On the other hand, the constant accretion by the enterprise of more and more applications is badly undermining the economic viability of IT. Most IT organizations are supporting such a huge portfolio of applications where they spend 70%-80% of their limited resources just keeping the lights on. This leaves them with little in the way of resources that they can allocate to projects that really move the needle when it comes to the performance of the business.

The bottom line is that IT needs to support fewer applications—even as it increases its enablement of real-time fact-based decision-making.

And that’s where Big Data analytics delivers benefits that are often overlooked. Unlike conventional IT-driven empowerment—which has historically entailed the development of purpose-built applications that deliver information and/or collaboration in very specific ways—Big Data analytics let users quickly find and socialize information in whatever way best suits their purpose at any given time. So in addition to providing the business benefit of that particular enablement, it also relieves IT of the burden of building and supporting another app. And another. And another.

It’s easy to under-value the mitigation of this support burden. After all, IT operations has plenty of tools for automating management of the enterprise environment. And virtualization is driving down TCO for everything from servers to storage.

However, even with all these advances, the burden on IT operations continues to grow at a much faster pace than its budget. Plus, we don’t want to keep pressuring them to do more with less, anyway. What we really want is to actually give them less to do—so we can spend our IT budget where it will do the business much more good.

And with the kind of do-it-yourself information empowerment that Big Data analytics provides, that’s exactly what we can accomplish. Vivisimo lets users to find and share actionable information on an ad hoc, self-service basis. It’s an IT service that pre-empts the need for any number of IT apps. And in the long term, that relieves IT operations of one of its most problematic workloads.

Companies don’t outperform their competitors because IT hits its service level objectives or shave 5% off their storage costs. They outperform their competitors because they make really good decisions—or, perhaps more critically, because they innovate in ways that allow them to be market disrupters instead of disruptees.

Big Data analytics helps achieve both of these objectives. Yes, it enables better decision-making everywhere across the enterprise. But it also helps shift the allocation of IT spend away from the support of an unending parade of purpose-built applications. And that second benefit may be more important than many of us realize.

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Customer Parables

The product management team must be able to decipher customer signals and tell the customer’s story. We are one of the few roles that often touch a customer before they are even a customer and continue to nurture the relationship over time. Today, companies collect a slew of customer data that product managers must then connect to deduce requirements and drive product improvements. And not just requirements that impact the customer’s business needs, but their emotional needs. Research shows that 70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels. Listening to customers to validate and guide the product development process then becomes very important. This extends beyond improving existing products to forward thinking and developing products that uncover unspoken needs. So the onus is on us to get the customers involved early and often so that we implement products and solutions that impact the customers’ shopping and delivery experience.

Customer Positioning

In product management we’re often the face of the product in that we are the ones sharing the future vision in roadmap discussions, listening to customer’s future needs to help align them with our solutions, discussing issues as they relate to the product, as well as working with sales for proper positioning up front. Our customers are not just those buying products and services but also internal customers. Product management must help sales articulate the competitive nuances of the solution and position the product in the right light to get prospects excited. Engineering also needs product management to ensure the right priorities are aligned early on in the process and the right level of requirements are being made to address the customer needs. In addition, the marketing team needs assurance that they are getting regular product releases to help build brand awareness and generate excitement in the market. We are responsible for establishing product positioning for both our internal and external customers.

Customer Defects

A critical part of the product management role within the customer experience is minimizing customer defects. It’s not just about developing the best product as even with best-in-class products—usability may impact the customer experience. It’s easy also to stop at developing a superior product and move on to the next big innovation. To minimize customer churn however, we must cast the net further—product usage, upgrades or even support. This means working closely with the support and services team to determine the types of customer contacts they receive and the cause. The team must then find ways to quickly rectify the issues with a fix, upgrade or new solution with as little effect on the customer experience as possible. Managing customer defects means walking a fine line between adding new features versus fixing problems and strengthening the existing feature set.

