‘How to Improve CX Using Data and Tech’, by Clare Muscutt
When we’re doing the important work of understanding how customer-driven our organisation is, we have a multiplicity of choices in what to invest in and where to spend our revenue. The wonderful worlds of data and tech are at our fingertips, and the level of choice – and challenges of implementation – can often feel completely overwhelming.
There’s so much to gain for an organisation committing the funding and the employee hours to boost how it handles the data it already owns. And there’s a host of technological services to draw upon to get it done.
This article aims to demystify the role of data and tech in CX-led transformation. Taking the time to think clearly about the vision and desired outcome can determine the difference between an effective reorganisational project that changes the way your customers experience your company or an expensive waste of time without actionable insights.
Let’s break both down and examine the benefits and challenges of each.
CX and Data
Using data is one of the most potent ways to convince decision-makers of your CX vision.
So, in order to communicate a well-informed argument about CX, you need to have all the facts. Commercial awareness will go over well with directors and get them onboard, but most importantly, knowing what’s going on will give you more confidence to start influencing the agenda.
“In order to communicate a well-informed argument about CX, you need to have all the facts.”
“Excessive information creates its own form of blindness to what is actually going on.” – Alexander Chancellor
Never forget that knowledge is power.
Using Data to Support CX
I hope we agree that buying the wrong tech ‘off-the-shelf’ or impulsively designing solutions in isolation from everything else you do is bad for business. But when talking digital, there is a further, often more challenging form of transformation we need to consider. Harnessing the power of data is one of the things every company with any legacy systems struggles with the most.
All older companies wishfully sigh: “If only we could be like Amazon or one of the other companies who have grown up since the millennium! One of the ones founded on customer obsession and had its technology and data architecture built from the ground up to deliver against customer needs!”
“The reality of many data-driven transformations is that they are being inundated with masses of data sources and are struggling to integrate them into business intelligence.”
The reality of many data-driven transformations is that they are being inundated with masses of data sources and are struggling to integrate them into business intelligence. As soon as any business gets ‘woke’ to data, a gold rush of requests often happens without the proper capability to manage them: data ‘overwhelm’.
Data is indeed the future for delivering joined-up, personalised experiences. But to truly ‘harness’ it means having centralised data and a squad of analysts to interpret it… The funds needed to do it will have to come from somewhere, which usually means something else being cut. Without thinking holistically, how the heck do you know which branch to lop off?
“Many businesses make the wrong choices and lose customers for it.”
Many businesses make the wrong choices and lose customers for it, only to have to go through more pain reinstating services/roles/departments all over again. While some organisations do manage to successfully reorganise their resources to put enough people and financial backing behind big data, for some reason, few of them ever seem to be able to do anything really meaningful with it when it comes to CX.
One of the most commonly overused terms today is ‘single customer view’ (or ‘unified view of the customer’).
This means the capability to hold every single bit of data you have about who the customer is and how they use your products and/or services in the same place so that you can do stuff with it through data analytics.
With this power, you have limitless insight and a solid foundation for informed customer-led decision-making. However, most attempts to exploit data only extend to improving targeted communications or holding better case management information at the contact centre because the intention behind the investment was limited to increasing revenue or reducing cost in the first place.
Utilising Data in CX Design
Imagine if you could join comms, purchase, customer service, and preferences together in order to serve up an experience that adds value to help the customer and save costs or drive revenue. That would be a win-win, right?
Even more exciting, imagine if you could design the target experience for, say, five years’ time and identify what data would be needed to deliver meaningful personalisation. Imagine if the data and tech teams could work together to prioritise their workloads through a shared vision in the form of a customer-driven roadmap. A map of planned development that meant tangible value for customers being delivered as easily and frequently as possible.
This is achievable with the right thinking and tools.
“Imagine if the data and tech teams could work together to prioritise their workloads through a shared vision in the form of a customer-driven roadmap.”
There are usually masses of data, but lacking the capability in analytics to actually use it means it is not harnessed well enough to seamlessly join up CX, and/or the requirements for the kind of integration needed for it to power CX are misunderstood.
Customer Experience and Tech
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller.
Trying to keep up with ever-changing tech might be another impulse behind change at your organisation. ‘But surely this is a good thing?’ I hear you cry. And the answer is, yes, it’s great being able to show off shiny new tech. However, when changes are made in isolation and/or without consideration for customers and employees, the process of digital transformation can also come with its own pitfalls. The worst of these is the decision to buy expensive, off-the-shelf tech that promises to solve all your problems or the knee-jerk ‘we need an app for that’. Both are expensive solutions, and neither are targeted at delivering real customer (or employee) value.
I would warn you to be very wary of salespeople pitching technology solutions that will miraculously cure all ills and deliver a seamless CX. I’m not saying new tech isn’t part of the answer; it certainly is. However, the desired target experience has to be thought of holistically first, and integration is considered before any solutions are selected. Otherwise, you might end up with a new set of problems.
“I would warn you to be very wary of salespeople pitching technology solutions that will miraculously cure all ills and deliver a seamless CX.”
Depending on the age of your organisation, the scale and type of change you're looking at might differ drastically. Attempts to re-engineer legacy systems that came ‘out of the ark'; empowering employees with tech that lets them do their jobs better; creating sexy customer interfaces through pioneering uses of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI).
But it’s usually the first of these. Despite lofty ambitions, most businesses I’ve encountered are still immature when it comes to building technology infrastructure. Many people I talk to describe their diligent IT architects working towards platform migrations. Typically, the old tech doesn’t have any of the capabilities needed to deliver the customer’s requirements these days, so the business is moving to new, more flexible solutions—ones that can be updated and changed more easily without bringing the entire vessel down.
Unfortunately, migrations like this are usually pretty rocky for the good ship Customer Experience. As new features are deployed and tested, this can lead to ‘outages’ and failures of the really important bits like the checkout… resulting in some very frustrated customers and increased costs necessary to serve the failure demand.
Thinking Clearly Before Making Tech Investments
Imagine if, before making multi-million-pound investment decisions, you could think about the customer experience you want to offer and what your customers/employees need. That would enable you to visualise how technology would support the vision so you could be crystal clear about your requirements, delivering the maximum customer value and maximising the return on investment. Imagine if that vision enabled your organisation to plan what needed to be built not just now but in the future so you had a technology roadmap that was not only efficient but people-driven.
Clear vision is crucial when dealing with heavy investment opportunities such as data analytics or new technological investments.
For the right decisions to be made, and for the process to be effectively implemented - organisations have to make sure they’re giving employees the agency to contemplate clearly the roadmap ahead and voice their thinking.
