In the age of almost everything digital, new technologies are fueling more innovative products and processes and heightening consumer expectations. Businesses are now compelled to improve the way they interact with their customers, to remain relevant and competitive.
This week’s article selection provides insight into customer experience and its role as a competitive differentiator in today’s digital world. We conclude with some great input from one of our digital customer experience experts.
Is your customer experience your competitive differentiation?
Defining your most sustainable competitive advantage is key to establishing where your organization’s focus needs to be, in today’s fiercely competitive market. It is noted here, that before changing price, product or service, businesses first need to consider how they deliver real value to their customers – value that creates differentiation. Focusing on value will make organizations more customer centric and it’s obvious that customer experience has a significant role to play here. “More than two-thirds of marketers responsible say their companies compete mostly on the basis of CX and in two years’ time, 81% say they expect to be competing mostly or completely on the basis of CX” – Gartner CX study
Read further to discover 8 ways successful companies can improve customer experience, as well as 4 things marketers can do to make service delivery and customer experience their competitive differentiators.
- Publisher: visionedge marketing
- Access: Public
- Download: None
Making Your CX a Competitive Differentiator
This is a video interview with Mike McCalley, VP of Strategy & Marketing for CECO Environmental Corporation, which was broadcast on SBITV. McCalley speaks about customer experience and how to make it a competitive differentiator. The video is 25.52 minutes long, but there is a written summary of the topics discussed and their respective times (so you can scroll through the video to find them). This is divided into 3 segments.
- Segment 1 – Getting started;
- Segment 2 – Budgeting and
- Segment 3 – Hottest topics facing marketing leaders
If you are really crunched for time, you can just skip to the pertinent points, which have also been highlighted in the text (with their respective times). For example, skip to minute 15.38 where Mike describes how CX translates into revenue growth. Happy viewing!
- Publisher: SBI
- Access: Public
- Download: None
Make Customer Experience Your Competitive Advantage With These 3 Steps
Having a competitive advantage is key to ensuring business success. And with customer choice being the main driver, it makes sense to make customer experience the differentiator that gives organizations an advantage over their competitors. The author emphasizes that you cannot design the customer experience with tunnel vision – instead he suggests the use of customer journey maps and personas, as a means to learn more about customers, their needs and how best to engage with them.
Read further to discover a three-step approach, which is a “means to identify opportunities for customer experience to create competitive advantages.”
- Publisher: CMS Wire
- Access: Public
- Download: None
Input from our digital customer experience expert
“Not all businesses recognize the value of Customer Experience (CX) and many aren’t prepared for the level of change required to thrive in the age of the empowered consumer. Departments need the authority to break down silos that constrain customer centric processes and limit the ability to create industry leading experiences.
Over and above the retention of their existing customers, businesses that embrace the power shift and put effort into customer experience are more likely to see a massive increase in loyalty, purchase frequency and average spend from engaged customers.”
Need some guidelines on how to improve the customer experience? Let’s start with customer journey mapping...
Alison Treadaway
Vice President, Marketing, Striata, a Doxim Company
She joined the Striata in 2002, and served as Managing Director of the African region for 13 years. Prior to this, Alison’s experience in Internet-related solutions included marketing and sales positions at Internet Solutions and Dimension Data.
Alison has 24 years of experience in the ICT sector. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Languages, WITS) and a Post-graduate Diploma in Business Administration (WITS Business School).
Read more of Alison's blog posts here or connect with her on the following social channels:
