What follows is a summary of the meeting of the IDC Digital Leadership Community (DLC) held on the 4th of March 2021. The Digital Leadership of 34 organisations from across Europe discussed the importance of Customer Experience for the CIO role.
Who owns customer experience? Is it something that concerns an entire company, or is it entirely the preserve of the marketing department? These were the key questions considered in the latest IDC DLC Connect call
The good news for businesses is that there was universal agreement in the meeting that everyone within organisations should be involved in supporting and improving customer experience – what wasn’t so clear was how this should be done and to what extent the CIO should get involved. There was also a belief that some companies did not have an understanding of what IT could bring to the party.
The role of IT
For some attendees, one of the ways in which IT could be introduced is in helping to set up audit trails so it is easier to identify parts of the customer process. With everything working towards the same ends, there is a need to establish common ground. To do this means analysing customer data and, again, there was agreement that IT departments are well placed to extract the relevant information.
For some companies, it proved to be important to find a way of recognising cultural differences in the way that services are being used. As an example, a company from the entertainment industry recognised from analysis of their data that there was a better way to engage with customers from different countries involved and adjusted their service accordingly – it’s not something that would have been spotted so easily without access to the relevant data.
In such cases, the development of AI and machine learning (ML) would be a vital part of improving customer experience and that is an area when the CIO will definitely play a part. All participants agreed that businesses were going to make greater use of analytics in the future and they would have to get their systems geared for that.
There was also definite feeling that the customer survey was reaching (or had reached) peak usefulness, the question was what is going to replace them?
The current trend to talk about “customer journeys” a was discussed and along with other elements of so-called marketing jargon. It is fair to say that the language may not have been to everyone’s taste but there was an understanding that technology would play a vital role in helping marketing departments to offer particular deals to certain customers: these could be links to specific, premium content or special deals for favoured customers.
The tools of the future
Animated discussion followed about the some of the newer tools that were entering the market, one step up from the standard analytical tools. Companies are taking analytics one stage further by understanding a new type of connection, for example between different people who are connected by similar interests or understanding when different online personas are actually the same person. This is the kind of decision making that Netflix is trying to introduce into their processes. The IDC Analysts involved in the discussions opened up the thinking with reflections on contextual segmentation and the goal of a “Segment of 1” – ultra personalisation.
This analysis of the future trends led to a discussion about what some of the bigger tech players are doing. There was a recognition that much of the detail was surrounded in mystery but a small number of tech companies were clearly identified as having plans for more sophisticated approaches to customers.
According to the participants, Google has announced it is changing its approach to cookies in targeting groups of connected users. This follows what the direction that Apple is setting, but with a spin that many consider will favour Google.
There was a definite recognition that a greater personalisation was on its way. The community members realise this is something to plan for as a CIO. TikTok was highlighted as a great example of how this could be achieved at scale and to a degree that the users did not even notice.
Despite the agreement that many traditional companies hadn’t reached this level yet it was considered important.
It’s not all about technology
Underlying all of this was an understanding that there were many non-technical issues to be faced. Regulation may change everything about the way that data could be held and what could be done with it. GDPR has already had an effect on companies, and it wasn’t clear what the future would hold as next steps.
In conclusion there was common consent that the CIO and the IT team would be vital for helping companies understand what their customers wanted – “it’s making them happy without them knowing about it.”
If IT doesn’t have some sort of input then the whole process is owned by sales and making and, as one person put it, “everything becomes a sales opportunity.”
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