“Self interest is not only the major driver in human behavior -- the desire to live a happy life -- but is also the prime mover in all customer-business relationships.” — Paul Greenberg
Customer experience is becoming the next battleground for business. How can companies use new technologies to improve the customer experience? There are technologies that are used to improve how we market, sell and service customers. The few of the strategic technologies used t improve the customer experience include CRM platform, advanced predictive analytics, mobile, chatbots and messaging apps, augment and virtual reality, artificial intelligence (AI) powered applications and the Internet of Things (IoT). Digital transformation - the application of information and technology to improve the stakeholder experience - is a journey. In the age of the connected customer, this is arguably the most important journey for businesses today. Some argue, the customer experience is the product and also the most important point of differentiation. Others will point to the importance of the workplace culture as the root for building a customer-centric organization that obsesses about delivering the very best customer experience.
Harvard research identified advanced predictive analytics and AI as essential technologies to help companies close the customer experience gap. According the research, forward-looking companies have invested in new technologies capable of consolidating and analyzing key customer data and have reorganized to be able to act on that customer insight in a more nimble way.
The Shifting CX Technology Tool Kit: AI Will Take The Lead
The most important sources of customer experience data are: 1. customer relationship management systems (75%), 2. customer satisfaction surveys (53%), 3. social media tools (43%), 4. feedback from sales and retail staff (40%), 5. email or SMS (37%), and 6. transaction data (34%).
The sources of data that are actually used for customer experience are: 1. CRM (54%), 2. customer satisfaction surveys (52%), 3. websites (50%), 4. contact center managers 4. (41%), and feedback from sales and retail staff (31%).
According to the research, the top three success factors for customer experience transformation is: 1. customer centric culture, management/leadership buy-in, and visibility into and understanding of the end customer experience.
The Most Important Factors To Delivering An Effective Customer Experience
The research also revealed that customer experience (CX) leaders are more likely to be using emerging technologies and creating personalized and omni-channel experiences. CX leaders are also more likely to use data to predict and anticipate consumer needs, understand lifetime value, and track customer advocacy. CX leaders also have a much higher sense of urgency - they believe there is no time to waste in transforming to deliver a superior customer experience.
The most important factors to delivering an effective customer experince
At the core of delivering a superior customer experience is a combination of culture, process, talent, strategy and lastly technology. Companies must adopt a customer centric point of view and design engagement opportunities from an outside-in framework. To learn more about the art and science of customer engagement and customer experience (CX), Ray Wang and I invited the bestselling author of the most popular CRM book ever written by a customer facing expert who mentors CRM, CEM and CX influencers to our weekly show DisrupTV.
Paul Greenberg is Founder and Managing Principal of The 56 Group, LLC, an advisory firm focused on CRM and customer facing strategic services. His book, CRM at the Speed of Light now in its 4th edition, is in 9 languages and been called “the bible of the CRM industry”. It has been used by more than 70 universities as a primary text. It has been used by more than 70 universities as a primary text. Greenberg’s new book, The Commonwealth of Self-Interest: Customer Engagement, Business Benefit is due out in 2018. Currently, Greenberg, known in the CRM industry as the “Godfather of CRM”, sits on the Global Advisory Board of the SEAT Consortium as the only non-sports professional of a sports business professionals organization. Greenberg was elected to CRM magazine’s CRM Hall of Fame – the first non-vendor related thought leader in its history. Greenberg also writes on customer-facing matters for CBS’s ZDNet high profile tech media property (blogs.zdnet.com/crm). He is a must follow on Twitter at @paulgreenbe.
Paul Greenberg, Founder and Managing Principal of The 56 Group
Here are the key takeaways of our conversation with Paul Greenberg (start at 40 minute mark of video):
What is the thesis behind the ‘commonwealth of self interest?’
According to Greenberg, there is one thing that all of us have in common. We all want to be happy. And, we don’t want to be miserable as we take our journeys toward happiness. In order to be happy in your life, you are self-interested and we follow a path, and more control we have on the path that you choose, the happier you are. This concept translates in business a great deal.
“While human beings are self-interested, they want to be happy individually.” — Paul Greenberg
Greenberg reminds us that as customers, we want to be happy and feel valued. We want businesses to attend to our customer’s self-interest. So how can companies deliver mass personalized service to all of their customers? Business are constrained by regulations, time, talent, budgets, and much more. But the customer does not care. To deliver exceptional customer experience, companies must be aware of their customer’s needs and deliver products and services to best meet the commonwealth of self interest.
“As of 2017, there are 7.5 billion human beings on this planet. Each of those human beings is unique in most ways. They have different hopes, dreams, stresses, desires, paths in life, and relationships, and they each think with a set of different metaphors. But there is one thing that all of us have in common: We all want to be happy. Additionally, we don't want to be miserable as we take our journeys toward happiness. We want to be happy on that journey -- and having as much control over it as humanly possible is one of the things that makes us happy. Ultimately, in the grand scheme of things and at the atomic level, that's what life is about.” — Paul Greenberg
How do you satisfy the self-interest of your customers?
Greenberg references companies that capture and analyze large amounts of customer data, ultimately consolidating a finite set of offers that meets the most amount of value for their customer population. This basket of goods consisting of products, services and special offerings is defined and delivered to purposefully meet the commonwealth’s self-interest.
“As a business you are living in an era where personalization of an individual's experience overall and interactions in specific are part of what you need to offer. But if your business scales, you will reach the point that you can't tailor an individual offer to a single customer without significant cost. Yet, you are likely going to have to, because even though you have significant number of customers -- thousands, millions -- each doesn't care that you are constrained, nor do they care about each of the other customers you have. They care about the interactions they have with you, whether they get the kind of outcomes they are looking for from you, as well as the value they want from those outcomes and from their overall experience. When trying to engage customers, there is no getting around working with and on that self-interest. Given that the communications tools available to the empowered -- even entitled customers at times -- are powerful and easy to use, businesses must take heed, strategically, not just in response to an issue or to push a program.” — Paul Greenberg
It is not about business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C), its is about people-to-people and relationships. According to Greenberg, the gaming industry is the most advanced industry in terms of delivering to the commonwealth of self interest. Greenberg references influencer marketing and then tools in the B2B space, where the goal is to find who influences sales within a business. How can companies find the key decision makers and then cultivate a long-lasting relationship? Greenberg said that very often, when price and features were equal, it was likability that made the difference. He also noted that the most important set of relationships is with people in the company that influence the key decision makers.
“Self-interest does not mean selfish.” — Paul Greenberg
“The fundamental question a business should ask itself -- and it is fundamental -- is: "How do I satisfy the self-interest of each of my (fill in the number) customers so that their experience with me is good enough to want to them to continue to do business with me?" And "What does that mean to an organization already constrained by multiple factors?" — Paul Greenberg
Fundamentally, Greenberg remind us of this very simple, but profound finding: “If it helps me, I like it!”
Customer experience is and will continue to be a key differentiator for all companies. Data is at the heart of meeting the elevated expectations of today’s connected customers. The competitive battleground is now squarely based on superior customer experience.
To learn more about optimizing the customer experience and strategic implementations of CRM and social CRM technologies, I highly recommend that read Paul Greenberg's articles. No one is better at taking complex topics and breaking them down to very simple, intuitive and powerful insights.
Paul Greenberg mentors some of the top CRM and enterprise software influencers in the world. Greenberg new book will surely be a bestseller and I cannot wait to add yet another brilliant work of Paul’s onto my existing library of his books and thought provoking articles. Greenberg is not only the Godfather of CRM, Greenberg is also the Godfather of Customer Experience.