Future of Work Enabler: Customer Empowerment and Engagement
1. Making the Shift to the Next-Generation Enterprise
(a multipart series)
Future of Work Enabler:
Customer Empowerment
and Engagement
Meeting the needs of the empowered consumer by
providing a consistent, cohesive and compelling
customer experience.
| FUTURE OF WORK
2. Executive Summary
Have you met the new consumer?
• She likely knows as much as you do about your business’s
products and services.
• He probably uses his smartphone to research competitive
pricing and availability when in your store, hotel or bank.
• She has no patience for promotions or offers that don’t
target her directly, especially when she provides personal
information.
• And when the interaction moves from your brand’s Facebook
page to an online chat, mobile Web, contact center or brickand-mortar outlet, she expects the processes and policies to
be consistent across these channels and for each one to pick
up where the other left off.
Enormously informed, always-connected, highly expectant — this
is the new consumer, aided and abetted by social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies (or the SMAC Stack™). Whether it’s
millennials who have grown up with a smartphone and a social
media mindset, or digital immigrants slowly but surely adopting
these new behaviors, customers are using the latest technologies
to manage their lives, and they expect their business interactions
to be no different.
New consumer behaviors are impacting all industries, but much
can be learned from retail, as this industry has long been focused
on customer centricity. Each step of the retail journey — research,
shop, transact and post-sale — is now performed in multiple and
sometimes simultaneous channels. A shopper who sees a product
in a catalog might research it further via the mobile Web, check
out the comments on the retailer’s Facebook page and “pin” it,
sparking interest among her Pinterest followers. She might head
out to the store on her lunch break to see the item in person and
check her mobile device for nearby deals and customers’ ratings
and reviews.
2
FUTURE OF WORK
November 2013
3. At home that night, she might chat with a service agent by
phone and then complete the transaction online, receiving an
e-mail receipt and then tweeting her plan to pick up the item
the next day in the store. When she realizes she’d prefer another color, she might try to return it at the service desk and
order a different color at the in-store kiosk. And if any of these
interactions exceeds or falls short of her expectations, she
won’t hesitate to let others know — and word spreads quickly on
Community Interaction Model
social networks.
Clearly, whether in Community Interaction Model
retail, travel/hospitality, financial services, Innovation Model
insurance, technology or media/entertainment, forward-facing
enterprises need to devise a holistic strategy for engaging with
Worker Empowerment
Innovation Model
Community
and empowering the new consumer, using social media, Web Interaction Model
and Enablement
and mobile tools. Doing so is one of the eight enablers companies need to consider when mapping their journey of reinven- Customer Empowerment
Worker Empowerment
Innovation Model
Community
and of work,
tion for the new worldEnablement as described in ourInteraction Model and Enablement
overview
paper, “Making the Shift to the Next-Generation Enterprise.” In
this installment, weCustomer Empowerment
will look at the many choices andWorker Empowerment Model
consider-Commercial
Innovation Model
Flexibility
and EnablementCommunity Interaction Model and Enablement
ations businesses must make when forging a customer-centric
strategy and choosing the tools, technologies and policies to Value Chain
Commercial Model
Customer Empowerment
Worker Empowerment
Flexibility
empower and engage with customers.Model
Innovation
and Enablement
Community Interaction Model
and Enablement
Value Chain
Virtual Collaboration
Commercial
Customer Empowerment Model
Worker Empowerment
Flexibility
and Enablement and Enablement
Mapping the Enablers to the 3 R’s
Innovation Model
Community Interaction Model
Virtual Collaboration
Value
Commercial Model Chain
Customer Empowerment
Worker Empowerment
Flexibility
Community Interaction Model
Innovation Model
and Enablement
and Enablement
1
Flexible Service Delivery
2
3
4
Value Chain
Community Innovation Commercial Model Virtual
Worker
Customer Empowerment
Innovation Model EmpowermentInteraction
Worker
Empowerment Collaboration
Flexibility
and Enablement
and Enablement
RETHINK the
Business Model
3
Business
Processes
3
Commercial
Worker Empowerment Empowerment Model
Customer
Flexibility
and Enablement Enablement
and REINVENT
3
Commercial Model Chain
Value
Flexibility
Virtual Collaboration
Customer
Empowerment
6
Commercial
Model Flexibility
Flexible Service Delivery
Virtual Collaboration
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
Value
Customer Empowerment Model Chain
Commercial
REWIRE
and Enablement
Flexibility
Operations
Figure 1
3
Value Chain
5
Flexible Service Delivery
7
Value Chain
Flexibility
3
3
Flexible Service Delivery
Virtual Collaboration
3
8
Flexible Service
Delivery
3
3
Flexible Service Delivery
Virtual Collaboration
Flexible Service Delivery
Value Chain Virtual Collaboration
Flexible
Virtual Collaboration Service Delivery
FUTURE OF WORK ENABLER: CUSTOMER EMPOWERMENT AND ENGAGEMENT (A MULTIPART SERIES)
3
4. Understanding Today’s Customer
It’s no wonder that “customer centricity” and “customer experience” are popular
phrases among the C suite and business leader circles. With seemingly endless
product and service options available to them on the Web, customers today are less
loyal to a particular brand or company, and they expect the same variety from how
they shop, pay or take delivery. Convenience and efficiency are now table stakes
— when most consumers (74%) will abandon a Web page if it doesn’t load on their
mobile device in five seconds,1 you can imagine the turnaround they expect when
they lodge a complaint or request information.
