Ephlux Insights

Integrating Oracle Service Cloud (RightNow) with Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) Let’s zoom in on the options available for integrating E-Business Suite with Oracle Service Cloud

The other day James was complaining about poor connectivity to his friends, and his friends seemed to experience the same problem. But what was remarkable about the whole discussion was that everyone facing the connectivity issue was more apprehensive about the call they made to the company to complain.

The retail sector is at the top of the ladder of Customer Experience, but is that really good news? Because we’ve always heard that the only way after the top is going down. I’d say – let’s stop believing the old-school, and instead of going down with those words, let’s add another rung to our ladder, and step up!

Customers may change over the period of time – their preferences, their styles, their circumstances – nothing is permanent. So, why should your design be fixed?

CX is essentially a complete set – with subsets of UX and Customer Service. Other sets that need to merge as well are the customer-centricity and employee-centricity to get the best results. Now, CX covers the customer’s perceived experience from beginning to end, at all touch points within a company. UX deals mainly with digital touch points, such as web and mobile user interface, and is a subset of CX.

Retailers need a customer experience platform that provides a single view of the consumer and delivers personalized cross-channel engagement. The Oracle CX Cloud solutions connect every engagement with the brand and deliver a consistent, personalized and interactive experience across all touch points.

It’s amazing how the color of a dress has created such spindles that weave tweets, likes, shares, Instagrams, Pinterests, videos, theories, philosophies, tech talk, scientific fizz and even psychological sessions. I know that you’re amongst those that don’t give a dime about the issue, and yet you’re here to read more on it. So here’s my take on it. But I’ll get to it in a while.

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!

Our superbly connected lives in this Digital World should have had awesome telecommunication services (which form the foundation) – sadly, it isn’t so! Although the telecommunication service providers have marked off the basic voice and telephony services and now offer multitudes of entertainment channels and various other value added services. For the customer, it just doesn’t cut it anymore!

Banks have served the public for a long time, but putting the money on the table today has become more complex than ever was conceived. Banks need to set the strategy according to the customers today and have the strategy ready for tomorrow as well – yes, because that’s how fast the customer demands and needs are changing.

It’s been a while that we’ve heard of the smart refrigerator that knows when you’re out of milk or the smart lightings in your rooms that know when you enter or leave – smart technology has started to populate around us, watching us. But, I’m tempted to ask if the independent and exclusively programmed smart devices really have a long life purpose?