At the end of the day, customer experience involves every touch-point including product experience. It also requires the ability to quickly access knowledge and information throughout the organization to draw insights and make quick, accurate decisions. Without quick access to information, product management loses the responsiveness our many hats require during the customer lifecycle. Mirroring the right information at the right time to meet customer needs is absolutely critical.

For those in product management, how do you impact the customer experience and what role does information access and knowledge play? 

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This acquisition is a unique opportunity for our customers, for our employees and for the Pittsburgh community. IBM and Vivisimo share a passion and dedication for engineering innovation in the service of customers. That passion will offer unique opportunities to all our employees, as no company knows how to celebrate, promote and recognize engineering and customer service talent better than IBM. That dedication will ensure that our existing customers continue to get value from our products as we keep enhancing them and introducing new innovations. We intend to double the size of our engineering team this year and just today we have opened fifteen new software engineering positions, most of them in Pittsburgh, to be filled in the next month.

I would like to thank all of you—customers, partners, investors, employees—who have made this adventure possible. I hope you’ll share my excitement with this announcement as the best part of that adventure is still ahead of us.

Jerome Pesenti
Chief Scientist & Co-Founder

Fragmented Search…

Many applications and intranet sites used by workers daily within the enterprise have some type of embedded search functionality. Some companies have made the decision to always use an application’s embedded search if it has one, and only use a standalone search product for those applications and data stores that do not have embedded search capabilities. While it sounds like a reasonable approach, it can have significant drawbacks especially for organizations with vast amounts of data and many applications.

Forcing users to access multiple data sources individually to retrieve information is inefficient. Different search sources typically support different query syntax and vary as to the quality of their search relevancy. Users will mine applications with better search capabilities more often while those applications that are lacking good search get relegated to the back burner. This dynamic means that potentially high quality information can go untapped simply because users will avoid sources that are hard to search.

A properly implemented unified search solution addresses these and many other issues. Such a platform provides a consistent interface from which to launch a search and analyze its results. What’s more, it can normalize the results returned from all of these systems.

Unified Search Interface…

Without a unified search interface, users are required to navigate multiple application-specific search interfaces and memorize several different query syntaxes. A unified search platform delivers a comprehensive query syntax geared towards a user’s search requirements. The search platform then takes on the heavy lifting of translating a standard search query into the specific format required by each underlying search engine. Users are much more likely to become power users and become proficient with a single, standardized interface and ultimately move beyond simple keyword searches to more advanced targeted searches.

In addition to offering a single, standard query syntax, the unified search platform provides a standard hierarchical navigation structure that allows for serendipitous browsing and discovery of content. Structured navigation is very valuable when the right question to ask isn’t so obvious.

Optimized Relevancy…

A unified search platform can also optimize relevance across multiple data sources. Typically, some enterprise data stores are known to have more relevant information than others. The unified search platform can automatically boost the search results of these sources, ensuring that the repositories that the organization has deemed mission critical are weighted accordingly.

In addition, the search platform can analyze the results returned from each underlying platform and re-rank them if necessary with a custom algorithm, ensuring that the quality of returned results remains consistent across multiple systems.

Auto Correlation…

Just because data and documents reside in different repositories, doesn’t mean that they aren’t related. However, it is difficult to correlate search results if users must navigate a variety of search platforms. A unified search platform solves this problem. By acting as an overlay over applications with embedded search and data repositories that have none, the engine can combine individual results in meaningful ways. This technique goes beyond just displaying search results from multiple systems into a single list. Individual related results themselves could be combined into a single search result document.

Imagine that you are searching on competitive pricing information that is contained in multiple databases and file shares of unstructured documents. A uniform search across all of these sources is a step in the right direction and will provide users with a combined list of individual relevant search results. But even if this list of results is highly relevant, users still have to sort through multiple search results and manually collate them into a meaningful, holistic answer to their initial question. A well-implemented search platform will auto-correlate related search results into a single search result based upon common meta-data or extracted entities. This capability allows meaningful related results from multiple sources, structured and unstructured, to be presented to the user as a single highly relevant aggregate search result.