The opportunities for companies to interact
with their customers are manifold, but the
competition to win mind share and generate
action is greater than ever before.
Customers are also more informed, whether by the opinions and reviews found
on social media or the more direct information available on vendor Web sites. In
our 2013 shopper study, conducted with Retail Information Systems News (RIS), we
found that 80% of shoppers research online before making a purchase.2 Similar
behavior exists in the travel industry, where over 60% of travelers use mobile
devices frequently to aid their travel process.3 In fact, customers today are rarely
without their smartphones — according to Morgan Stanley, 91% of adults always
have their smartphone within arm’s reach, while IDC Research says most check
their phones within 15 minutes of waking up.4
How Service Stakes Have Risen
Personalized service is becoming increasingly important to customers.
Special treatment in the store based on loyalty
3.4
3.9
Acknowledgment of status as a highly
valued customer while in the store
3.2
3.5
Offers delivered in a store that are personalized
3.2
3.5
Offers delivered via a mobile phone
that are personalized
2.3
2012
2013
2.6
E-mails with personalized messages
2.9 3.2
Web site recommendations based on other
products you searched for
2.9 3.1
Web site recommendations based on
products others have searched for
2.8 3.1
0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
4.5
(Respondents were asked to rate the importance of each option on a scale of
1 to 5, with 1 being “low importance” and 5 being “high importance.”)
Response base: 2,500 shoppers in the U.S. and Canada
Source: “Retail Gets Personal,” Cognizant/RIS, 2013.
Figure 2
4
FUTURE OF WORK
November 2013
5. Millennials in particular rarely disconnect from the mobile Web or their social
networks and even engage with multiple devices simultaneously. Such multitasking not only keeps them distracted, but it also gives them a lot of power — with one
creatively worded (or recorded) rant, they can cause a public relations emergency.
The opportunities for companies to interact with their customers are manifold, but
the competition to win mind share and generate action is greater than ever before.
And it doesn’t stop there. Customers today also want ultimate flexibility in how, where
and when they engage with companies, and they expect those interactions to be
handled by well-trained and knowledgeable associates. Increasingly, customers also
expect businesses to “know” them by offering relevant, personalized and localized
service and deals, delivered just when they need it (see Figure 2). And amid all this,
customers also crave the element of surprise — in a world where 800 apps per second
are downloaded from the Apple App Store alone,5 novelty is the name of the game.
Creating a Customer Empowerment Strategy
These new customer behaviors will only become more entrenched as social/
mobile use spreads. Faced with this reality, many companies make the mistake of
taking a tactical approach to changing their customer experience. They move in
multiple directions at the same time, with no holistic plan in place. We propose a
four-pronged approach for developing a customer empowerment strategy and a
customer experience that is cohesive, consistent and compelling.
Overhaul the Business Model
The most important element of customer empowerment is revising the business
model so that the customer is truly at the center. While this advice is commonly
given, ample evidence suggests that very few companies actually implement it.
In order to be truly customer-centric, business leaders need to think like a customer
and view their business from the outside-in, experiencing it as a customer would.
Today, that means taking a look at all the channels through which you interact with
customers and rationalizing those points of engagement so that the company appears
as one single entity, sometimes called an “omni-channel” approach (see Figure 3).
The Omni-channel Approach to Shopping
The non-linear shopper journey begins and ends anywhere.
Research
Web
Shop
Buy
Service
Purchase Online
Comparison Site
Chat
Phone Order
Contect Center
Issue
Complaint
Visit Retail Store
In-Store
Google Search
Return
In-Store
Product
Info
E-mail Order
Confirmation
E-mail
Social Media Facebook
Fan Club
Local Store
Begin Catalog
Order
Catalog Browse
Catalog
Mobile Device
Pick-up
Read Reviews
Share Experience
on Twitter
Figure 3
FUTURE OF WORK ENABLER: CUSTOMER EMPOWERMENT AND ENGAGEMENT (A MULTIPART SERIES)
5
6. Omni-channel is the new belief system in retail, particularly given the criticality of
aligning physical and virtual storefronts; with its early momentum, retail has many
lessons to offer other industries that will similarly need to pursue omni-channel
strategies. The underlying belief is that channels cannot be treated as silos and that
the experience needs to be cohesive and relevant across them.
