Many people appear to have already devised a plan. According to Accenture’s recent Business of Experience report, 77 percent of CEOs want their company to transform how it communicates and interacts with customers dramatically. They recognize that change is necessary for business growth, long-term viability, and relevance.
The research investigates the evolution of customer experience as executives adjust to a new way of thinking about it (CX). It’s remarkable that over 80% of CEOs agree on anything. It indicates that significant changes are occurring in the way businesses connect with their customers. It also emphasizes the fact that more firms will transform into experience enterprises (BX).
There was also the customer experience to consider. The much-needed staff experience followed after that. What is the next challenge that CEOs must face? The experience industry.
So, what is BX, exactly? This renaissance is inspiring companies to think beyond the usual CX mindset and devote their entire organization to offering exceptional experiences. Clients’ fresh, frequently unfulfilled, and ever-changing desires must be catered to in these interactions. BX is about the entire company anticipating and delivering on these expectations in order to provide customer value.
Netflix, for example, has rebuilt itself as more than a movie streaming service; it has restructured its entire business to control the content experience and how customers consume it at home and on demand. Venmo was more than simply a payment processor; it also offered a global, user-friendly experience for digitally exchanging money with friends and family, regardless of bank affiliation.
According to the study, BX builds on CX’s foundations to give businesses a more holistic approach to becoming customer-centric and reinvigorating development. CX used to be the domain of the chief marketing officer (CMO) or the chief operating officer (COO), but because of its ties to all parts of a company’s operations, BX is now a boardroom priority.
BX expands on the pillars of CX to provide a more holistic strategy to becoming client focused and reigniting growth for businesses. Before we understand what is Business of Experience and how to achieve Business Experience Transformation, we have to understand the various meaning and definitions of Customer Experience (CX).
What is customer experience (CX)?
Customer experience (CX) is the way a company interacts with its customers at every stage of the purchasing process, from marketing to sales to customer support and everything in between. It’s largely the sum of all of a customer’s interactions with your brand.
The customer experience is more than a collection of behaviors. It also emphasizes emotions. What do your current and potential customers think about your brand? You can improve—or destroy—your customers’ perceptions of you at every customer touchpoint. As a result, crucial decisions must be made at each touchpoint, and those decisions have an impact on how successful your firm will be.
Why customer experience (CX) matters?
So, why does the client experience matter so much? Customers differentiate based on their interactions with your organization rather than specific product features and functionalities as items become increasingly commoditized.
Customers want to feel linked to their favorite brands, and they want businesses to know about and respect them. Because customer experience has emerged as the most important competitive difference, companies must guarantee that their CX initiatives can deliver individualized, pleasant encounters at every consumer touchpoint.
Your clients’ entire perspective and opinion of your brand is influenced by these interactions. As a result, customer experience is vital to success. Here are several aspects that can have a significant impact on your consumers’ perceptions of your organization, and thus on CX:
– Do your marketing efforts address their wants and needs?
– Is it straightforward to use your ecommerce site, and does it guide and aid visitors along the way?
– What is the strength of your approach for supporting B2B and B2C customers during the sales and service processes?
– Is all of your customer data available to the individuals and systems who require it? Do customers have to tell everyone who they are, what they need, and what they’ve said in each conversation?
– Customers’ levels of satisfaction—and their desire to conduct business with you—are heavily influenced by how well you understand them. You’ll be the firm to beat if you get CX right.
Customer experience is the new competitive battlefield, according to 89 percent of organizations surveyed by Gartner.
What is a CX strategy?
No matter the consumer touchpoint, a customer experience strategy lays out the actionable actions needed to offer a positive, meaningful, and differentiated customer experience (CX).
Any/all competitive information, consumer and marketplace research/data, and any/all corporate strategic goals, activities, and value statements should all be considered in a customer experience plan.
All departments, not just those traditionally considered as customer-facing, must be included in a customer experience business plan. Today, every employee is involved in some aspect of customer service. It will be easier to align everyone on customer-centricity goals and improve customer experience by bringing in groups from throughout the company (CX).
What is customer experience management?
Customer experience management (CEM) is defined by Gartner as “the discipline of creating and reacting to customer encounters in such a way that they meet or exceed their expectations, resulting in increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.”
77% of CEOs Signal Market Shift To Business of Experience
What is good customer experience?
There is a distinction between good and bad customer service. Customers leave every interaction feeling happy and satisfied when the customer experience business is positive. Well-targeted marketing campaigns (PDF), easy-to-purchase ecommerce sites, simpler buying processes, self-service customer service choices, and the ability to communicate with company representatives anytime, anywhere, on any device are all examples of positive customer experiences.
Customers expect to be able to interact with you through a variety of channels. They expect brands to anticipate their demands, and they want to be rewarded for their devotion via effective and relevant loyalty programmes.
Connected data is critical to a company’s capacity to deliver exceptional client experiences. To accomplish so, you’ll need to link your data and whatever insight you’ve gathered across all of your systems, from front to back. Only then will you be able to provide a consistent, linked, and personalized customer experience across all marketing, sales, and service touchpoints.
