Next frontier of excellence in Customer Experience – Extreme Personalization

Customer experience is one of the things which is keeping C suite executives awake in the night. As a result a we see slew of initiatives implemented by various organizations in the hope of improving the experience provided to the customer in every interaction. Significant investments in technology and algorithms have been made and continued to be made in order to understand customer & their needs to build a great experience mechanism. Companies have used AI, Machine learning, IOT, Robotics and a whole lot of analytics platforms to come out with such mechanisms which will elevate customer interaction.   

Some of the areas where companies have worked are

·      Proactively identify the product customer may want to buy and build some special schemes around the same

·    Reduce the price points and increase convenience points through multiple aspects like efficient operations, Direct to customer, free delivery, same day delivery, order online and pick up at the nearest store, etc.

·     Provide a significant choice to customer and make return easy to reduce the hesitancy of impulse buying

·        Use social media information and create a product for specific groups and provide a special deals for specific group

·         Train the last mile employees to provide a great experience at every touch point with customer

·         Creating a powerful online channel to help customers buy from where ever and whenever they want to buy

All the efforts are towards making buying process delightfully rewarding to customer that customer returns to buy more as well as provides word of mouth publicity.

It is also important to note the temperament of the current generation; they do not want to go out to stores to have a feel of the product they want to buy but they are happy to order it from their mobile phone. There is no loyalty for a seller/shop, who so ever provides lower price, good return policy gets the deal. Although brand plays a role in decision making but convenience and price determines the purchase decision.     

Companies like Amazon, Walmart have leapfrogged in this art and are creating more and more mechanisms to engage the buyer meaningfully. I call these mechanisms as Gen 1 mechanisms which involve changing / optimizing/ improving everything around the product. The next step in this would be to include product itself in building the lasting customer experience.

The Gen2 of mechanisms will include the product and extreme personalization will be at core. Simply put, enable customer to define /design product of their choice and provide the delivery with the same efficiency and convenience we have built in the Gen 1 mechanisms.

One example, in today’s situation, if one wants to buy a Shirt , first you visit a website, you choose style followed by selection of either color or pattern from the list available in the size that fits you. Select delivery option and see the total price. Normally, person will check on multiple websites if the same brand and similar shirt is available on any other website and finalize the decision based on the best pricing.   The next generation of disruption is going to come from extreme personalization i.e. by allowing customer to design their product. If we translate this to purchase of shirt situation, then it will be something like this – you visit a website for shirt, every one does not have a great chiseled body and std sizes do not fit them properly so you provide your photograph so that your measurements are understood by the company. Then you can choose the cloth, pattern, etc. from a significantly large repository of designs and cloths. The website provides you with the picture of shirt with your specifications worn by you (using the photograph provided by you). If you like it, you can place an order. It will be manufactured to your specific size, design and shipped you efficiently. It is a tailored shirt purchased with convenience of sitting at home and price of a mass manufactured shirt and delivered to a destination of your choice.

  

It will be a 100% “made to order” scenario, but a completely automated to remove any manual work typically involved in “made to order” scenario. The technological development in terms of machine to machine connectivity and various facets of automation will allow us to share the order from a mobile phone to the shop floor which will manufacture the goods to the specifications provided using the raw material for specific order and then it will be shipped to specific address. This will create a significant impact on the entire industry as companies will not have any stocks of finished goods, no warehouses for finished goods, no worries as to how to take out the unsold stock, etc. The warehouses will only hold stock of raw material and you will have many automated specialized plants to manufacture specific category of products connected with the websites picking up orders. With 3D printing capabilities getting evolved, this can be enhanced significantly. It might look impossible at this juncture as it will need to dismantle the whole industry and rebuild it with new principles, but the competition will drive us to conquer this new frontier of extreme personalization to create that super duper customer experience.      

Nine Step process to Improve Customer Experience

As described in my earlier blog “Customer Experience and Organizational Excellence”, customer experience has a start (your current level) but no end point and it needs to be improved perpetually. If we do not improve the level of customer experience, it automatically degrades itself. The kind of experience we can provide to customer depends on how well we know the customer and our urge to provide customer with great experience during every interaction. Since it is proven that the top and bottom line gets affected directly by the experience a customer gets while interacting with our company directly or indirectly; it is natural that we want to give the best experience and the “urge” for the same is assumed to be given. So the manifestation of experience directly depends on how well we understand our customer. Do we understand their needs, wants and aspirations?, Can we really think like them?, Do we know how they will react or perceive us if we take a certain action? It is a complex, multidimensional, and nonlinear process due to multiple variables like changing environment, churn in customers, technology disruptions and competition to name a few. 

I have observed a nine step model in ancient Vedic literature to understand God (Nava Vidha Bhakti i.e. nine ways of devotion) and I feel that if we apply it to today’s corporate world, it provides us a great model for understanding our customer and provide a superlative experience during each of our interaction. I have presented the same in this blog.  The following diagram shows the real names of these nine steps and “Applied Names” when used in context of understanding customer.  

