At the roundtable, the passion for customer experience came across from everyone, loud and clear. There were plenty of great statistics in there, too; I love stats. I wrote down seven things during the discussion, and these are my key takeaways.
Humans: We discussed the evolution of humans and how technology has to be intuitive. I think there is a link between humans and smart automation. Certainly, natural language processing and understanding sentiments in emails and messages is an area of investment and innovation. As another classic example, though, you want to know where your parcel is on its journey to your door. It’s a commonly asked, simple question that can be solved by automation. Tracking technology means that humans are not needed, but there are plenty of other things that do require human input and touch.
Trust: Someone mentioned trust. And a few people had different definitions of trust, but the two words I took away, linked to developing consumer trust and loyalty, were security and integrity.
The ecommerce journey: This was another subject. There was a great stat on ecommerce growth: the pandemic spurred a 130% increase in ecommerce adoption. But looking at the ecommerce journey is so important, especially when working out where to remove friction.
Experimentation: Someone said: “Have a go and try digital transformation.” I love that. I attended an Amazon Web Services (AWS) summit a few years ago, and despite that digital transformation had been around for a long time, thousands of people there were wondering where to start. The speaker on stage, from AWS, said: “Just have a go, just have a go, pick your burning platform and just have a go.” In many ways, that’s still going on, which is great to hear.
Brand connection and value exchange: Together these make a potent combination. There has to be something for the customer in return for their data.
The use of data: This final point wraps the session up nicely. Collecting data in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but it has to have a context in terms of how an organisation will use the data. That’s the essential bit. Then there is the integration of that data in the customer journey. For example, we all get driven mad if we are on an interactive voice response for 20 minutes and then, having filled out the information, the human customer support person asks us the same questions.