Define bad customer experience (CX)
Unhappy, disappointed, or even frustrated customers are the result of a bad customer experience. Customers’ beliefs that you don’t know them, don’t understand them—or don’t care to—or that you’re tough to do business with can lead to negative customer experiences. These views can emerge as a result of:
- – Websites that are difficult to navigate
- – Products that don’t live up to the hype
- – Customer service request resolution is slow.
- – Marketing outreach that is ineffective
Standardized, one-size-fits-all customer encounters are off-putting for customers in an increasingly customized world, especially as customers offer a plethora of information about themselves—either consciously or unwittingly. There’s no excuse for a divide between brands and customers in today’s connected, data-driven world.
When a customer care agent is uninformed of a customer’s previous interactions, when the CRM system does not contain the necessary information for a customer, or when personalization is missing or merely comprises of a first name as the email salutation, these disconnects arise.
How does customer experience software work?
Customer experience software serves as a foundation for the entire organization. To maximize customer interactions throughout the customer lifecycle, most customer-focused businesses deploy marketing cloud, service cloud, sales cloud, and commerce cloud technologies.
To improve customer experience, you’ll need enough data to get a complete picture of your consumer. Because the client supplies that information every time they connect with your business, all you need is the correct CX software to make the most of it.
This includes marketing automation, ecommerce, customer service, digital experience, CRM, CPQ, and sales force automation (SFA) tools, as well as a customer data platform (CDP) to help unify data into comprehensive profiles and actionable insight.
How to improve CX?
Are you looking for ways to improve your customer experience? Improving the customer experience is not a one-time task. It calls for the following:
- – CX objectives that are well-defined
- – Integration of all front- and back-office systems with executive and C-suite buy-in
- – Data and feedback from customers and employees
- – The capacity to trace a customer’s digital journey with digital tools
- – The belief that every employee is a customer service representative
- – Metrics and analytics
- – A data-driven approach
What’s the difference between customer experience and customer service?
The terms “customer service” and “customer experience” are sometimes used interchangeably. Although they are not synonyms, they are related.
Customer service is defined as the act of assisting or supporting customers, whether through digital means or human engagement. It’s a part of the customer experience, but it’s not the whole picture.
Companies who seek to improve their customer experience see a rise in revenue, according to 84 percent of them.
What effect does customer experience (CX) have on sales?
From website searches to browsing ecommerce sites to numerous digital customer care channels to in-store encounters, CX encompasses the full sales process (to name a few).
Taking your business elsewhere is now easier than ever. To convince a customer to buy, repurchase, and stay loyal, you must provide a wonderful experience with every customer interaction.
Remember that customer perceptions are based on money spent, whether it’s with you or with your competition. Through customer-centric marketing initiatives that are engaging, smart, and personalised. In other words, businesses must concentrate on what matters to their customers, and they must have access to the data that reveals this information. Customer journeys must be efficient and effective from research to purchase. Customer support must be thorough, adaptable, and error-free.
Remember that customer experience is founded on consumer perception, and perceptions equal money spent, whether with you or with your competition. Positive perceptions contribute to higher levels of consumer loyalty, retention, and, eventually, advocacy. All of these, in turn, have a measurable financial outcome. Every aspect of the client experience is important.
How does customers experience (CX) drive business growth?
Customer experience has a direct impact on your bottom line. It’s a well-known truth that acquiring a new customer is significantly more expensive than keeping an existing one. As a result, ensuring that each consumer has a great experience is critical to your company’s growth.
Cross-sell and up-sell opportunities can also lead to incremental growth when customers have a positive experience. Excellent customer service also encourages customer advocacy, which leads to the acquisition of new consumers at a low cost.
Negative customer experience is a major contributor to slowing growth. Customers with bad perceptions leave, resulting in a high rate of customer turnover. This can happen very quickly in the digital age. Customers can easily share their experiences through social media and online review sites.
The terrible ones are more likely to be shared. Customers are far more prone to vent their frustrations online than to express gratitude, and a single complaint can reach millions of people in an instant. The driver’s seat is occupied by customers and their experiences.
Is there an ROI on CX?
Providing exceptional customer service yields a considerable return on investment (ROI).
While calculating the cost of a CX mentality and customer experience software may be simple, or at least reasonably simple, calculating the benefits may be more difficult. We have a tendency to demand huge things from customer service, but does it actually increase market share?
Will it result in an increase in revenue? Is it simply the cost of doing business in today’s world? Well, it’s a combination of all three.
According to KPMG (PDF), failing to satisfy consumer expectations has double the impact as offering a positive experience at every touchpoint. By measuring key performance factors around customer happiness, you may build links between CX and monetary gains. After all, a customer-centric approach is intended to improve customer happiness, decrease churn, and promote loyalty.
