How to help your business fine tune its CX

Customer experience (CX) is becoming more and more important every day, especially in a world where every user is a micro-influencer to his or her personal network.

Take your own life for example, whether as the owner of your SME or as a private individual, you share your good and bad experiences with your favorite brands through words, pictures, and videos, on social media platforms. And it impacts the brand, often directly.

So, when it comes to managing your own brand, you must focus on delivering the best CX you possibly can, and make sure you benchmark to industry leaders and not your peers. Your customers will compare you to the best experience they get, not to your competitors.

In fact, according to the recent Adobe Digital Trends Report, businesses that prioritized CX significantly outperform competitors.

The report surveyed 13,000 marketing, creative, and technology professionals in the US, APAC, and EMEA to look at the most significant trends impacting digital strategies in the short term. It found that 45 percent of those surveyed rank CX as one of the three most important priorities for the year ahead.

According to Adobe Senior Marketing Director John Watton:

Digital means that customers now have more power to engage with brands on their own terms. This has changed the way companies interact with their customers, who expect great experiences as standard. For businesses that put the customer at the center of everything they do, it’s clear the investments are paying off.

According to the report, here are some of the key focus areas to build a great CX:

Cross-collaboration

Designing and implementing a great customer experience isn’t just the responsibility of your marketing division.

The Adobe study found that companies that get their creative, content, and web teams to collaborate with their marketing team for their CX are twice as likely to exceed their business goals.

Top performing companies were also four-times as likely to have invested in a highly-integrated, cloud-based technology stack that enables them to have a more comprehensive view of the full customer lifecycle, from acquisition to retention.

#CustomerService is an #ATTITUDE
not a department!#service #customersupport #loyalty #brand #customerexperience pic.twitter.com/YOQmzYHXwv

— Real Marsha Wright| Brand Influencer (@marshawright) February 22, 2018

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming a driver of customer experience. Think of Netflix’s AI-driven recommendation engine and the impact it has on your experience while leisurely surfing different genres after dinner.

Adobe’s study found that companies using AI tools to create real-time personalized experiences for customers are 50 percent more likely to significantly exceed their business goal.

The Role Artificial Intelligence in Improving Customer Experience
We have all heard or read a lot about artificial intelligence. It is a controversial topic with many fearing that it may result in…#Artificial_Intelligencehttps://t.co/A4US8jbI8Z

— SwissCognitive – The Global AI Hub (@SwissCognitive) February 25, 2018

Skills gap

New technologies are exciting but they make it difficult for businesses to find the right talent to help incorporate and assimilate them into their business.

About 40 percent of those surveyed by Adobe said they lacked the knowledge of AI or resources required to implement an AI-driven CX strategy, and also agreed that they lack the talent required to engineer good experiences.

India to plug AI talent gap with education initiatives https://t.co/CLOo20hjIE #IoT #MachineLearning pic.twitter.com/EOE59HxK2o

— Study International (@Study_INTNL) February 22, 2018