Boost Customer Experience through Agility and a Customer-First Mindset

Tech companies face an uncertain business environment in 2023. They grapple with tough
competition, reduced margins, and budget cuts. But despite the tough times, time-honored
rules will still work – agile, resilient, and flexible enterprises that place their customers first
will succeed.

1. Adopt agile tools and methodologies
   
   
   

   Customers, especially B2B customers, seek fast ROI for their tech products. For subscription
   based products, more than half the contracts are six months or less, and customers seek to
   profit from their investment within this time. The pressure to drive ROI fast comes from the
   ever-increasing competition, and also the increasingly short shelf life for tech products.
   The only way to deal with such threats and remain in the business is by improving
   efficiencies and reducing costs. In such an environment, tech enterprises discover the value
   of agile to improve efficiencies and do more with less.
   Agile offers a marked alternative to traditional command-and-control-style management.
   Agile methodologies cut waste. It promotes process efficiency by avoiding repetitive
   planning, excessive documentation, and redundant meetings. It improves the product by
   eradicating quality defects and low-value product features.
   
   Follow these tips to get agile adoption right.

   1. Adopt methodologies, such as Scrum and Kanban, to become more responsive to customer needs and changes in the marketplace. Scrum emphasizes creative and adaptive teamwork to solve problems. Kanban focuses on reducing lead times. These methodologies focus on iterative development, continuous improvement, eliminating waste, and frictionless collaboration. Agile companies release products fast and deliver the best experience to customers.
   2. Promote cross-functional teams. The agile approach places people in self-managed, customer-focused multidisciplinary teams. Moving away from functional silos is often unnerving. But engaging with members from different backgrounds broadens the team’s exposure and experience. For senior managers, it also reduces the time spend on micromanaging functional projects. They may spend more time on high-impact tasks. For instance, they may create and adjust the corporate vision or focus on strategic initiatives.
   3. Prioritize tasks depending on the value added for the customer. Also, assign the right people for each job, considering their skills and competencies.
   4. Empower teams to do their thing. Companies become resilient by empowering teams with the autonomy to seize the opportunity. A key change is eliminating bureaucratic processes and reducing the decision-making hierarchy.
   5. Train the workforce on what agile means and the benefits by inculcating the philosophy.
      
      

      Best-in-breed companies hardcode agile best practices that work for the business into
      workflows. Spotify exemplifies the implementation of agile models to perfection. The music
      streaming company, founded in 2006, was an early agile adopter. The company applies agile
      practices end-to-end to improve customer experiences. Agile adoption covers product
      development, general management, and marketing. Unlike many other enterprises, leaders
      here do not dictate specific practices. They instead encourage experimentation and
      promote agile-based flexibility. They set up small cross-functional teams to drive innovation
      and track the progress of such teams.

2. Embrace flexibility

   Agile and flexibility go hand in hand. Unless the enterprise is not flexible enough to change according to the situation, they are not resilient or agile enough. The best enterprises strive for the right balance of flexibility and accountability.

   • Agile and flexibility go hand in hand. Unless the enterprise is not flexible enough to change according to the situation, they are not resilient or agile enough. The best enterprises strive for the right balance of flexibility and accountability.
   • Equip service teams with digital tools that help them speed up work and resolve incidents faster. The best tools automate incident response, enable seamless troubleshooting, and streamline incident review. For instance, a field service management tool automates scheduling. It schedules work orders for field agents with the skills to execute the job. The software integrates with inventory and sync scheduling with parts availability. Enterprises enjoy the twin benefits of improved customer satisfaction and enhanced productivity.
   • Encourage innovation. Innovation helps tech enterprises break free from the shackles of the low-margin survival game. Experimentation with new technologies and being open to new ideas allow meeting customer needs in new ways. New products and services help companies stay ahead of the competition in meeting customer needs. Launching new products and services delivers an early mover advantage.
     