The End Result…

If you want to provide your knowledge workers with the tools to unlock the value of your organization’s data silos, consider implementing a unified search solution that allows you to:

• Eliminate the daunting task of learning multiple distinct query syntaxes
• Optimize relevancy across multiple data sources
• Automatically correlate related search results
• Minimize the time workers spend searching and maximize the time they spend deriving value from organizational knowledge

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In a recent #CXO tweetchat Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, joined us as we discussed people skills in customer experience.

Here’s a summary of the discussion:

What are the traits, skills, and strategies of successful CFPs?

[@KateNasser]: Listening is number one, without it you can’t do the job at all.

[@ValaAfshar]: Perseverance is a key customer service trait—the ethos: ‘it’s our problem, until it’s no longer yours.’ Customer facing employees’ attitude is as important (perhaps more) than aptitude—a passion to serve is key.

[@RichardRShapiro]: Customer service is all about helping people CFPs should have a history of volunteering, coaching, etc.

What role do people skills play in exemplary customer service?

[@KateNasser]: People skills are the outward expression of care. It builds trust.

[@KimJosephs]: Strong people skills, in most cases, are more important than expertise on actual products or services.

[@thecxguy]: The necessary “people skills” for CFPs are patience, listening, patience, communications, and patience.

[@ValaAfshar]: Customer-centric companies recognize that front-line employees are your brand champions.

What are the major obstacles to employees’ delivery of excellent customer service?

[@KateNasser]: The major obstacles are: internal noise/baggage, rigid company procedures, un-empowerment and lack of cross-teamwork. When I train, the number one complaint of CFPs is lack of shared goals with other problem solving teams. This is a big obstacle for customer service.

[@Dschultzszumylo]: Placing the power of customer engagement in the hands of leadership and NOT in hands of the front-line, customer touch-point employees.

[@smoiz]: Bad hires—customer-facing jobs are not for everybody. Companies must hire friendly and train technical.

[@PaulSevcik]: Poor teaming = poor synergy = poor results = poor bottom line = where did my customers/job go?

[Marcio_Saito]: Excessive Scripting. Processes make for robots. Empowerment makes for people.

[@thehealthmaven]: Misaligned process communication and understanding of top line objectives

[@jeanniecw]: Bad processes and siloed organizations!

What tools, applications or steps can companies use to minimize obstacles?

[@KateNasser]: Give CFPs access to your company website. If customers can see it, so must your reps—many don’t! Shared tracking system between all who must work to solve problems and requests, is essential. Technology that integrates with shippers and suppliers so CFPs can see the big picture and give real answers to customers. Companies must also train all CFPs in people skills. Even the naturally friendly ones need time to learn more now that we are so global. A manager who empowers doesn’t control, teaches, doesn’t blame, and inspires, doesn’t sit back.

[@Joetwitloe]: A lot would already be solved if customer service is not lip service. Employees sense genuine care.

[@Michael_Lytle]: Using the right CRM solution is key to minimizing obstacles. Invest in tools and personnel that have the potential to grow and adjust to continuous improvements.

[@DelphiUSA]: Hire people who listen.

[@Jbondre]: Incentives (especially cash ones) don’t work. Let employees feel empowered to help customers.

[@Bikespoke]: If values are only written, find your nearest basket and toss it. It’s the leader who incubates the culture of the CSR.

How can you create extremely motivated employees willingly to go the extra mile to supporting the customer?

[@KateNasser]: All employees want to be recognized, acknowledged, and appreciated, SHOW them your appreciation. Start each shift with “Why are we here?” and then current challenges. Don’t skip first part! Also, quickly and directly address the non-performers. Inspired employees slowly lose heart when you coddle bad attitudes. Tap their daily learning and honor it. “What have you learned about customers that we can use to make service better?”