In an omni-channel business, a customer is recognized as a single individual, no
matter which channel he or she is engaging in. Too often, companies treat their
bricks-and-mortar business as one silo and their digital operations as another, relying
on marketing to drive traditional promotions, for example, and the e-commerce
group to drive online deals. As a result, when a customer purchases $100 worth of
goods in a physical location and $50 from the same company online, she’s not seen
as a $150 customer but as two customers, with two spending buckets. Or, an interaction or transaction that starts online, for instance, breaks down when a customer
tries to return a purchased item in the physical location.
It’s never been more important for the CIO and the
chief marketing officer to forge a close partnership
to leverage common creative assets, collaborate on
strategies and share technology resources.
In order to move toward an omni-channel capability, businesses need to forge new
lines of communication among business functions, applications and technology
systems. Instead of operating as separate business units, businesses need to work
together in partnership. This is particularly true for the IT and marketing functions;
it’s never been more important for the CIO and the chief marketing officer to forge
a close partnership to leverage common creative assets, collaborate on strategies
and share technology resources.
It also means pulling together the data that resides in the various functions’ IT
systems and applications so that it can be viewed and shared across the enterprise.
The IT function needs to be nimble and able to quickly respond to customer-centric
strategies.
Get to Know Customers as Individuals
The second element of customer empowerment is recognizing customers as individuals, with a particular set of preferences and needs. Today’s customers increasingly expect businesses to recognize those preferences and provide personalized
interactions. This means developing a holistic and up-to-the-minute view of who
their customers are — across all touchpoints —and understanding their preferences,
even interacting with them, at an individual level.
Using available data and advanced analytics, businesses need to reevaluate and
redefine previously established customer segments that were based on demographics and lifestyles, and update them with actual information on their digital
behavior and how they interact with brands online. Every action that an individual
makes online — a product selection, a Web site click, a “like” or “share” on social
media — produces volumes of information that create a unique virtual identity —
something we call a code halo™. Businesses that learn to decode the digital informa-
6
FUTURE OF WORK
November 2013
7. tion contained in code halos can not only better understand how customers want
to interact and transact, but they will also realize unprecedented levels of insight
and business value by connecting the dots across channels and interactions. (For
more on this topic, see our white paper “Code Rules: A Playbook for Managing at
the Crossroads.”)
Even more opportunities open up for companies that make distinctions about what
customers need and desire in the different roles they inhabit in their lives. For
example, the same customer may want to interact with a brand differently on a
weekday evening on the way home from work vs. a weekend morning on the way to
the gym. Depending on time, place and channel, they will expect the experience to
align with their shopping motive. To do that, companies can’t peg customers with
one profile; they need to understand the customer through a prism that accounts
for several personas — the busy working woman with leisure time on the weekend
but time constraints during the week who wants a different experience, depending
on her mission.
Few companies have incorporated this level of technographics into their customer
profiles. Without it, companies cannot optimize their customer interactions; for
instance, they might send e-mail promotions to customers who would be more
responsive to text messages.
Define the Business Value You’re Trying to Achieve
Let’s face it, the rise of the social/mobile customer has been a fast one, and many
companies — particularly more traditional businesses — are concerned about
missing the boat on the new opportunities these new behaviors introduce. As a
result, many companies move quickly into new initiatives without first determining
their business goals and priorities.
Only after companies shift to a customer-centric
business model, use analytics to better segment
customers and prioritize their business goals are
they ready to select the particular tactics to pursue
for customer engagement and empowerment.
An example is a company that recently launched a multimillion-dollar omni-channel
transformation program. When asked why, the company responded, “Everyone else
is doing it, so we have to, too.” There was no real business strategy or end goal,
however, or even a sense of what customers cared about or how the program’s
success would be measured. The company was just anxious and antsy and felt it
had to do “something.”
While a company might get lucky diving in without a full-fledged strategy in place,
it’s not a chance worth taking. Businesses need to establish what they are trying to
accomplish — gain market share, boost new customer acquisitions, drive more value
from existing customers, attract more traffic to digital channels, improve online
conversion rates, enlarge basket size — and align their initiatives with those goals.
Otherwise, they are focused on building capabilities that may have minimal impact
on business performance.
