

Service operations must mirror the CX vision of the organization to ensure that they can deliver the intended experience at scale – simply, conveniently, fast, and in a visually attractive way. These are now easy to achieve, and are usually expected, if not actually demanded, by customers. CX and its service operations must be in sync for this to happen successfully. It’s important that brands have solutions in place that put their customers first in their business operations, so they can deliver a frictionless, digitally augmented, human-centric people experience across their organizations.

Let’s take an example of this in from the life sciences sector, for a pharma retailer. This business has just implemented a strategic CX transformation program to ensure it listens to its patients and delivers the best experience for them. As we know, drug compliance is a major issue for pharmacies, and it’s a major source of worry when patients don’t remember to repeat their monthly prescriptions.

This is where service operations comes in. By engaging continuously with the patient and providing constant and timely feedback, we would be addressing the experience delivery across the entire lifecycle journey of the patient, and not just during each short-term transaction.

Areas of focus

Needless to say, this extension of CX into business operations is catching up across sectors. We see three domains where it can make a significant impact:

• Empowered sales – increasing customer engagement and the range of channels being used, so as to increase online sales to consumers, to employees, or to other businesses
• Augmented service – using artificial intelligence to create, deploy, and manage high-quality customer touchpoints, improving customer satisfaction, and expanding relationships – all while improving the operational efficiency of contact center operations, and improving customer service
• Connected marketing – achieving a better understanding of, and closer engagement with, current customers; finding and attracting new customers; the strategic development of complex marketing campaigns; the streamlining of campaign launches; and personalizing experiences across channels.

One size doesn’t fit all

This outline may seem to suggest a one-size-fits all approach is possible. That’s not the case. While it’s true that organizations need to engage their customers continuously across the lifecycle, it is imperative that the approach is tailored to the sector and to industry-specific nuances, to the issues typical of that market, and to possible solutions.

Similarly, with greater access than ever to huge volumes of data, and with constantly emerging new technologies and channels, there are many opportunities to engage with customers, and to reimagine their journeys.

Customer or business operations are no longer simply cost centers that are necessary to meet the service needs of customers. As CX implementations expand into multiple domains, from brand and product awareness, through connected marketing, to augmented service, operational business areas need to increase their efforts to delight their customers.

Joining the dots

What brands need is a partner who can join all the dots. At Capgemini, for example, it’s our aim to help clients achieve better business outcomes, such as enhanced customer engagement, an improved Net Promoter Score, personalized, real-time, and frictionless experiences, and omnichannel customer journeys.

The aim, in short, is to help businesses achieve and sustain a more meaningful, productive, and frictionless relationship with their customers.