More tips learned from Kate Nasser:

• Let them create a team moniker. I do this when I train them. What “label” describes your attitude?
• Build recognition throughout the company of the value of CFPs. They are often considered lowly peons.
• Promote/select supervisors based on #peopleskills—not just tenure in job or technical measures.
• Companies in general overlook value of #peopleskills in promoting to management. Chang this culture!
• Stop labeling CFP jobs as “entry level.” They are the brand-face to the customer where the customer enters—not the employees.

[@BarryBirkett]: Give employees the right tools and show them how professional success is tied to success in their customer interactions.

[@ThinDifference]: Lead by example. It is essential to align actions with talk.

[@Jabaldaia]: Make them wear the shoes of others and put them to walk the hillside.

[@ManasiKakade]: Hire for the attitude, coach on the skills. Embed the company culture of valuing customer service. Reward exemplary results.

[@Jbondre]: People get satisfaction from helping people. Many customer service departments are geared to minimize cost. Give employees freedom to help, this will motivate them.

[@JoeManna]: I think problem solving and innovation is something that should be rewarded.

Throughout the tweetchat, it was apparent that knowledge plays a key role in empowering CFPs as it’s hard to communicate well if you don’t have answers. Companies must make it easy for CFPs to know and understand customer needs with insights from customer data as it also helps close deals. Thirty-three percent (33%) of unsuccessful deals could have been won if the salesperson had been better informed. Providing information means having the right processes and the right tools. In my experience, poor systems is one of the biggest obstacles to information access. Technology can’t answer a question but it definitely can prevent an answer! At the end of the day, companies must give CFPS a holistic view of the customer so they can know past interactions and preferences and hold intelligent conversations.

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So this blog post is number two in a series on big data. My plan is to progress from general principles to specifics:

• Part 1 defined the nature and dimensions of “big data,” as well as the relative strengths of the available tools currently used to address big data, with special emphasis on the role that search can fulfill.
• In Part 2 (which you are reading today), I’m getting more specific and will identify some scenarios for deploying enterprise search as part of the big data ecosystem.
• In Part 3 and beyond, I will discuss uses of enterprise search to generate business value from big data in applications such as national security, legal discovery, social network analysis, customer experience management and revenue assurance—what we at Vivisimo call “big data optimization.”

If I may take a moment to define “enterprise search,” I am referring to a comprehensive indexing platform or service with the capability to index content from a variety of different sources and to provide a single point of access for search and discovery. This is a minimalist definition, because a full-featured enterprise search platform like Vivisimo’s Velocity Platform offers many more capabilities, from deep information discovery and collaboration features that are very obvious to end users, to the not-so-obvious but critical back-end capabilities such as entity extraction, security, scalability and fault tolerance. Velocity can also serve as a platform for search-based applications in which the central role of search is not immediately apparent to the end user, but defines the unique capabilities and business value of the application.

Four Scenarios
These scenarios lay the foundation for generating business value from big data. Put another way, they define the architecture of potential search-based applications that leverage big data. A few themes run across all of these scenarios:

• Truly robust enterprise search adds a real-time element to the predominantly batch-oriented world of big data processing

• The ability to access multiple different data sources (the “variability” dimension discussed in my previous post) greatly expands the scope of possibilities for exploiting big data

• Search is accessible and usable to end users, whereas the typical hands-on big data user is a data scientist

So without further ado, I’ll walk through our four scenarios for enterprise search deployed as part of the big data ecosystem.

1)  Indexing and Fusion of Big Data
In this scenario, the search platform indexes content that is resident in a big data repository or “holding area” such as Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). As discussed in my earlier post, such information is typically under control of data scientists and not easily accessible to end users. Furthermore, the connections and relationships to information in other enterprise systems are not always apparent in the isolation of a big data laboratory. This is where enterprise search can step in by enabling search that goes across both the big data repository and other organizational information. This fusion of enterprise application data and data that has been placed in the big data lab can provide a unique view and insights that would not otherwise be apparent to both the analyst and the everyday user.