The first one is called “Shravana (Listening to/about Customer) Bhakti” which tells us to listen more and more about customer. Use any channel available at your disposal; be it reading print / digital media, go to different customer / industry forums, conduct some surveys, understand some success stories as well as failures etc. Everything collected predominantly from secondary sources. This gives us a level of perception where we can start visualizing what customer would expect from any interaction with us and we can start building our customer engagement mechanisms.  

The second and third forms namely “Nama Sankirtana” (Chanting about Customer) and “Smarana” (Remembering Customer behavior) are typically performed together after the one has achieved a specific level of perception about customer through secondary knowledge and listening about him from multiple sources. These two forms tell us that we should always talk about customer, keep customer in mind while taking any action or decision. Also remember customer’s behavior in different circumstances and situations, remember how customer has reacted to an intervention by us or competition.  This acts as a positive spiral refining our perception about customer and helps us improve our actions thus improving the experience customers would get in every transaction. 

These first three steps really talk about the homework that we need to do before interacting with customer in order to create a great experience during interaction. This homework prepares us for initiate a satisfactory transaction with customer.

We are now ready and waiting for an opportunity to provide a service to our customers in the most desired manner. The next three forms i.e. Pada Sevana (Waiting on customer), Archana (Worshipping Customer ) and Vandana (Saluting Customer) provide direction in terms of how do we create this opportunity. Pada Sevana (Waiting on Customer) tells us that be around your customer, visit places like trade fairs where your customer is present, observe your customer, take note of what customer is doing. This keen observation and presence will definitely get noticed and opportunity for interaction will present itself.  This when coupled with Archana (Worshipping Customer) and Vandana (Saluting Customer) the chances of improving the customer experience increase many fold. A simple thing like Saluting / celebrating success of an athlete in a large forum of budding athletes by a sportswear company brings this whole thing together. It creates a large group of customers at one place, it provides opportunity to interact and understand the customer base through informal interactions not related to any business transaction, it sends clear message that you value the customer as well as the success one of the customer has achieved and you are happy about the same. It also conveys that you listen to your customer and ready to do things which are not directly related to your business (go extra mile) if necessary.  A company can create multiple such opportunities using Archana (Worshipping Customer) and Vandana (Saluting Customer) to create a supportive background for a memorable customer experience when the actual business transaction takes place.

We have done a lot of hard work in getting ready for giving a great experience to our customer, we have done right things to create an opportunity to do so. I am certain that opportunity will present itself to perform a business transaction and thus provide superlative experience to customer. The next three forms i.e. Dasya (Serving Customer), Sakhya (Be friend to Customer) and Atma Nivedana (Complete Dedication) take us through process of superlative experience throughout the life-cycle of relationship with customer. In the initial phase of your business relationship, you serve customer without questioning, listen to the needs and service them without questioning and try and go beyond what customer is looking for. You fulfill anything that customer demands. This provides a very comfortable experience in the transactions and also provides a lot of insights about customer mindset. This triggers the next form I.e. Sakhya (be friending customer), which means you now start advising customer on what would be right for him based on your knowledge about customer, you start thinking for him and work for him for his benefit. This elevates the experience to a new level. The last one i.e. Atma Nivedana (Complete dedication) is the next phase where your thinking is changed in such a manner that there is no difference between you and customer and you deliver services in a manner that you feel would provide best customer experience without need for asking customer. The key transition that you find here is the extent customer has to drive the transactions and set the expectations. From Dasya (Serving Customer) to Atma Nivedana (complete dedication),  you find that need for customer to focus on what he needs in a business transaction reduces and he keeps of getting the same or more without asking which naturally ensures a great and lasting experience. 

A few questions come to our mind –

·         Are these steps sequential?

·         Do we have to do all these steps?

·         The environment, technologies are changing; so are the customer expectations, what happens to this framework?

These steps grouped in to three groups as described earlier and followed in that sequence. Most of the activities in a group are run in parallel. There are subtle differences, but they can run in parallel. This sequence is for a set/segment of customer/s once you start you can go to the end to ensure great experience. It is better to perform all the activities to reach the ultimate goal of superlative customer experience, if we do not perform certain activities, it may not give us the desired results.

The model has an inbuilt positive spiral to correct the changes which are happening in the environment and then modify the next steps on the go. We are continuously Listening to/about customer, talking about customer, understanding their feedback to firm up our understanding in order to prepare for next steps. This activity is continuous activity and any changes taking place in the environment, technology, customer expectations, etc., automatically refine our understanding of customer enabling effective next steps.    

We can use the two approaches described in my earlier blog, “Customer Experience and Organizational Excellence”, to implement various initiatives to ensure superlative customer experience.

1                     Reverse Planning for a Customer Experience thread

2                     Creating multiple pairs of supplier/customer within ecosystem