Customer Experience KPIs
There is no comprehensive list of the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring customer experience success. Your KPIs are determined by your company, customers, and industry. There is no need to measure the reduction in on-site service calls if you don’t have a field service group, for example. However, because customer experience is intended to promote customer happiness, there are some broad KPIs that may be appropriate to include here. This includes the following:
- – Increased revenue
- – Customer turnover vs. customer retention
- – Amounts of cross-sells and upsells
- – Customer service is expensive.
- – Change in net promoter score (NPS)
A number of digital indicators, such as pages visited, time spent on-site, and conversion rate, can be used to determine how satisfied visitors to your online assets are.
Who’s responsible for customer experience (CX)?
The customer experience is the responsibility of every employee. Everyone has an important part to perform. To support those functions, all systems must share correct data in real time. Although consumer-facing services like as marketing, sales, and customer support receive the majority of the attention, the following back-office systems are as critical:
- – Inventory management ensures that a customer receives the product they requested and is not informed later that supply has run out.
- – Ecommerce sites that provide online customers with the same experience as in-store customers.
- – Billing and accounts receivable (AR) to assist and resolve any billing and payment concerns.
- – Human resources (HR) ensures that the correct employee is hired for the right role, with the proper skillsets.
- – Human resources (HR) to make sure that the right employee, with the right skillsets, are hired for the right job.
- – Logistics to guarantee that the product arrives when promised.
- – Finance to ensure that your company can support the subscription-based pricing models that customers want.
What is Business Experience (BX)?
The Business of Experience (Business Experience) or BX, as Accenture calls it, is a new approach where all business leaders are equal stakeholders in building exceptional experiences for customers, employees, and the society.
The term BX – Business of Experience – was recently coined by Accenture to describe a new paradigm in which all business leaders are equal stakeholders in creating extraordinary experiences for customers, workers, and society.
In this ever-changing digital landscape and changing client needs, customer experience has become a must-have for most businesses. Customer satisfaction is the responsibility of each individual and business function inside an organization.
The majority of companies are concentrating on the technology and digital initiatives that are required to support their company and operations. The next step is to go beyond technology and strategize how everyone in the company can contribute to rethinking customer engagement and experience.
Business leaders must establish new organizational structures to capitalize on technology investments and find new methods to deliver value and fulfil evolving customer expectations through meaningful and personalized experiences. This necessitates a shift in the organization’s attitude from one focused on the customer experience (CX) to one focused on the business of experience (BX).
Traditionally, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) was in charge of customer experience, but BX is a larger notion that encompasses all aspects of corporate operations.
It requires the organization’s stakeholders to shift their mindset and rethink how they conduct business from the standpoint of customers – how customers interact, shop, and so on.
Learning The Shift
When it comes to CX plans, companies prefer to priorities technology – new front-end tools for websites, mobile apps, social media channel optimization, e-commerce platform upgrades, CRM upgrades, redesigned marketing campaigns, and so on.
BX takes a different perspective and rethinks how leaders think. Instead of relying solely on technology, it becomes an underlying instrument for achieving company goals and redefining consumer experience. The emphasis is on consistently delivering experiences that customers want, rather than on how they do it. BX looks beyond technology to improve the company’s approach to customer experience.
The needs of customers are changing all the time. Customers need user-friendly websites, intuitive digital experiences, straightforward journeys with minimal complications, uncluttered experiences, and so on, therefore previous technological expenditures may become obsolete in the near future.
BX has the ability to take CX to a whole new level, allowing enterprises to be reimagined entirely through the lens of experience.
How to start with Business Experience Transformation?
To begin, businesses must connect all of their departments, develop cross-channeling of data, resources, and technology, and build a single ecosystem of processes and people who work together to give a unified customer experience.
Features
The four BX techniques stated below are used by organizations that surpass their competitors in terms of customer experience:
- – Customer obsessiveness – Identify unmet customer demands and turn data into action.
- – Experience innovation – Shift to new and innovative models that provide value and relevance to customers.
- – Extended responsibilities — Work as a cohesive unit from the C-suite to the customer-facing employees, with the goal of providing a rich customer experience.
- – People and Technology Synchronization — Select the appropriate technology and skill set to support business choices and BX goals.
The business of experience is a holistic approach that enables companies to become more customer-centric and grow. It will enable them to reinvent a more inventive and resilient business with the consumer at the centre. Organizations that embrace experience renaissance sooner will be better positioned for success and growth in 2022.
What is CX vs BX?
Businesses are putting a greater emphasis on customer service, and understandably so. Customers have never been more connected, informed, or powerful than they are now. In an era of digital Darwinism, any brand that wants to live and thrive must #adaptordie. However, just having a good client experience isn’t enough. Brands must grasp what it takes to compete in a world where people’s priorities in terms of values, aspirations, and loyalties are altering.
The killer app is now humanity.
Forget about leadership; basic market relevance is no longer bound by the status quo. We are now witnessing the emergence of a new normal, which is altering the way brands gain customer attention, deliver value, and establish connections.
