Building a Scalable Customer Experience is Key to Success

At this year’s South Summit, Jaime Moreno, CEO and founder of Mormedi, led a panel discussion on why “Building a Scalable Customer Experience is Key to Success.” The panel of experts was made up of Isaac Hernández (Google), Aitor del Coso (Mutua Madrileña), Rafael Tamames (Findasense), and Alberto Knapp (The Cocktail). Here is what they had to say.

Customer-centricity is key to survival

The ability to build and scale great customer experiences is more necessary than ever to the success of companies and organizations, but what does it mean to scale customer experience? And how can companies scale it successfully? According to Alberto Knapp, in the next few years, the only companies that survive will be those that are customer-centric.

Customers need a consistent experience

Jaime Moreno explained that, despite the different industries that were represented on the panel (insurance, digital services, fintech, and advertising), all companies face challenges when scaling their customer experience.

“The big challenge of customer experience is that, in some companies and organizations, employees work in silos and thus fail to build a coherent customer experience. In the end, there should be a conductor that envisions and defines one single customer experience.” – Jaime Moreno

Aitor del Coso, from insurance company Mutua Madrileña, explained that it is important to have one department that envisions how the customer experience should be and that makes the entire company move towards a certain direction. However, it is crucial that the entire organization understands the change that needs to be carried out in order to have a successful and scalable customer experience.

Scale requires data, and learning

According to Alberto Knapp, making customer experience scalable requires big data to understand which interactions are valuable, which ones are a commodity, which ones you can automate, and which ones are very personal. “The companies that we see thriving are the ones that know how to treat the customer experience at different levels, depending on the value that each touchpoint has.” – Alberto Knapp

Jaime Moreno raised the point that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are going to impact the way organizations think about customer experience. Aitor del Coso said that one of the keys to make customer experience scalable is to think about a homogenous, cross-channel experience that is fuelled by artificial intelligence. Isaac Hernández explained how Google is currently carrying out a customer journey transformation process and is leveraging big data and analytics in order to understand what their customers need.

“Technology is not a differentiator for companies or brands any more, it is a commodity. Algorithms in terms of machine learning are also commodities. The engine of machine learning is data and information”. “When you talk about customer experience it is critical that you measure everything and that you store all that information. If you don’t have your data, you will not be able to treat your customer better. The reality is that data is providing us a competitive advantage.” – Isaac Hernández.

“This is the first time in marketing where customers are ahead of the big brands. Now, every single brand wants to be customer-centric because finally consumers have a power over brands thanks to technology.”

Alberto Knapp

 

 

Collecting data is easy, changing culture is hard

Isaac Hernández went on to explain that technology is no longer the bottleneck to serving customers better, but rather the main hurdle to becoming customer-centric is internal culture and employees’ ways of thinking or working. According to Alberto Knapp, one way to become more customer-centric is to bring the customer’s voice to the discussion.

“Breaking the silos within companies is an important challenge that organizations face. Every single company understands now that, either they bring the customer to the table in the product definition and design process, or the product or brand will not succeed.” – Alberto Knapp

All speakers agreed that every member of an organization interacts, in one way or another, with the customer, therefore all employees need to understand and embrace the importance of customer experience in order to make it scalable to all audiences. The panel concluded that it is crucial that employees believe and share the importance of customer experience and direct their work towards enhancing it.