Designing exceptional customer experiences is a complex task for organisations. To better understand the challenge, MyCustomer spoke with Professor Mohamed Zaki, the deputy director of Cambridge Service Alliance and course leader of Data-Driven Design for Customer Experience (CX) at the University of Cambridge.
This interview explores the difficulties organisations encounter in delivering seamless and personalised CX and the importance of leveraging data and analytics to overcome these challenges.
The power of data utilisation
For Mohamed, much of his research focuses on utilising data to improve customer service. He explains that problems arise when organisations design strategies for digital, physical and social experiences in silos.
"There is no integrated way. And in essence, that leads to a lot of problems because customers deem a brand as one brand across different channels. So they would like consistency in the experience."
Many organisations struggle to track and monitor customers across channels effectively or utilise analytics to extract valuable insights. This hinders their ability to manage the customer experience and leverage AI capabilities.
"They have all this data. Still, they don't have the mechanism to follow the customers across channels and monitor what's happening, you know, to enable them to take the right strategic actions."
He continues: "It's not capturing the right information. They can't manage it well."
Investing in the right capabilities requires strong business cases and a customer-centric approach. Data plays a crucial role in designing experiences, managing customers, and capitalising on new opportunities. Another challenge Mohamed highlights is getting leadership buy-in.
"Organisations need a lot of business cases to enable them to become culturally customer-driven firms, getting the right resources from the top management."
Organisations need a lot of business cases to enable them to become culturally customer-driven firms.
He continues: "Now, in the digital world, we're starting to see that with customer experience, you can differentiate your business model. It's something other than your traditional business model as established. Your new service often heavily relies on the experience part.
"So, how we go from designing the right experience from customer management will enable us to capitalise on this, and typically, it's using data as an engine to enable us to do so."
Maturity matters
What are the challenges for organisations to get this right? According to Mohamed, one big challenge is the level of maturity. Primarily product-centric organisations are shifting towards a more service and solution-based approach, whether in the B2B, B2C, or public services sectors.
"Now they are thinking about the experience at the heart. We call it a culturally driven customer experience organisation. This means that everyone, from the CEO to the employees delivering the service, is dedicated to providing the best experience to customers."
Technology is another big challenge, even for established organisations.