3. Leverage the power of simplicity

   Never underestimate the power of simplicity to get complex things done. Business executives often falter because they face convoluted systems and need more access to data. They spend precious time grappling with the system and data. The same goes for the products and services offered by the business. Eliminate friction in product adoption. When making new tech purchases, customers primarily look for ease of implementation and use. Often, the root cause of poor customer satisfaction scores and customer discontent leading to service issues is when the customer does not know how to use the product properly.

   • Simplify the tech stack by reducing flab and duplications. Focus on integrations to simplify data access. For instance, Salesforce’s Genie Customer Data Cloud helps businesses store and analyze billions of data points. The speed and quality of decision-making improves.
   • Consolidate vendors. The average business uses a whopping 976 applications. Such a large number of applications create bloat and inefficiencies. Salesforce’s State of Sales report estimates 94% of sales organizations will consolidate their tech stack in the next 12 months.
   • Unify customer data streams to get actionable, data-driven insights faster. Often, enterprise data lies scattered in different databases. Since most enterprises evolve organically, such databases remain incompatible, and many silos exist. Simplifying data access is a complex exercise. Some silos and incompatibilities exist for genuine reasons, and it is not feasible to compromise the same for data analytics.
4. Use automation and Artificial Intelligence

   2023 is the year of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation. Enterprises will adopt AI in increasing numbers for cost savings and efficiencies. Collecting and storing customer data is easy. The hard part is unlocking insights from such data to further business objectives and delight customers. Artificial Intelligence solutions allow enterprises to glean insights from data. The trick is to use AI to make the work of human employees easy and more fruitful.Use AI-powered automation tools to:

   • Ease the work of human agents. Bots perform routine and complex low-level tasks on auto-pilot. Free from such repetitive tasks, human agents can focus on tasks that add value and involve employees’ core competencies. The latest Salesforce State of Sales report estimates 72% of sellers spend time on “non-selling” activities. AI- powered automation can reduce these numbers and enable salespersons to spend more time selling.
   • Understand the customer. Algorithms understand customer sentiments better than human agents and enable real-time targeted responses. Most companies scramble to react when a customer cancels an order. AI-powered systems will highlight customers getting frustrated. Proactive engagement of such customers will pre-empt customer cancellation. Likewise, marketers may use AI to track behavioral patterns and recommend context-aware suggestions.
   • Profile customers. AI enables marketers to give more attention to high-value customers or customers more likely to purchase. Automation enables them to create precise audience segments in double-quick time.
   • Personalize customer engagement. Tech marketers who use AI-powered platforms can create unified customer profiles. Marketers can engage with audiences based on personalized recommendations, content, and advertising.
   • Make better decisions. AI infers risks and opportunities within business conversations, enabling smarter decision-making. Salesforce Einstein AI, for instance, offers data-driven forecasting and pipeline management decisions. Marketers using this tool improve productivity manifold. Service contact centers using Einstein. Conversation Insights identify customer pain points in real time. Prompt handling of customer issues improves customer satisfaction scores and reduces churn.

     AI in marketing and other business functions is still a nascent technology used by only one in three sales organizations. But the organizations that do are the highest sales performers. High sales performers are 1.9 times more likely than underperformers to apply AI in their day-to-day sales functions.

5. Focus on the workforce

   Employees are the internal customers of an enterprise. Employee experience feeds into the customer experience. Delivering a positive employee experience will attract new talent to the enterprise. It also fosters commitment and motivates employees to go the extra mile to delight end customers.  Agile leaders empower their followers. The words of General George S. Patton Jr. articulate the primary approach of agile leadership: “Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” Agile leaders rarely issue orders or tell their subordinates how to do things. They ask probing questions such as “What do you recommend?” or “How could we test that?” They empower team members and provide them the support and resources to do their own thing. Such an approach does not work in all situations, but when it does, it leads to faster time-to-market and better output quality. Process efficiency and customer satisfaction increase. To achieve such a state:

