CX is a key differentiator today. According to research by the Boston Consulting Group, companies with the highest customer satisfaction scores create twice as much shareholder value as those with average scores. Switched-on enterprises have gone a step further and realized that employee experience is paramount in delivering a positive customer experience.
Enter total experience (TX), a business strategy designed to break down silos and streamline the customer experience process. It is grounded in delivering an over-arching exceptional experience to anyone who interacts with your brand internally and externally. It is designed to complement data collection and business processes, allowing analytics to be looped back to the end user for strong value creation.
Operating CX in a silo is one of the biggest mistakes that enterprises make, resulting in bad interactions falling through the gaps and causing frustrated customers and employees. Providing a compelling and well-thought-out customer experience is directly tied to how well employees are empowered to carry out their roles and respond to customer needs in a multi-channel environment.
TX brings together distributed customer and employee channels into a single, consistent experience. Data harvested can be analyzed to identify at-risk customers who may not be looking to repurchase with you, for example, and actively influence customers with personalized experiences.
Setting up a sustainable TX strategy takes time and effort, but the payoff can be big. Gartner expects organizations that adopt a TX approach to outperform their competitors by 25% across key satisfaction metrics over the next two years for CX and EX; and by 2026, 60% of large enterprises will have adopted TX in a bid to get an edge on the competition.
Connecting customers and employees seamlessly
TX is achieved by integrating CX with employee experience (EX), user experience (UX) and multi-experience (MX). The latter is a combination of various modalities such as touch, voice and gesture to create a seamless digital experience for the customer.
A trailblazer here is Domino’s Pizza with Domino’s AnyWare. Customers can order on whatever device they prefer, including in-car Ford Sync, Alexa, Slack, smartwatch or smart tv, and they can choose voice, touch, chat, gestures or text. Whatever the device, the experience is seamless and designed to accelerate business growth.
Coca-Cola’s Freestyle machine is another example that provides personalized drink flavor combinations. A mobile app allows users to interact with the machine and note their preferences, for example, control the drink pour from their smartphones without contact and collect reward points. They can also interact with the machine when they are away from it.
This TX approach gives the customer greater control over their drink choice, while employees can access the data to see what flavors are trending, for example, and provide predictive maintenance. This data is a leading indicator of user taste and results in some flavors being produced for the mainstream market, such as cherry vanilla.
Creating a TX strategy to get ahead of the competition
Enterprises can’t afford to offer sub-par experiences in an increasingly competitive digital economy. To embrace TX successfully, you need to know where these frictions are and how to fix them.
You need to ask what needs to change to keep customers happy and loyal, what motivates employees and retains them, what technologies are creating additional efforts, and what technology platforms suit the organization’s needs.
Here are my five tips for creating an effective TX strategy:
1. Map your ideal TX journey from both the employee and the customer perspective. Audit the applications, KPIs and metrics you are using. Are they supporting that ideal journey? Identify where changes need to be made and make them.
2. TX isn’t just about people, process and technology, it is also about a change in mindset. This requires an introspective look at the organization to shape where behaviors and commitments need to alter to reflect a change in values and beliefs.
3. Ensure there is cross-functional collaboration between CX, EX, UX and MX teams who have individual and shared objectives to optimize performance and efficiencies.
4. It is important to remember that TX covers multiple disciplines and is highly fragmented. Therefore, you need to map out the different data requirements, data repositories and applications different teams require. Look at where they cross over and where workflow automation could streamline processes.
5. Ensure data is accessible across touchpoints. You can’t deliver a quality omnichannel experience when your data is trapped in silos. Neither can it be easily harvested and analyzed to continuously keep track of the experiences that users demand.
TX is here to stay
The truth is that everyone stands to gain when an enterprise adopts a TX approach – employees, customers and the business itself. Engaged, empowered employees, and satisfied, loyal customers bolster the bottom line.
TX should be top of mind now for any enterprise that is looking to grow and prosper in the digital economy.
Find out more about how Orange Business can help enhance customer experience for increased customer loyalty.
Francesca Puggioni is the Managing Director of Orange Business for Southern Europe. With an extensive international business background, she is a champion of cultural diversity in the workplace to inspire creativity and drive innovation and favors a dynamic and innovative management model. She is a great supporter of socially responsible initiatives, especially where technology can have a positive impact on society as a tool for social, economic and environmental development.