In fact, the concept of brand is being re-imagined entirely. What brands stood for and how that value proposition was delivered are no longer relevant. Not only are brands in desperate need of an overhaul, but so are every touch point, value proposition, procedures, policies, and systems. Executive perspectives, philosophies, expertise, work, leadership, and management, perhaps most crucially, are ripe for innovation.
As an eternal optimist, I believe that re-invention is not only conceivable, but also available. The most difficult task is just seeing and doing things in a different way. This is especially tough when a company is functioning well and providing positive returns to shareholders and stakeholders.
I’d like to offer a recent DX Summit presentation in which I discuss the current status of experience, how we got here, and where we need to go. In it, I introduce “The X framework,” a notion first explored in X: The Experience of Business and Design. It assists CEOs in prioritizing efforts so that every cog in the machine is turning in the direction of modern relevance.
Define the emotional and tangible experience that customers should have before, during, and after involvement with your brand.
CX – Customer Experience: To revitalize the brand essence, align “the experience” in each instant and the aggregate of all moments.
UX – User Experience: The customer’s interaction with each touchpoint, interface, representative, and the product itself must individually and collectively bring the experience to life. This includes user interface, user experience, and information architecture design.
For a number of reasons and business justifications, transformational initiatives are conducted. Rarely does the programme begin with a full examination or assessment of the anticipated client experience. To improve customer experience, a fundamental move is to invest in the design of the desired experience up front and to build leading and lagging financial indicators.
The same is true when implementing a new technology platform. Salesforce has always prioritized the client.
As a result, any organisation going on a BX journey should consider the platform. Is there a real chance? Changing your opinion about Salesforce’s purpose. Technology is commonly chosen by organisations to replace another system or to address a tactical requirement. Rather than the technology driving the experience, the experience becomes the product of the technology.
Become data-led
Data must inform not only how we design captivating experiences, but also how we change and evolve them over time. This is true for enterprises of all types, including B2B, B2C, B2B2C, and even B2C2B. Data reveals customer preferences, behaviours, habits, likes, dislikes, and preferred engagement patterns.
We don’t necessarily connect all of these revelations to the deliberate design of experiences. This is a truly unique skill set. To succeed in the experience market, you must first understand your customers’ data and what their behaviours are telling you. According to the report, leaders are twice as likely as others (55 percent vs. 26 percent) to believe they can translate customer data into actions.
Integrating data into your automated decision-making becomes lot easier with the correct tools. Tableau, for example, from Salesforce gives a platform for becoming more predictive and prescriptive in evaluating and improving customer experiences — a key component of the BX shift.
How to win using technology as a change catalyst?
The BX study identifies four winning techniques that high-performing companies are far more likely to employ in order to outperform their competitors. Choosing the right IT platform can assist businesses in quickly implementing their plans.
Only 27% of their lagging counterparts have a clear grasp of which technical platforms they need to use to stay competitive and relevant to customers, while leading organisations have a clear concept of which platforms they need to utilize to stay competitive and relevant to customers. Here’s a quick rundown of the winning strategies and resources for learning more about these topics:
- – Obsess on the needs of your customers and use them as a compass. Putting the customer at the centre of your design, as simple as it may seem, is sometimes overlooked in favor of internal KPIs.
- – Make it a habit to try out new ideas. By establishing a culture of continuous innovation, you can keep delivering on the promise of improved experience. Using cutting-edge technology like Salesforce to enable that culture makes it more likely to stick.
- – Extend the reach of your firm’s expertise. Everyone is responsible for the customer experience, and it’s easier to work as one coherent, customer-focused organization when everyone shares the same insights and tools.
- – Sync the goals of technology, data, and research. We believe that bringing about change necessitates delivering on the promise of technology and human ingenuity. When these factors are integrated, you get a lot of value that lasts a long time.
For all enterprises, BX has become a need. Focus on experience, become data-driven, and leverage technology as a platform to drive change to increase your chances of success. Strong transformational and technology partners are also essential.
It’s the year 2022, and customers have had enough.
Everything has changed in so many aspects of their lives, and while many of us hanker after the “good old days,” we all recognise that these changes are unavoidable. As a result of the worldwide health crisis, even digital natives have changed their minds about online commercial transactions. However, they’re fed up with fake news, overpromising, and hysteria. Consumers today don’t want to be sold to or advertised to; instead, they want constant and authentic connections with companies they can rely on.
To effectively engage with people, you must apply your customer service concepts to every aspect of your organisation and transform into a true business of experience (BX) leader, whose success and growth are inextricably linked to their satisfaction and loyalty.
It’s a big request, but there’s a need for it. In a world divided politically and economically, big brands are the only really global voices left, and they invest more in understanding consumers than any geographically confined organisation or politician driven by short-term thinking.
The combination of data-driven business intelligence and purpose-driven leadership is generating new market leaders in every vertical, and first-mover advantage is still a possibility in many industries.
