Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 33 | Page 32

business ‘‘ TALKING //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// help establish benchmarks that allow constant improvement across end-to- end CX activities. 4. Intelligence: Every great building has a strong foundation. For great CX, the foundation is an intelligent core that can process and analyse vast amounts of O and X data, produce actionable insights and provide the agility needed to act on the insights. We call this part of the intelligent enterprise strategy, a new approach to business that allows organisations to rapidly transform data into insight and feed process automation, innovation and optimal experiences. 5. Automation: The pace and sheer complexity of the modern business environment has made it impossible to rely solely on manual processes to ensure CX – or business – success. With an intelligent core in place, many back-office operations can be automated to provide greater consistency in the customer experience and freeing up valuable internal resources to focus on more high- value, customer-facing activities. Despite organisations’ best intentions, some CX projects simply don’t deliver on their promise and fail to drive business success. One of the common pitfalls is a lack of top-level buy-in for CX strategies – if an organisation’s top executives are not driving the CX strategy by example, there may be a lack of engagement across the organisation and the strategy will inevitably fail. How do different customers experience your products and services? What are their most important considerations when choosing to work with you? What are customers saying about you and the experience you offer? Having quantifiable data to determine benchmarks eases the process of developing specific strategies and interventions to address shortcomings or further enhance CX. Step 3: Partnership The sheer size of large enterprises’ X and O data sets and the mix of technologies needed to make sense of it all can add complexity to an already difficult business environment. Having a partner that is experienced in applying technology in the service of greater customer experiences can reduce time-to- value and help you understand how new technologies such as AI could support and enhance CX activities. Step 4: Strategy With the correct data and partners in place, organisations need to develop a clear CX strategy that looks at key milestones, objectives and desired outcomes. By linking CX measurement to business value, organisations also create a more clear CX value proposition to executives and other shareholders, which according to PwC, increases accountability for CX success from the top down. Step 5: Test, Refine Once the CX strategy is implemented, organisations need to utilise their technology investment to constantly measure, test and refine various aspects of the CX strategy. If you’ve introduced a new payment process, for example, data should indicate how customers are experiencing it, what they enjoy and what they don’t, and where to make changes to ensure a consistently positive customer experience. Step 6: Act All the data and insight in the world are for nought if organisational leaders are unable to act on them. Ensure you have an open line of communication with customers to gain a clear view over the impact of your CX strategy and act quickly to fix issues or enhance low-performing elements. n What can organisations do to increase the chances of success for their CX efforts? Six steps to building a more CX- friendly business Step 1: Data The first step is to ensure the organisation can collect and analyse customer data and then start building more accurate behavioural models. Knowing what individual customers need and want enables organisations to adapt their offering in ways that enhance the customer experience across multiple steps in the customer journey. Step 2: Benchmarking There’s no way to measure improvements in CX without first establishing benchmarks. 32 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com