2)  Indexing and Search of Big Data Analytics
Most of the hard work done in the typical big data lab is designed to drive analytics. A single project could produce an extremely large number of results “packages” that are stored in individual files, aggregated into a single large file, or stored as database records. Future navigation and recall of these results, either individually or in related sets, can be problematic. If they are viewed once and allowed to languish on a file server somewhere, future value may be lost. What if we were to index these analytic products and make them accessible to a broader range of users, over time? Results from analytics can also of course be merged with results from other supported data sources, providing a critical fusion function for deeper insight into the business or mission context of the analysis.

3)  Access and Loading of Content from Diverse Data Sources
The typical big data deployment needs to be “fed” data from wherever it is generated or collected. This step usually involves creation of custom data adapters. A robust enterprise search platform such as Vivisimo’s Velocity has the ability to collect data from a wide range of external systems, transform it into a format that is useful for merging with other data, and passed along for processing in a big data project. This process may bypass the normal indexing step, in which case the search platform is providing something similar to an “extract, transform and load” function.

4)  Bulk Processing and Conversion of Extremely Large Data Sets
An enterprise search system can use the distributed batch processing capabilities of a big data framework such as Hadoop and MapReduce to perform bulk processing tasks such as entity extraction and document conversion against extremely large data sets. In this use case, the native analysis, conversion and metadata extraction processes of the search platform are either deployed within MapReduce or replaced with equivalent functions. The search system could then then ingest the output of these processes and pass it along to the indexing stage of the pipeline. This is an attractive option for truly massive data sets, and where organizations already have invested in big data processing infrastructure to leverage commodity hardware for massively parallel processing.

Next Step
In a future post, I’ll explore the business side of big data optimization, identifying applications and business solutions that can be deployed using these four scenarios, plus any that are introduced in future discussions.

Are you using search as part of your big data project, or do you plan to do so? What is the deployment architecture? How does search integrate with your other big data infrastructure? What business problems do you propose to solve?

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My financial background blended with my customer experience knowledge and helps me attribute specific value to their business problems. In my role I lead processes for:

• Trends identified through reporting that can be applied to solve real business issues
• Customer-focused, customer-lead benchmarks and measurements against goals with a definable, measurable ROI attached
• Honest sales processes that practice what they preach and are not afraid to walk away from a situation if value cannot be delivered

I am not saying it is easy. In a solution game where by its very definition we are focused on ‘soft dollar impacts’ like saving time, searching for information, finding what we need fast versus finding hard ROI examples and defining them credibly is a challenge. However, when you find that right situation—when the need is real, when the customer knows they have a need and believes in the measurement of improvement—it is then that you know you truly enjoy what you do and a ‘win-win’ isn’t just a cliché.

Most often the value of search-based success is in findability. Companies, especially companies that have annual revenues exceeding a billion per year, already have the answers—they simply cannot find them. The problem may be cultural more than technical; the very DNA of the organization is often a main reason the right answer can’t find their customer, but with the right technology in place, with the best practices-based processes around it, with good people focused at the target of improvement, findability can be turned from a liability into an asset.

In proving the value of finadability in a customer experience setting, a finance-based mind finds its playground. Attributes of what drives a company to succeed are everywhere in this Rubix cube of possibilities, such as:

• Talking to the front lines that deal with the customer’s customer. What are their needs? How do you solve what they are looking for? What gets in your way to finding the right answers for them?
• Measuring the impact of what that improvement may look like. What if you held them on the phone for an extra one minute to present an add-on upsell? What if the total time of the call reduced, even with this extra revenue opportunity?
• Enabling a team to meet its goals, even beyond what they imagine can be done. Mobile access to real-time information about an account in the hands of a sales person as they walk into an appointment ensures fewer surprises—and maybe just one additional sale per year, per Rep—which has a game changing impact.

It isn’t hard for any executive to picture these improvements. The magic is when it is translated into bottom line impact, validated in conjunction with their teams, their customers, and their trusted internal advisors up front. When it’s followed-up on, vetted, measured, re-estimated, and then included in the budget for the following year based on quantifiable results, the magic heightens.