According to a recent Accenture consultant study involving 1,550 executives (almost a quarter of them are CEOs) in 21 countries across 22 industries, BX focus and orientation delivers 6x profitability and growth. BX distinguishes leaders from followers in every industry.
It entails a minor but significant change in customer service. For certain firms, putting customers’ needs first, rather than relegating them to sales and marketing, and adopting a really complete method to accomplish so, may need a significant reorientation.
According to Baiju Shah, Chief Strategy Officer of Accenture Interactive and co-author of the aforementioned study, BX must be driven from the boardroom. “To flourish in the coming year, every organisation and leader will need to think about experience differently,” Shah writes, “especially when nearly everything we do has been structurally upended, from how we shop to how and where we work to how we engage with people.” Transformation must begin at the top and work its way down.
Customers want to be inspired.
The old zero-sum transactional paradigm of sales is no longer appropriate in the new environment. In a one-time one-way transaction, it’s not about the customer exchanging money for whatever you give them. It’s a representation of a digital connection and relationship in which value and service are intricately linked and scalable.
Buyers are also less likely to analyze direct competitors when determining where to conduct business; instead, they will compare brand experiences across categories. Who makes people feel good, whatever it is they are offering? Customers will follow where they are led if they are motivated, providing an unrivalled opportunity for brand extension.
Customers will follow where they are inspired to be led once trust equity has been built through BX practices.
They want something more than the conventional user-centered, design-driven touchpoints. Slick onboarding bots and native apps are no longer enough to increase market share in industries ranging from grocers to SaaS. Accenture’s term “sea of sameness” refers to the high functionality and user experience standards that are increasingly expected and sought, but which offer little individuality or innovation.
Customers, on the other hand, are looking for something more substantial: a vision and goal that reflect their values and beliefs. As Gillette learned through their planned response to the #metoo movement, and as many businesses have learned from their answers to Black Lives Matter in words and deeds, this will include alienating some potential customers in order to better connect with others’ emotions. For real BX, though, maraschino choc chip is preferable over vanilla. It’s preferable to be cherished by your customers than to be liked by everyone.
This is because, compared to 37% of other customers, more than half of Gen Y and Z customers told Accenture that when a company disappointed them because of its words or actions on a social issue, they transferred a portion of their spending away from their current service provider. They want businesses that make them feel like they’re a part of something, that connect them to a common cause or movement – but only with complete transparency and accountability, because this group is quick to criticize and discard those that are hypocritical or jump on the bandwagon.
Change your consumer interaction with BX.
When it comes to creating a BX mentality, there are no quick fixes. With a brand refresh or by employing the right specialist, it’s difficult to achieve. Rather, achieving the necessary adjustment will necessitate a fundamental shift on multiple levels:
The President & Board
It all starts with reversing the model: first consider the purpose and experience you want to create, then consider how you’ll generate money from it – rather than the other way around. Customers are also stockholders in the company… In regard to this vision, what are their top priorities? Before you can build a strategy to achieve your goal, you must first define it.
Sales & Marketing
You’ve already built a customer-centric user interface, but take a step back and consider their views and requirements on a larger scale: What is the best way to build an experience that connects clients to their desires? How do you include that experience consistently and consistently across all CX touchpoints without becoming overbearing?
Products & Services
How can you use your data and insights to truly adjust to the demands of your customers and generate offerings that elicit the emotions and experiences you want them to have? A range of technologies, ranging from qualitative research and social listening to interaction analytics, can help you find latent demands and get beyond the ‘faster horse’ response you might receive by asking people what they want in an open-ended question. You’ll be able to put the right answers in front of people before they even realize they need them if you’re sensitive, nimble, and aware of external developments.
In addition, you’ll need to consider and incorporate your experience values into your operations and supply chain. If your consumers experience a protracted onboarding process or delivery delays, you will shatter the entire perception, and truly living your value and purpose entails ensuring that your suppliers do the same.
Customer dedication, rather than customer centricity, will be the key to success. If you fantasize about making people happy, learning from them, and supplying them with what they need bravely and honestly, you’ll be in the right frame of mind.
Customers, more than ever, require a compass, a north star, as they struggle with economic, health, and environmental uncertainty. Your business has the potential to adapt and contribute to a more meaningful and inspiring future. From the top down, this must be everyone’s alignment and commitment, with no silos or boundaries. Work smartly, efficiently, and effectively with the necessary instruments to achieve the right goal.
Then you’ll be giving your customers the best, and you’ll be on your path to becoming a true experience company.
Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” If the only way to get a ride was to wave down a car on the side of the road, taxi companies would be foolish to expect that rising user demand would be conceivable. Rather than revising crowd management tactics solely during peak hours, a supermarket should consider ways to improve the shopping process throughout, including the ease with which customers can check out.
Touchpoints must be improved to improve customer experience (CX). This, however, is insufficient. Companies must find a sweet spot in aiding customers in attaining their most critical objectives and create a Business of Experience (BX) where commercial success may have a positive social impact.
