Sven Denecken, SVP & Chief Marketing and Solutions Officer for SAP Industries & CX, shares how CX strategy comes down to four key pillars: unique to the industry, connected across departments, filled with insightful data, and adaptive to customers’ changing needs.Â
Smart business leaders across industries, from retail and consumer packaged goods to utilities and automotive, are increasingly putting customers at the center of their transformation efforts to differentiate their brands, deepen customer relationships and drive profitability. However, different industries have distinct CX goals. For instance, automakers might prioritize personalized vehicle connectivity through IoT technologies, while retailers would instead focus on achieving true omnichannel integration.
According to the Temkin Group, companies that earn $1 billion annually can expect to make an average of an additional $700 million within three years of investing in customer experience. This growth starts with maximizing customer lifetime value and loyalty, but businesses need the right solutions and implementation strategies to seize the opportunities that great CX can unlock. This is where today’s technology leaders have an opportunity to become drivers of business impact by becoming a champion for the customer.
While the benefits of a CX focus have been proven, and many organizations have taken up the charge, most initiatives land short of their full potential because CX comes to live in silos across commerce, marketing, sales, and service functions. This approach hinders businesses from delivering truly personalized experiences, connecting experiences across touchpoints, and consistently delivering on expectations. That’s because each department approaches optimization independently with only a small slice of the customer’s data and very little transparency into upstream processes across the supply chain. This also requires costly integration efforts across disparate technology solutions and multiple vendors. In contrast, businesses implementing an intelligent, industry-tailored CX strategy have kept pace with evolving customer expectations for personalized, convenient, and consistent experiences and developed agility to turn the unexpected into opportunity.
Adopting An Intelligent Approach To CX
The good news is that technology leaders within organizations are uniquely positioned to be the customer champion and drive strong customer experiences. However, creating those strong customer experiences requires adopting an intelligent CX approach powered by integrated business process solutions supported by a robust and flexible technology ecosystem that leverages operational and contextual data from across the entire enterprise to ensure a seamless customer experience.Â
An intelligent CX approach can be summarized by four core pillars, which are:
Rooted in the unique needs of your industry
Businesses operating in different industries have distinct CX goals, and the unique needs of that industry can’t be served by a “one-size fits all†CX product. An intelligent CX approach employs industry-tailored solutions powered by a rich technology ecosystem and industry-leading partnerships that deliver “out of the box†capabilities and end-to-end process blueprints. With a better understanding of the most critical needs of your industry and your customers, and the technology ecosystem to capitalize on that knowledge, intelligent CX enables your business to deliver profitable growth and increase customer loyalty more efficiently.
Connected across departments and technology systems
Deep integrations with the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system are essential to connect operational data from business processes with customer experience. This integrated data approach gives businesses full visibility into inventory, fulfillment, contracts, and pricing at customer-facing touchpoints while providing a business with demand signals that allow for better supply chain management and product development. All the data and insights provided with an intelligent CX approach help businesses maximize investments, empower employees to help customers at any given moment and drive efficiency and profitability by unifying operational and contextual data in a centralized model. Intelligent CX centers on a brand’s ability to anticipate and serve its customers’ needs in a more meaningful, profitable, and measurable way. Companies can achieve this by surfacing intelligence that sits in disparate systems across the enterprise and serving it to the right customer at every touchpoint.
Filled with insightful data to help make better business decisions
Data matters, regardless of the size, industry, or type of business. AI-powered analytics play a crucial role in understanding customers and making sense of vast amounts of data from across the enterprise. An intelligent CX approach leverages AI to enable businesses to conduct real-time data analysis, identify their best customers, personalize customer experiences at the moment, and empower employees with insights and recommendations. Organizations can work smarter through AI-assisted discoveries by combining operational and contextual data to understand and reward their most profitable customers.
Adaptive to meet the changing needs of customers and businessesÂ
Building tailored solutions that cater to unique business requirements demands a vast and composable partner ecosystem. Composability is crucial as it allows technology leaders to build and scale to the needs of both their business and their customers while aligning with where they are in their digital maturity journey. An intelligent CX approach supports current and future business growth through a composable architecture, offering feature-rich core platform capabilities and allowing customization at a flexible pace through vetted, certified, and integrated technology partners.Â
Composing a future-proof Customer Experience solution
Keeping customers happy and loyal while empowering employees through lasting success becomes achievable through a comprehensive, intelligent CX strategy that evolves alongside market trends, technological advancements, and evolving consumer needs.Â
I’ve witnessed firsthand how businesses succeed significantly after adopting an intelligent CX approach. One particularly impactful example that comes to mind is the British fragrance brand, Molton Brown. The company needed to update its legacy e-commerce solution while maximizing the value of customer data across ERP and supply chain systems. Molton Brown adopted an intelligent CX approach, optimizing their e-commerce experience to support the business better, facilitating a connected, end-to-end customer experience. Since implementing intelligent CX strategies and solutions, Molton Brown has seen impressive results, including a 30% increase in sales, ~430,000 units sold across all channels on Black Friday 2022 (exceeding the forecast), and increased order placements.
Businesses can compose a future-proof CX solution that ensures lasting success in a dynamic digital landscape through deep connections, insightful analytics, and adaptive architectures.
Have you used intelligent CX to drive profitability and grow your businesses? Tell us about your experience on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!Â
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