   • Upskill employees. Offer development opportunities for the workforce to adapt to the changing environment. Encourage them to learn new skills and competencies that deliver value during rapid change.
   • Provide employees with tools and information to deliver high-quality job execution. Employees equipped with tools and resources to do their jobs well remain happy. Happy and committed employees put their best foot forward to enhance the end customer experience.
   • Enable job rotation and multitasking. Encourage the employee to take on new roles and responsibilities depending on the changes in the business realities.
   • Encourage a culture of continuous learning. Organize training programs and mentorship.
6. Prioritize customer experience

   Successful tech companies prioritize customer needs. They adapt to changing market conditions, customer needs, and emerging technologies. They keep track of their customers’ wants and co-opt the latest technologies to meet changing demands. They tweak their products to align with the changed market realities and customer preferences. Catering to customer expectations is a no-brainer in winning over the customer. But walking the talk is not easy. There is no mechanical formula to track changes in market conditions or customer behavior. Instead, companies that succeed on these fronts promote a culture of flexibility and change. Also, they take steps to overcome reluctance to change.  Delivering superior customer experience depends on being customer-centric. Becoming customer-centric requires placing the customer first in everything.

   • Prime up systems to ensure data readiness, for businesses to respond to customer requests faster. Ready access to data help executives to understand the customer perspective before making decisions.
   • Set customer service standards, and encourage employees to go the extra mile to provide exceptional service. Incentivize customer satisfaction and encourage healthy competition based on delighting customers.
   • Gather regular feedback from customers using surveys and social media engagement. Use the insights to discern changes in customer behavior and expectations. These apart, involve the customer directly in the product planning stage, or in iterative sprints, wherever feasible. Regular feedback and customer involvement helps to bring the most valuable products and features to market faster.
   • Leverage customer data to understand customer needs upfront. Find out why the customer has engaged with the company. Identify their preferences and pain points. Craft relevant product development and service delivery strategies.
   • Engage in proactive outreach with customers. Customers prefer businesses that prevent rather than solve issues. They appreciate businesses that catalyze meaningful engagement to avert a crisis or undesirable outcome. For instance, many fintech companies now use automated bots to notify customers who are near their card credit limit. They may also apply Artificial Intelligence to increase the limit temporarily for eligible customers, and pre-empt declined transactions.
   • Personalize the experience to the extent possible. Tailor marketing messages and product recommendations. Deploy relationship managers with direct numbers to look after high-value customers.
   • Deliver omni-channel experiences. Until a few years ago, most customers were content to look up info on their phones and complete the purchase using a laptop or desktop. Today, they expect to start from the new device where they left off at the previous device. Successful brands blend multiple communication modes into one efficient conversation without losing context. For instance, they offer chat information, transition to a phone call, and finally complete the sale through the mobile app.
   • Communicate using text, images, or video based on the business context and customers’ preferences. One out of three Gen Z customers prefers voice messages over text. Gen Z today makes up 40% of the US consumer base. Companies catering to audio and video in customer support improve customer satisfaction scores. They may allow customers to upload short videos or audio recordings to explain issues rather than force them to type the issue. In a perfect world, the backend system transcribes the voice, and automated AI systems solve the problem. Complex matters outside the scope of the Artificial Intelligence bots get escalated to human agents.
   • Offer self-service in customer support. Customers hate companies that make them go through hoops and wait over the phone, waiting for a free agent. Also, empower customer support teams to solve issues without having to follow up for each and everything.

     Quantify customer experience for greater visibility and buzz. Consider the US Department of Transportation’s new Airline Customer Service Dashboard. The dashboard brought visibility and transparency to the customer-facing processes. It brought to focus the fragmented customer experiences and mediocre support in the airline industry. The initiative has made airlines more accountable, improving customer experience. In today’s competitive business environment, brands must deliver focused and empathetic experiences. Successful tech companies are, almost to a rule, agile, responsive, and adaptable. They keep their customers first in everything they do.