Preoccupation
Are you entirely focused on your customer’s objective, problem, need, and expectation?
As a leader, it’s normal for you to deal with consumer issues. To progress as a BX leader, you must first identify the unmet demands and expectations of your customers.
Let’s take a look at a well-known Asian brand: Grab. The company wouldn’t be able to provide a service that users would return to or expand into new sectors like food ordering, grocery shopping, and financial services if it didn’t understand the problems and unmet needs that its users were experiencing – such as a desire for an alternative to disappointing taxi services and a preference to ride motorcycles to avoid traffic jams, among other things.
An continual data and research approach can help you understand what people are saying and how they are acting, especially your clients. Share these facts and insights across company functions to come up with swift answers.
Apple’s success was built on a strong consumer focus and extensive market research. If Apple had continued to develop overpriced accessories like the bulky Newton personal digital assistant and hybrid PC game console, Pippin, and ignored customers’ growing needs for a brand with products that can help them juggle work and personal life, it would not have become the innovation juggernaut it is today.
Determination
Experience innovation does not happen at a set interval. It takes place at all levels of an organization and focuses on solving problems in fundamentally different ways. A typical CEO might decide to create a digital app for customers to purchase items and have teams research methods to improve it.
Although a better app may result in a more trustworthy service or a more personalized solution, none of these factors will change the game in terms of how individuals interact with products, services, or brands on their own. Customers are increasingly demanding that organizations continue to innovate with more relevant products, services, and experiences that respond to their needs and set new standards. More over half of the world’s largest companies (53%) agree.
A BX leader will have his or her team consider “where do our customers originate from?” in order to support their customers’ outcomes with enough innovation and speed, i.e. “what features can we integrate to serve the diverse customer profiles?” “Do we introduce contactless payments or technology algorithms to assist them choose their items fast and easily?” and “Do we introduce contactless payments or technology algorithms to help them choose their products quickly and easily?” “Is it possible to add third-party drop-offs or pick-ups?” “How can everyone respond to consumer requests properly?”
Leaders’ daily attitudes must be imbued with experience creativity. Connect the dots between the company’s goals and the customer’s experience. Make a prototype and let the results speak for themselves.
Inclusivity
Is everyone in your firm with you at the start and finish lines?
All team members must work together to provide a positive client experience. Customer-centricity entails aiding customers in doing what they want rather than forcing them to do what the company wants.
In a conventional retailer, for example, employees will simply respond to customer needs. Employees who understand BX, on the other hand, will be motivated to learn why people buy, empowered to make recommendations, and eager to share their expertise in order to help people make the best purchasing decisions possible, whether offline or online. Shiseido is a great example of a company that helps its staff provide excellent customer service.
Its employees will take part in training programmes tailored to their unique skills and interests, ensuring that they are well-prepared for their jobs.
BX executives must understand that every employee must have a feeling of ownership and be aware of how their daily tasks and responsibilities link to and contribute to the business and experiences they deliver customers. Performance assessments, career development, corporate meetings, team-building exercises, and training can all integrate customer experience measurements.
Ingenuity
We’ve seen how data and technology have profoundly changed the world. When technology, data, and human purpose are combined, an unstoppable flow of innovation and a plethora of unique experiences results.
KFC was having difficulty re-engaging young people in its outlets. Using social media and infusing personal touch into the digital realm, the KFC Pocket Franchise was born. Gamified elements added to the experience, allowing users to unlock additional things and create their own digital storefront.
The virtual kitchens of KFC restaurant managers were then challenged to recreate KFC menu items. Its great success highlighted how a company’s strategic investments in technology and data could both create a human-centric experience and generate income.
A leader who understands BX is constantly rewiring how technology, data, and people may work together to offer new opportunities for performance and progress. He or she will assess investments, update operational models, and connect data and people in new, faster, and more innovative ways.
Business Experience thinking is critical as the world continues to be disturbed by the minute. As a result of the pandemic, several businesses failed to move overnight. A viable organization requires a forward-thinking BX leader who is customer-focused, determined to make experience innovation a daily habit, has the horizon to include everyone on this journey, and is imaginative and resourceful enough to merge the tech, data, and human agendas.
When Accenture Interactive works with companies to help them transition from customer experience (CX) to business of experience (BX), marketing strategy is put under pressure to change in unanticipated ways.
These days, it appears that a growing number of Xs are being welcomed into the lexicon of leadership, management, and marketing. Why should we be concerned about BX?
Leaders know that their strategy and execution need to be redesigned as they work to recover from the pandemic and return to growth.
In some ways, we’re entering an amazing moment of opportunity known as the experience renaissance, which is compelling brands to reimagine everything, and CEOs are leading the charge. The bottom line is that BX is a progression in which customer focus and experience optimization are not just about improving a touchpoint or a new work stream, but a new way of working that is a top priority across the whole C-suite.
Should we consider a retooling of strategy when an organization transitions from customer experience (CX) to business of experience (BX)?
