Digital can be used as a growth engine to differentiate your brand in the experience economy.

Fundamentally, customers do not want choice; they just want exactly what they want; which is eliminate a problem, a pain, or a challenge they face. However, this is not enough anymore, they also want to add-up value to their business; either economical, functional, social, emotional, epistemic, or conditional, while living an exceptional customer experience in the whole journey.

It is essential to recognize that value is not just price. Value is a much richer concept that is perceived by the customers in any interaction of their journey, is what they are experiencing as customers (Customer Experience), no matter the channel they decide to use. Fundamentally, the notion of customer value is basic and relatively simple to understand; however, implementing this concept can prove to be tremendously challenging. It is a challenge because customer value is highly dynamic and can change for a variety of reasons, including: The business may change elements that are important to the customer value calculation, customers’ preferences and perceptions may change over time, and competitors may change what they offer to customers. One author states that the challenge is to “understand the ever-changing customer needs and innovate to gratify those needs - Sudhakar Balachandran, “The Customer Centricity Culture: Drivers for Sustainable Profit”.

The simple version of the concept of customer value is that individuals evaluate the perceived benefits of some product or service and then compare that with their perceived cost of acquiring that product or service. If the benefits outweigh the cost, the product or the service is then seen as attractive.

Customer Value = Perceived Benefits − Perceived Cost.

We are living the biggest shift in customer behavior in more than a generation and in the last decade. Rocket fuel has been added by the growth of e-commerce, mobile internet, and social media. It’s also gone together with what some have called the death of brand loyalty, as customers churn more frequently than ever, driven by a need for experimentation, a technology landscape that makes switching easier than ever. More than 61% of people say brand relationships are no longer a key factor in their purchase decisions.

It is complicated managing the customer experience in an omnichannel world. We all know that customer experience is about understanding the moments that matter most to your customers and turning those interactions into opportunities to delight and exceed expectations. While delivering world-class customer experience has never been easy, it’s something that has become even more complex with advances in technology. First, there was the switch to online and e-commerce. Then came social media and mobile. Now new channels such as voice-activated devices and IoT-enabled devices are adding even more complexity when it comes to managing the experience for your customers. For many organizations, these channels remain siloed; you have your in-store experience, contact center, website, apps, and social media, and in many cases each one is managed by different teams and departments in the business.

But think about your organization from a customer’s point of view, and the channel itself is almost irrelevant. Customers now jump effortlessly between channels as they look to complete a task; for example, they may research a product on their mobile, buy it on their desktop and then visit the store or call a contact center when they need support.

Each interaction shapes their view of the brand, and customers expect to receive value in what they are looking for every time they interact with your company. Should an experience fail to meet their expectations on any one channel, it impacts not just their perception of that channel, but the brand as a whole. Brands must break down those silos and think about the complete customer journey, both on- and offline to improve the experience for their customers. There is an opportunity in the challenge if we achieve to manage how to use digital to master customer experience. To accomplish it, there is a journey to walk by:

1. How good is your customer service?
2. Are you a customer driven company?
3. Do you really understand your customers and markets?
4. Do you really understand your customers’ journeys?
5. Are you really committed to deliver an exceptional customer experience?
6. How mature is the customer experience you deliver?
7. Is you company ready to personalize the customer experience?
8. Do your customers perceive you deliver value to them?
9. How do you measure the value you are delivering to your customers?

If you rank your company with a high score or excel in all these questions, you already have one of the key drivers and one of the essential building blocks for sustainable success. If not, it is never late to begin!

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