All this while many people including myself have been writing Digital Transformation and its business outcome which primarily focusing on Customer Experiences (CX). CX is nothing new but it became more prominent when the disruptors hit the market.
Disruptors or even customer’s obsessed companies like Amazon, Netflix, Airbnb, and many more are some of the companies that revolutionize the way people rely on technologies to gain consumer’s experiences. Whether we like it or not, we need to rely on digital technologies to improve our business model. It is the era of digital transformation where companies need to focus on consumers’ behaviours, lifestyles, and habits. Digital Transformation is a total paradigm shift for business to reshape their business model.
Today, there are many online platforms in the marketplace, some are digitalized and some are still on the same traditional operating model. Consumers becoming more mature as they use the services rendered by the service provider. Having said that, how do one company able to continuously meet and improve to meet consumer’s demands? Let me share three scenarios based on my personal experiences using online shopping platforms;
Platform no. 1
This is still my go-to platform as I have experienced and assured of their services. There were once, I received a malfunctioning product and the seller refused to honour the replacement. The customer service attended to me promptly throughout the entire journey via live chats and emails. The online provider manages the seller directly and they even asked me whether I like them to take up further action with the seller? At the same time, they honoured my dissatisfaction and refunded me the payment without any hassle.
Platform no. 2
Not my preferred platform and I only visit this platform when I could not find the specific product from the others. However, I noticed something from this online platform. They will always send an email to follow up on the shopping experiences with them. I responded once when I was pretty upset with the long-delayed shipment of the product. They called me immediately to understand my dissatisfaction. This shows that the platform provider is accountable and concern over the entire consumer’s experiences even they don’t own the products sold through their platform.
Platform no. 3
I have eliminated this platform provider, why? This is due to recent experiences I had with them. Although the Customer Service (CS) were prompt with their replies to my emails, however, I am more concerned about the overall service. I purchased a fitness watch that comes with two years warranty. Unfortunately, the product became malfunction after several months. I reported to the online service provider they have the warranty stamp on their receipt. However, they insisted that I should contact the seller directly. To my dismay, I could not reach the seller after many rounds of communications, therefore, I have no alternative to revert to the platform provider. During the back and forth communications with the CS, they will send me an email to rate their service. To date, I refused to respond as it only gauges the user experiences with the Customer Service representative but not the entire holistic services provided by the online provider.
What are the differences between the three providers? Customer Experiences (CX) is different from Customer Satisfaction or Customer Success. In Digital Transformation, it is a business model that focuses on overall customer experiences and not individual touch-point; it is the holistic service.
We must know that customer’s behaviours have changed, they became more mature. They were no longer just satisfied with one single touch-point. Service Providers became the Single Point of Contact (SPOC) from the moment they engage with consumers.
Let me share here in a better light. As the owner of the service platform, you are accountable and responsible for the customer’s experiences. But being Accountable and Responsible serve different purposes. Let me elaborate here based on the Responsible Assignment Matrix (RACI). This matrix is commonly used by project managers to define the roles for one to complete the tasks or deliverables. But I want to use this analogy as to why the service provider has ownership of the entire service model. Let me distinguish the below two roles,
- Accountable is the person or organization that has the ownership and authority to make a decision when a thing goes wrong. This is their role to own the entire lifecycle of the customer’s journey in this aspect.
- Responsible is the person or organization who will only execute the assigned task or processes. In the instances with the 3rd platform provider, their business model only shows they are responsible for one single-touch point.
Therefore, based on the above scenarios, CX is all about being accountable throughout every aspect of the engagement. Therefore, they are accountable from the moment they engage with the consumer.
Most companies today are equipped with an advanced Quality Management System (QMS) to help them with proactive improvement plans however, what puzzled me is how one can improve the direct back end operations until I read “Moving beyond CX to the Business Experiences (BX)” by Accenture.
It now makes more sense to me as BX will resolve human needs. BX focuses beyond the direct back-end processes. It covers the entire organization’s ecosystem, the point from the interaction channel to operating model, the front-end technologies, product and services, employee experiences, business and delivery model; the marketing sales, CRM, and other services function.
Why do I agree with BX need to be in place?
CX will look into the external factor whereas; BX focuses primarily on the entire internal business eco-system, something that very few organizations measure today.
CX will reflect on Marketing and Operation performances however, it takes more to meet customer’s experiences. It is the entire business ecosystem as it revolves around the entire organization’s resources from the back end operations to sales, marketing, finance, logistic, and even human resources. As such, to meet CX one must be able to ensure the entire supply chain within the business ecosystem work collaboratively.
Let me give you another scenario as to why BX is critical and move forward with measurement.
Early last month, I received my replaced credit card and it took almost a month for the bank’s CS to rectify the One Time Pin (OTP) issue. I guess I spoke to more than five Customer Service Officers (CSO) and each time they repeated the same first preliminarily checked while a few of their CSOs refused to take up the issue. After having been persistent with my complaint, finally one of them manage to escalate the issue however, it is beyond his capacity to resolve the problem. Why?
Perhaps, having me being in Digital and Business IT, I somehow was trained to think beyond the entire ecosystem. I suspect the issue is beyond the front end system, it could be an issue with the back end system or external gateway. This issue is definitely beyond the CSO empowerment and back end operations as it revolves around multiple escalations and parties to resolve it. As such, who actually owns or is accountable for this problem? Unfortunately, this B2C business hence is more complicated with the B2B business model and support.
Therefore, Business of Experience (BX) came into the picture. It now makes more sense to me, and with this; the organization will have the business leaders’ prioritize their digital transformation journey.. But how do one measure BX today? Hope the next episode we have more visibility as to how this entire business ecosystem can work collaboratively to enhance the Customer Experiences and its journey.
“LEAD Digital, THINK Digital, GOVERN Digital”