CX has gained a lot of traction in recent years, but it’s typically been restricted to a team or a workstream. BX is more than just a workstream; it’s a whole new method of working and thriving.
The most successful BX companies will be defined not by what they sell, but by the experiences they provide. Consumers’ fresh, often unmet, and frequently changing wants must be addressed, and customers must be able to attain their intended objectives.
What distinguishes BX from a more focused strategy focus on improved CX performance at its core?
We’ve discovered that CX is treated as glitter, while BX is woven into the organization’s fabric. BX is a large-scale, daring mentality shift that begins with the CEO and extends to every C-level executive and leader in both the front and back offices. BX is an experience-driven method that involves rewriting your entire organization’s DNA. When you improve the customer experience, you improve lives and, as a result, business.
This new reality has prompted organizations to get a new level of understanding of their consumers and staff, as well as create new ways to deliver experiences that meet their unmet demands. The payoff is long-term stability, not just short-term gains.
Business Experience Examples
When it comes to BX news and BX reviews, Kilowott’s Blog is a must-visit. The BX blog covers technology, gaming, and entertainment, and the blog is constantly updated regularly. In addition, Kilowott offers comprehensive insights into tech topics that you won’t find anywhere else.
It’s an excellent tech blog for those who want to learn more about mainstream tech and its potential impact on the world. The blog covers a wide range of consumer tech topics, along with cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), and other technologies that are transforming the way we connect with one another.
Businesses have long recognized that the consumer experience is often more essential than the products themselves, and they have taken advantage of this. Companies such as Apple, Zappos, and Starbucks are notable examples of companies that priorities customer experience (CX). They realized that others could match or exceed their product offers, so they decided to set themselves apart by providing memorable experiences for their clients. They are still in charge of their respective markets.
However, there are other, lesser-known businesses that are doing the same thing. B2B enterprises like Varsity Scoreboards (previously Sportable Scoreboards), Construction Specialties, and Panasonic Business are developing and integrating numerous customer experience software suites to make doing business with them easier.
Business Experience Examples can be found in Kilowott‘s Business Experience Use Cases.
What effect should this have on the CEO’s relationship with the CMO?
This is a critical time for the C-suite, as it will affect how they work and, as a result, how they grow. Our study discovered an unexpected divide in the C-suite, with 8 out of 10 CEOs saying they need to change how they connect with customers, but only 4 out of 10 CMOs agreeing.
This discovery highlights a strategic, communication, or both chasm. The CMO is at a crossroads, with an opportunity to ascend and join with the CEO to make BX their north star.
This reinforces the idea that the top CMOs operate as ‘chief collaboration officers’ across the c-suite, advocating for the customer throughout the organization. This is a trend we’ve been watching for a while, but the outbreak of the pandemic has accelerated it, presenting a chance for the CMO to be the CEO’s actual growth partner.
Many CMOs’ responsibilities and mindsets will have to shift from “making people want things” to “driving brand evolution by recognizing that their brand is built on experiences that connect customers to what they want, not the other way around.”
How should BX be measured?
There are operational experience indexes and quality of experience (NPS, CES, and brand love) measurements available in the short term. However, we believe that, in the end, businesses must drive experiences that produce mutual value. If you follow that line, you’ll find that the leaders will link experience to growth in two ways: the business’s growth and the growth/improvement of their customers’ ‘P&L.’
We are still in the midst of a global crisis, and brands should take advantage of this once-in-a-generation chance to reset, pivot, and rewire their businesses around the concept of experience
The gold standard will be BX. It’s a huge attitude shift, and we believe it’ll be a fantastic engine for substantial disruption, market differentiation, and consumer delight in the years ahead.
Moving Ahead
According to a recent report from consulting firm Accenture, firms must pivot to a “business of experience” (BX) that delivers a holistic approach to customer-centricity as customers continue to demand more from brands.
Consumers today want increased levels of convenience, responsiveness, and overall experience from businesses. They’ll now wonder why a brand can’t have as straightforward a purchasing and shipping option as Amazon, or as seamless and generous a warranty and repair process as Apple, even if it’s in a completely different space.
Aside from being among America’s largest and wealthiest firms, what those two brands have in common is a single-minded focus on customer experience (CX). While CX has typically been limited to transactions, firms like Amazon, Apple, and Salesforce have refocused their entire organization on providing excellent customer experiences.
These “business of experience” (BX) customer-led organizations beat their industry peers by six times in year-over-year profitability, according to Accenture’s research, which polled more than 1,500 executives in 21 countries.
“To put it simply, when you improve the experience, you improve lives and, as a result, you increase business,” said Brian Whipple, group chief executive of Accenture BX Interactive. BX leaders outperform CX-oriented organizations, according to Whipple.
To develop customer-centricity throughout an organization, companies must move customer experience out of the marketing department and make it a priority for the whole C-suite, including the CEO. According to Accenture’s poll, 77 percent of CEOs responded that changing how their organization interacts with customers is a top priority for driving business success. This opinion was shared throughout the executive suite, with 56 percent of COOs and 51 percent of CFOs agreeing.
