Key themes that executives are focusing on for Reimagining Customer Experience

By Arun Shastri, Gopi Vikranth and Itika Yadav

Across industries, customer engagement models have changed dramatically to provide convenience, personalization, and agility. We spoke with senior executives across industries responsible for customer experience and here are the key emerging trends companies are focusing on to meet evolving customer expectations (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reinventing-customer-experience/id1563960517).

Based on conversations with executives from Walmart (CTO), Goldman Sachs — Marcus (Chairman), Citibank (CAO), IHCL-Taj (Head of brands, MKTG), Panera Bread (SVP, MKTG), Sweetgreen (CDO), United Airlines (VP, Digital), Choice hotels (CCO), Forrester.

It is key to place the customer at the center and meet them where they prefer

• Companies are focused on transitioning to seamless and persistent omnichannel customer interaction. It’s about enabling speed; it’s about driving innovation and leveraging technology to meet the customer and becoming their primary destination. There is a need to be omni present
• For customers hypermobility and hyper flexibility/ convenience are the new normal, and speed matters for new experiences.
• Marketers need to create mechanisms and strategies that don’t force customers to compromise when using their product or service (due to internal constraints).

We see this manifest in many ways, be it in retail where massive technology and investment is driving “interact and buy from anywhere and get the product anywhere” or in fintech, which is re-organizing businesses to make it very flexible and convenient for customers to get their financial needs fulfilled in a fraction of time it used to take with traditional banks.

The brand to customer relationship is now a two-way dialogue

• Customers have evolved from being passive contributors to becoming actively engaged. This makes establishing direct relationships with customers extremely critical, else a digital aggregator or an intermediary will replace brand relationship.
• Companies are rethinking their customer strategy, by integrating offline and online channels, such as bringing in micro influencers and digital mechanisms (i.e., social/ live commerce) which are impacting behavior through contextual content and experiences.
• Anticipating customer wants and needs is key. There is a need for customer service that is predictive of customer needs at all customer service touchpoints. This can be done through persistent intelligence, recognition and having preventive or one click resolutions.

For example, we have seen this sentiment echo from multiple industry leaders ranging from F&B to Hospitality to Retail. True to the old adage, customer is really the king now and they have many mechanisms to express their voice. Without a direct relationship (which is often digital and the investments to preserve and engage customers) core business is at risk, from third party apps be it in F&B or retail.

Stitch together customer journey across all interactions using Data, Tech and AI, resulting in a seamless & personalized end to end experience

• Customers are multi-dimensional, and businesses need the right portfolio of journeys to deliver personalized customer experiences that are distinctly phygital in nature. Whether the customer moves from a physical channel (like a store) to a digital channel like an app or website or a call center or an interactive experience through AR, businesses want to personalize and maintain the continuity of the journey and achieve customer delight.
• With the right data and understanding of the customer and how they’re interacting with the products, companies can iterate, experiment and tailor them better — this is digital by nature, and it will play an enormous role.
• The human connection and differentiation through that will be a special ingredient on top of AI + digital to deliver lasting customer delight.

For example, in hospitality and in many industries, Digital and AI are enabling many experiences. However, brands which are able to carefully add curated human touch to these digital experiences are creating lasting impression and loyalty in customer’s mind.

About the Authors:

Arun Shastri is a principal at ZS and leads the Artificial Intelligence practice.

Gopi Vikranth is a principal at ZS and leads Personalization and Customer Experience Analytics.

Arun and Gopi Co-host “Reinventing Customer Experience” podcast which is available on apple and Spotify featuring executive guests across industries.

Itika Yadav is an Associate Consultant in the research and consulting team at ZS.