The intersection of finance-type metrics with explosive sales-based results is the intersection where value lives. This is the thing that excites any results-driven CFO and what led me to customer experience management and thus began my journey.

Do these measurements align with your own strategic planning? Does your organization use other metrics to justify spend on the customer experience?

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Challenge: Finding Market Insights On-Demand

At my first stop when I walked through the doors, there was a palpable energy as teams went about their daily tasks. At first glance all seemed well, moving like a well-oiled machine. However, when I sat down with the executive staff, I got a clearer picture of the intricacies of a consumer packaged goods company (CPG). The biggest issues are being that their strategic account managers and field marketing teams are struggling to find the market insights they need while meeting with key grocery chains and distributors.

The CPG has a team of twenty that focus solely on managing one of the largest retailers. With such a large and dispersed team, the challenge is keeping the entire team in sync with one another—especially when they’re on the road. At all times they needed to know what pitches being shared, shopper insights, as well as ensure all the retailer’s locations were given the same messaging and customer experience.

I was pleased to see the opportunity for our solution to improve access to their consumer insights and research and to increase productivity for all employees. Information access and visibility also promoted self-service to the research content for the marketing and sales team. Information transparency will also foster greater collaboration and findability to reduce duplicate efforts and increase productivity across the entire company.

We believe we can help our CPG client optimize information, improve customer experience and:

• Ramp employees up quickly as employees rotate products and departments roughly every 3 years
• Empower the field to be more self-sufficient and have qualified conversations with customers
• Give executives greater visibility and efficiency—reducing their email and time spent hunting for information

Challenge: Employee Retention

My next visit was decidedly different—their business model was much more complex. As a prominent medical equipment manufacturer their processes were very precise and methodical. Their biggest challenge was high retention among their employees which made them experts but also makes it challenging to update the team on the latest information as well as expand over time. As such, their primary goal focused on simplifying their processes and empowering their internal customer. By empowering their employees our client improves the customer experience they deliver while reducing overall support costs.

As part of their strategy, this medical equipment manufacturer is attempting to better manage their internal knowledge and expose the right information at the right time to their own customers. They’re also looking to make it easier for customer-facing professionals (CFPs) to identify experts thus reducing the amount of time they take to find the right answers to customer questions. It was also interesting to see their plans for optimizing and leveraging information to deflect calls through self-service. Enabling customers to answer their own questions lowers the calls coming in to their support staff. I believe our Customer eXperience Optimization (CXO) application can give agents a 360º view of both their products and customers with a comprehensive view of customers from sales, accounts receivable and support. By improving knowledge share, they are preserving the enthusiasm of call center agents and improving customer satisfaction.

How about you? What challenges are you facing around customer service and sales enablement? How are you using or planning to use information to improve processes within your business environment?

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Engaged customers don’t just buy your company’s products but also identify at some deeper level, sometimes reflected in “liking” your Facebook page, participating in online forums and displaying your company’s logo. In short, they are glad to be associated with your company and identify with its image. They also sometimes use your products in interesting and creative ways, write and talk about them, and provide feedback that can lead to innovation and improvement. And along the way, they tend to influence others to become your customers as well. It’s no mistake that “gamification”—the use of game techniques and mechanics to enhance non-game activities—has become an area of intense interest for engaging both employees and customers.

The second topic I want to call out is what Gartner is calling the “Nexus.” No, it’s not another spy novel or video game. It’s the nexus of forces that include social media, cloud computing, mobile, and abundant information that are transforming the way we live and work. We see it in the growing use of media tablets, mobile applications, “consumerization,” and various kinds of context-aware computing. The nexus isn’t something that organizations will be able to put on a list of things to address next year or the following year. Because each of the four forces tends to increase the pace of the others, there is a self-propelling effect at work that is forcing organizations to adopt things like tablet computing, and to deal with things like big data whether they are ready or not. Forward-looking companies are getting ahead of the trend by adopting programs like IBM’s BYOD—short for Bring Your Own Device—in which the company announced a phased approach to support its employees’ use of the devices and apps of their choice as a way to harness creativity and increase productivity rather than resist the inevitable.

