Customers expect better and better customer experience (CX) the longer they choose to do business with you, courtesy of the Internet of Things (IoT).
Is your company delivering sustainable CX?
Today’s connected devices, equipment and machinery and interactive platforms set a new benchmark for customer expectations during their lifecycle journey with your organization.
Customers anticipate that products, equipment and service will not only remain as good as the first day they were deployed. Rather, customers expect products, equipment and service to become better and better throughout the product / equipment lifecycle.
Is your organization delivering on customer expectations of a better and better customer experience?
Customers are connected to the Internet of Things. So are their Experiences with your Organization.
Recent Gartner research showcased the impact of the Internet of Things on how businesses make decisions. In 2011, only 36% of businesses polled utilized customer experience when making decisions, including decisions to buy from your organization. Fast forward to 2016. Now 89% of organizations report leveraging CX with your organization when making decisions. A huge increase.
What was going on between 2011 and 2016, you ask?
In Germany in 2011, digital technology began to heavily impact business models for energy and manufacturing sectors as well as the way people worked. They called this phenomenon the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Industry 4.0.
By 2013, GE named the digitally expanding, sensor influenced manufacturing ecosystem the Industrial Internet of Things.
The term Industry 4.0 refers to the combination of several major innovations in digital technology, all coming to maturity right now, all poised to transform the energy and manufacturing sectors. These technologies include advanced robotics and artificial intelligence; sophisticated sensors; cloud computing; the Internet of Things; data capture and analytics; digital fabrication (including 3D printing); software-as-a-service and other new marketing models; smartphones and other mobile devices; platforms that use algorithms to direct motor vehicles (including navigation tools, ride-sharing apps, delivery and ride services, and autonomous vehicles); and the embedding of all these elements in an interoperable global value chain, shared by many companies from many countries.
No matter what type of product or service you provide, customers always expect to be on the receiving end of advances in updates, upgrades, training, education and your expertise.
How your organization delivers and measures customer experience becomes part of how customers interface with you each day.
Is your organization only status-quo surveying or actually delivering better and better Customer Experience?
Are you one of the many organizations that periodically measure customer experience via surveys? If so, you potentially remain disconnected from your customer’s heartbeat. You are stuck in pre-2011, pre- Internet of Things mindset.
First of all, to whom do you send surveys? The majority of business leaders I’ve spoken with report that their organizations send quarterly surveys only to decision makers and managers: the people authorizing initial and repeat purchase. These individuals represent only half of the customer experience heartbeat of an organization.
Also, are you status quo focused? What actions does your organization take based on CX survey results? When your organization is transactionally and relationally-focused, you react to negative customer feedback once you “hear” about it. Shouldn’t your organization consider becoming proactive and prevention focused, for starters, when providing better and better customer experience?
In addition, survey results may represent survey bias. When you limit surveys to decision makers and managers, you risk non-representative responses. These super busy executives may provide generic “one size fits all” survey responses simply to get your CX survey off their To-Do list.
Finally, consider the value of focusing on the End User Journey. End users drive the long-term relevancy and value derived from your products, software and equipment, post sale. They interact with your company daily and represent the true heartbeat of your client’s organization.
In today’s connected, digital and industrial Internet of Things ecosystem, delivering better and better Customer Experience is a function of capturing and weighing all of the voices of end users, influencers and decision makers.
How can your organization deliver continuously, better and better customer experience when you only measure CX periodically?
Connect a better and better customer experience strategy to your customer’s long term success.
A better and better customer experience strategy is translational and transformational. Your organization focuses on how doing business with your company impacts client growth, expansion and sustainability.
Many leaders talk about “sticking close to their customers.” Re-consider just what this phrase “looks like” in today’s continuously changing, dynamic industrial Internet of Things ecosystem.
Your company’s connected software and equipment interfaces provide end users with real-time, streaming data and analytics interfaces. Similarly, new customer experience platforms allow you to remain similarly connected to your customers real-time rather than periodically.
Connect the two. Continuously. Seamlessly.
Create a dynamic program for capturing real-time customer experience feedback. Allow your organization to become co-invested in your customer’s success. That strategy leads to product, service and software innovation which contributes to better and better customer experience and long term customer success.
Does your organization currently focus on delivering better and better customer experience, or only fixing things when they are reported to be broken?
Babette Ten Haken is a writes, speaks and coaches about customer success for customer retention. She traverses the interface between human capital strategy for hiring and developing collaborative technical and non-technical teams. She serves manufacturing, IT and engineering intensive companies. Babette’s playbook of technical / non-technical collaboration hacks, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.
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