The State of CX: A customer experience series - differentiating with data
The evolution from customer communications to the more comprehensive approach of customer experience management represents the sea change in how businesses view their approach to customer growth and retention. The common theme in customer experience trends is acceleration. It reflects not only new demands for digital agility and analytics but also a focus on implementation of customer journey mapping and other customer-centric tools. As a leader in CXM solutions, we’ve spoken with industry analysts, Quadient experts, and customers to deliver this series on the state of CX, which will explore each of the key customer experience trends across the CXM landscape.
Engagements increasing with data personalisation
There's a core trend buzzing throughout the CXM industry: data's personalisation power is today's most significant CX differentiator.
Specifically, experts emphasise data's power to shape hyper-personalised experiences—not just communications. At the same time, they note that while enterprises have caught on to the need for CXM strategy, they are still largely sitting on their most potent personalisation tool: data strategy. In fact, it's estimated that up to 80 percent of an enterprise's data could be left dark. This is a massive lost opportunity.
Quadient's Jo Tryer, SVP of Customer Transformation, notes that consumers have lost patience with experiences that fall short of their expectations. The last year taught the remote consumer to expect deeply personalised, automated omnichannel customer communications. They expect respect for the context of their individual situation, and any interruption to this can be seen as deliberately frustrating.
Leveraging, and listening to, the unique perspectives and customer stories that data unlocks is crucial to meet these heightened expectations. Our capabilities for driving engagement through data personalisation via different communication channels will surpass those from just two years ago. Accelerated technology adoption of cloud, AI and 5G empowers enterprises to deliver deeply empathetic responses at scale. With these capabilities driving CX competition, brands no longer have leniency for failing to provide a frictionless experience across all interaction points with their customers.
Experts explore what comes after data personalisation
- IDC predicts that by 2023, 65% of consumers will be using voice, images, and augmented reality for interacting with brands using their 5G-enabled mobile device, thus extending physical and digital experiences at scale. As 5G networks reduce latency times and support more complex data processing at the edge, organisations that can dynamically adapt tone, mood, and visual content, while collecting new streams of behavioral data that further contextualise the blended digital/physical experience, will lead in the next economy of intelligence. - Marci Maddox, Research Director-Digital Experience Management, IDC
- In 2021, we'll see more enterprises actively working to identify targeted business values - figuring out what value truly means to them - and leveraging data to drive and prove this business value. Jim Tincher, CCXP, Founder & Mapper-in-Chief, Heart of the Customer
- Consumers will continue to use a complex set of emerging channels of engagement in a non-linear fashion, leaving businesses with the challenge of mapping customer journeys that are accurate, personalised, and increasingly predictive. This current landscape will force communication professionals to synthesise an enormous set of customer data, including all past interactions, demographics, preferences, interconnected behaviors and journeys, and potential future actions. This will require orchestration of data analytics, re-engineered business processes, user experience, information technology, market research, and a communication-driven compliance and privacy framework. For many (especially those in more conservative industry segments), transforming communication touchpoints in this manner will require out-of-the-box thinking. Communication experts will need to draw from smaller, more disruptive models popularised by digital start-ups and even from their fellow competitors to keep pace in this ever-evolving space. - Allison Lloyd, VP of Conference Programming, DOCUMENT Strategy Forum & Former Editor of DOCUMENT Strategy
- Process mining holds promise, and leading firms will begin to leverage process mining capabilities to optimise content creation and publishing processes across the organisation. By simplifying and consolidating processes, firms will make huge improvements in both time to market and operational cost efficiency in their communications environments. - Doculabs
- Many Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are now finding themselves in the unique position of going beyond common marketing demand generation experiences to leading the entire customer journey experience by leveraging data across the front office and back office - and this changes everything. Andrea Tucker, VP – Product Marketing, CXM, Quadient
The landscape of customer experience management is exciting, and the acceleration of change is driving new opportunities for growth. It’s crucial your business remains agile enough to adapt to not just what innovation and demands are coming, but those that have already arrived. The new normal is now, and data personalisation is just one of the trends in CX.
Explore the others in our eBook, The State of Customer Experience.
