2015 February

Retailers happen to be the fastest advancing vertical – in terms of seeking to provide (and in many a cases, already on to it) the exceptional customer experience to their customers. They have chalked out plans and strategized to map the customer journeys as and when they happen (runtime and analytics) and also by the general behavior of the various demographics (type, history, preferences, behavior and analytics)

Everyone out there is talking about knowing your customer and engaging with them. So, when a customer of mine said she has always loved the products in my shop, I decided to take a plunge in the Customer Experience Ocean and have a little chat with her.

Where every customer has a distinctive journey – an experience that is exceptional and awesome at the same time can be arranged because each and every touch point comes as an opportunity to nurture the customer relationship. It doesn’t really matter how fragmented the journey appears because the correct combination of marketing solutions, data management and analytics can help to harmonize and orchestrate with that journey.

Conventionally, companies have been investing heavily on marketing and product development and not on the customer! But that was fine – the simple logic was: market strongly and across all channels – the customer had no choice but to notice your mass-advertisement and got impressed (where would she hide anyways?)

IKEA is a key player contributing to improved lifestyles the world over and clearly deserving to have a place where they could unwind, collaborate and be even more productive – and turning to Ephlux for their Enterprise Social Network proved worth-the-while.

A friend of mine, Kathy, recently told me her story of an experience she’d never forget. Soon enough, I realized it was not really a memorable one – instead an experience she never wishes to have again. As a customer, I would hate to go through such a disconnected experience.

Because the Telco Industry isn’t really leading the Customer Experience Walk, it can learn from others that have loyal customers converting into ardent advocates quite rapidly. To achieve this loyalty beyond reason, Telecoms will need to work on their customer satisfaction scores – by doing absolutely nothing wrong and then doing certain things that are awesome!