How does your company respond to these questions? How would you respond?

To adequately respond to these questions, you need a customer-company-connected-strategy that creates value by breaking the existing trade-offs between the value that a customer receives and the cost that the company incurs. The reward of a connected strategy is providing more value to the customer at a lower cost to the company.

For example, in a brick & mortar store, innovations like delivery services, augmented reality and store without checkout lines, are increasingly both customer satisfaction and efficiencies. Other example is Lift & Uber, which not only have improved the passenger experience compared with cabs but are able to do this at much lower fulfillment costs. By connecting passengers with drivers, ride-hailing companies have created a market for driving services. Furthermore, by allowing prices to vary depending on supply and demand, drivers are giving an incentive to work when and where it is most valuable. Matching supply with demand in a dynamic world requires new forms of connectivity that extend well beyond a person jumping into the streets to flag a cab or calling a grumpy dispatcher to send a taxi. Once the connectivity is put in place, resources can be used much more efficiently.

Connected strategies lead to competitive advantage. Through connectivity, you will be able to provide superior Customer Experiences at lower costs. To do so, it is important to analyze and understand in depth how you can create a connected relationship with your customers, a relationship in which isolated or episodic interactions are replaced by frequent, low-friction, and customized interactions enabled by rich data exchange.  

This understanding includes the information flow between the customer and the company that leads to the recognition of customer needs. There are different ways to shape this information flow, it might be initiated by the customer, or it might be autonomous. Once the information reaches the company, the company needs to interpret and convert it (or help the customer to convert it) into a request for a desired option. Lastly but not least, the company needs to respond to this request and fulfill the desired option in a low-friction manner. This full interaction between customer and company creates a connected Customer Experience. We propose four different types of connected Customer Experiences (CX):

1. Response-to-desire.
2. Curated offering.
3. Coach behavior.
4. Automatic execution.

Here are some examples to better understand the four types of connected CX:

• Response to desire: Amazon is a great example! Once the customer expresses a need, Amazon responds rapidly and conveniently. Disney’s Magic Band also creates a respond-to-desire experience. When a customer wants to enter a ride, pay for a burger, or open a hotel room, a swipe with the Magic Band is all that is needed.
• Curated offering: McGraw-Hill textbook. Having many interactions with each customer allows the firm to learn about the customer’s needs. With that knowledge and trust, the customer is no longer alone in finding solutions. Here the firm and the customer look for solutions jointly. McGraw-Hill does not help the student figure out the corporate valuation problem on page 247, but instead detects that the student is still struggling with the net present value calculations and asks him to repeat the exercise on page 35. Disney (Through the same Magic Band based on past experiences) knows that a customer wants to experience action rides or a specific kind of meals. With this information, they can create and proposed personalized itineraries for their customers, shoot them personalized offerings,  
• Coach behavior: Nike tries to change the behavior of customers towards what is good, smart, and healthy. Nike does not force you to go running more often, but it can help you achieve your fitness and health goals. Similarly, wearable device start vibrating if its owner has not left this office chair for the last few hours.
• Automatic execution: Health care providers intervene even before an urgent need has arisen and implanted devices that are able to take independent actions. A cardiologist is consulted the moment an arrhythmia is recorded by the heart monitor.

While these individual customer experiences already create a lot of value, once a company is able to repeat these interactions, is has the ability to substantially refine the customer experience over time. A company with a connected strategy is able to transform a series of customer experiences into a connected relationship with its customers, which is a key condition for a company to create a competitive advantage.

The ability of companies to learn from existing interactions in order to shape future interactions will allow them to create a sustainable competitive advantage and successful & sustainable business results.

We are here to help!