“As much as our world has changed – how we shop, how and where we work, and how we engage with people – all leaders will need to modify their approach to experience and verifiable business outcomes in the year ahead,” said Gregor Barry, managing director and Accenture BX Interactive lead in Canada. “We can witness an experience renaissance taking place right in front of our eyes. Companies that live and breathe experience will have a competitive advantage.”
According to Accenture BX, companies that outperform their counterparts in terms of financial growth and business cycle endurance use the four BX techniques listed below.
1) Obsession with the customer – Top organizations are twice as likely (55 percent vs 26 percent) to believe they can translate customer data into actions, indicating that they will find customers’ unmet needs.
2) Create a novel experience – According to Accenture’s research, leading companies are more than twice as likely as their counterparts to be able to pivot to new business models that provide value and relevance to their consumers.
3) Increased accountability for experience – From the C-suite down, top companies will make experience the business of everyone in the organization. The company should operate as a single entity, with the best possible customer experience as its guiding north star.
4) Align technology, data, and human goals – A BX company may reroute data, technology, and people to new opportunities that boost performance and growth. In comparison to only 27% of their counterparts, 61% of leading organizations claimed they recognized what digital platforms they needed to harness in order to stay competitive and relevant to customers.
How can we create a business experience using BxT?
Any work experience counts as business experience. This can include any job or freelance work you’ve done, as well as contributions to family enterprises or your own company ventures. This is usually written in chronological order on a resume, with the name of the company and your function as a heading.
When individuals talk about customer experience (CX), they’re usually referring to the normal sales and marketing touchpoints along the customer journey. Consider attentive store associates as well as branded apps and websites. These are typical CX expenditures, and they have yielded returns in the form of increased revenue, new customers, and loyalty.
However, they are no longer sufficient.
Why?
Because the way we connect with brands has shifted tremendously. Digital has already changed the way we live, work, play, and shop before the epidemic. It now has a far greater impact on our actions. And many of the new consumer behaviors that are currently popular will be there for a long time, if not forever.
When compared to their industry peers, companies that create a culture centered on providing extraordinary experiences to customers, workers, and society, can increase their profits by 6x. We bolster and strategize this transformation to deliver the following impact via our Kilowott’s BxT framework.
Impacting Future-proof concepts – Kilowott’s BxT framework helps your business to identify customer’s unmet needs and translate those needs into data, which in turn, translates to tangible actions to drive business growth.
Impacting Agility and Innovation – Kilowott‘s Business Experience Transformation framework finds solutions that make your business agile and streamline them further to deliver value to your customers, thereby innovating at scale.
Impacting Experience Driven Culture – CMOs are no longer CX custodians. Each C-suite leader and employee is a stakeholder under the ambit of Business of Experience (BX). Thanks to BxT, your business unifies behind one culture, one purpose, one direction, and one methodology.
Impacting Data To Scale Further – The BxT framework leverages people, data, and technology, to build the foundations of an agile organization that reinvests its resources in creating new opportunities for performance and growth.
We are on the verge of a customer experience renaissance as a result of this tremendous transformation. Every firm must deliver great experiences and nothing less to stay ahead of the competition and keep up with change.
Many of the new consumer behaviors that are currently popular will be around for a long time, if not forever.
How do we know that traditional CX isn’t going to cut it? The numbers speak for themselves.
According to a study performed by Accenture BX, 80 percent of firms believe they provide exceptional customer service, but just 8% of their customers agree.
Pushing beyond CX has never been more important, especially with such a large gap between expectation and reality.
CX must evolve into the Business of Experience in order to narrow the gap (BX). Customer-centricity must now be the driving force throughout an organization in ways that the majority of businesses have yet to embrace. With so much at stake, businesses should consider whether their existing customer experience is adequate to meet customer expectations, provoke good feelings, and generate repeat business.
What does it take to deliver exceptional experiences?
It’s essential to be customer-focused. Every brand must adopt a new mindset in order to become a Business of Experience. That is, an organization that ensures smooth, pleasant, and simple interactions with each customer contact.
The chief marketing officer and other C-level executives should not be solely responsible for gaining experience.
To negotiate unfamiliar consumer territory, companies must make excellent customer service a priority for everyone in the organization. The chief marketing officer and other C-level executives should not be solely responsible for gaining experience. From product development to supply chain to operations and beyond, nearly every person in every area may contribute to meeting customer experience goals.
The future of customer experience is the Business of Experience
Leaders who push past outdated CX strategies and rethink the future of business—not just in terms of the products and services they sell and offer, but also in terms of the experiences they deliver—will be better prepared for the unknowns ahead. They’ll also surpass their contemporaries, resulting in long-term growth.
For more tips on how to keep pace with rapidly evolving CX strategies-and how to boost customer satisfaction and sales-dive into the full version of business experience, let’s talk.