While soaking up some of these ideas and networking with other conference attendees, I was leveraging mobile technology myself so I could participate remotely in planning the launch of an app that truly embodies the nexus. Vivisimo’s CXO Mobile (announced on March 26^th) harnesses the forces of the nexus to provide mobile access for customer-facing professionals (CFPs) to all of the information they need to deliver an outstanding customer experience from virtually anywhere. Never again should a sales rep have to walk into a meeting wondering whether their customer’s critical support case has been solved. Never again should a mobile service professional have to stop in a coffee shop to open her laptop and look up a customer in the CRM system to find out what products they have purchased, or to update an entire team with information from the field. CXO Mobile gives these individuals real-time access awareness and collaboration capabilities far beyond the walls of their offices or cubicles, in the palm of their hand.

With the power of CXO on a mobile device, a customer-facing professional can hold in their hand access to systems as diverse and powerful as CRM, content management, supply chain management, ERP, business intelligence and more, all fused in a contextually-relevant way that gives them a better view of their customers and partners. Rather than burying them in data, CXO Mobile pushes the right information and engagement power “to the edge” to enable mobile workers to accomplish more without anchoring themselves to a desk. It’s just one example of how the forces of the nexus can be harnessed to make our personal and professional lives more engaged, focused and productive rather than adding complexity and distraction.

How is your organization dealing with the “Nexus?” Is it increasing or decreasing levels of engagement for your employees and customers? Does your mobile strategy go beyond simple e-mail and communications to empower employees to be more productive when they’re outside the office?

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No Limits…

To really make customer experience impact and be an integral part of our brand strategy, it needs to be more than what we say, but what we do. And even then more than what we do, but who we are. It shouldn’t stop in the marketing department, or on the sales floor. We must take the limits off of our brand strategy and look at every aspect of the customer experience, every touch-point, every interaction. Does the image we exude on our website compare to our call center? Moreover, we need to look at the seemingly minute facets like our SOWs, and our training classes—they all should align with the brand image and experience we want to shape. We expect sales to know everything about the customers while we have email campaigns addressing Mr. Brown, but alas the recipient is female. According to Avanade, “Only 14% of respondents think that companies live up to the customer service promised,” we have a long way to go.

No, Not Just the Shoes…

I read the transcript of all our Customer eXperience Optimization (#CXO) Tweetchats. Though overused and clichéd, many times we leave with the overarching reminder to “walk in the customer’s shoes.” For customer experience to be critical to branding, I’d advocate that we elevate customer intimacy and not just walk in their shoes, but live in them—and not just their shoes—their skin. When we see and feel the experience from their perspective we can create a much more powerful and definitive brand strategy. It humanizes the way we communicate with our customers and helps us improve the processes and channels we devise. The customer then drives the conversations as we ignore corporate speak in favor of their language—a language we’re familiar with because we’ve lived the customer journey. 

No Boxes Allowed…

Competition today is intense requiring that we surpass thinking outside the box to crushing the box all together. We must continuously push ourselves and our team to think of unique ways to delight our customers—unexpected delight. By creating innovative programs aligned with customer needs, we can create memorable experiences that build our brand. Furthermore, leveraging innovative technology to simplify and streamline processes helps keep our companies agile. Solutions like CXO Mobile keep companies on pace with the shift in the market and the “52% of information workers that use three or more mobile devices to perform their jobs.” With CXO Mobile, Customer Facing Professionals (CFPs) have customer insight anywhere, enabling them to build customer trust, loyalty and improve our brand stickiness.

No Gazing…

A critical component of using customer experience to create brand strategy is focus. Marketers need to hone in on the factors that create a consistently memorable experience and maintain these at every touch-point, with every customer, with every interaction. One failed moment could tarnish the entire experience and brand image. While we’re focused on the customer experience we must maintain the right perspective and see the experience form our customer’s point of view.

As you embrace customer experience as an integral part of your branding strategy, what steps are you taking to ensure success?

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