FUTURE OF WORK ENABLER: CUSTOMER EMPOWERMENT AND ENGAGEMENT (A MULTIPART SERIES)
7
8. Quick Take
Keeping Pace When the Only Constant is Change
Businesses in all industries need to make changes to
keep up with changing customer behavior. Here are
some quick-tip guidelines for doing just that:
• Avoid
chasing technology: Technologies such as
mobile devices, social media, analytics and real-time
access to information are essential, but it only gets
you halfway there. Completing the journey will require
changing organizational behaviors, empowering
employees with more decision-making capabilities
and making processes more agile and customerfriendly.
• Adopt
agile processes: Companies need to deliver
new, differentiated customer experiences quickly.
This means striking a balance between innovating and
delivering enterprise-ready solutions. The faster you
can deliver new customer experiences, the faster you
can incorporate feedback from how customers are
responding to them. We recommend getting smaller
enhancements to market quickly (every three to four
weeks) and leveraging an agile delivery methodology
vs. a big bang solution delivered through Waterfall
development methods. It’s OK if some initiatives fail,
but they need to fail fast.
• Update your customer profiles: Companies need to
move beyond a traditional view of customer segments
by analyzing technographic behaviors and using this
data to know customers better.
• Don’t forgo the fundamentals: According to our 2013
shopper survey, 75% of customers still interact with
companies through traditional channels, and product
selection, price and customer service continue to be
the top three factors influencing purchase decisions.
Customers are becoming pickier about product
options and more informed about competitive pricing,
and they have higher expectations of sales associates.
Companies need to take action to address all three.
• Get your channels right: Be thoughtful about how
customers will interact with the brand through
different channels and optimize the experience for
those channels. For example, don’t replicate your full
e-commerce site on your mobile app — that’s not how
customers want to use their mobile devices.
Identify and Pursue the Highest Value Tactics
Only after companies shift to a customer-centric business model, use analytics
to better segment customers and prioritize their business goals are they ready to
select the particular tactics to pursue for customer engagement and empowerment.
There is no one right answer — the tactics that are pitch-perfect for one company
will not be the same for another. It’s a matter of choosing the tactics that will drive
the desired business value for the customer segments you wish to serve.
Tactics that companies typically deploy include the following:
• Mobile capabilities: Depending on their goal, companies might pursue a range of
capabilities to capture customers’ attention through their mobile devices. These
include mobile apps or mobile Web sites that provide streamlined experiences for
people on the go (such as fast food establishments that enable quick pickup for
online orders). Or they may leverage near-field communications capabilities to
send localized offers at the right time and place.
• Social: Businesses need to move beyond pursuing “likes” on their Facebook pages,
to higher-value social media opportunities. Examples include monitoring social
media activity to identify and resolve product and service issues; engaging in
forums to contribute (meaningfully) to relevant discussions; extending services and
8
FUTURE OF WORK
November 2013
9. transactions to social media sites (such as promotional contests on Facebook or
the ability to print Instagram photos, as Walgreens does);6 and alerting customers
to recent purchases made by their social media contacts. Companies can also
use popular social media sites (Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, for instance) to
embed their brand into the consumer zeitgeist; however, there are more ways to
get this wrong than right, as evidenced by AT&T’s tweeted 9/11 promotion,7 Tesco’s
tweeted pun following a horsemeat scandal and other social media blunders.8
• Web: Companies are seeing continued growth in their online businesses, but
Web sites are more than just a sales channel; they can augment the customer
experience across all customer touchpoints. For instance, an eyeglasses retailer
might lower the cost of service and increase customer engagement by offering a
virtual “try-it-on” capability on its Web site, as well as the ability to order sample
eyewear. The brick-and-mortar locations then need to maintain a contiguous
customer experience by understanding what transacted online, offering similar
policies and ensuring consistent pricing and promotions.
Real differentiation comes from empowering sales
people to make decisions that can “rescue the sale.”
• Interactive store experiences: Our retail studies all point to the same conclusion:
Customers still value the physical experience. At the same time, customers will
no longer be satisfied with an in-store experience that fails to adopt digital capabilities such as rich product information, self-service options and interactive
experiences. Here again, channel consistency is key. An example of a retailer
that “gets it” is Burberry, which embeds RFID tags into merchandise that project
multimedia content about the item onto store mirrors, such as insight into the
product’s craftsmanship or a video of how the item was worn on the catwalk.
“Walking through the doors is just like walking into our Web site,” former Burberry
CEO (now Apple retail chief) Angela Ahrendts has famously said.9
• Personalization/targeted
offers: Customers are well aware that companies
collect information about what they buy and when they buy it; it’s no wonder
they expect that data to be used intelligently, in the form of personalized offers
that they, as individuals, would value. Further, given that many customers carry a
smartphone, it’s possible to offer not just personalized but also localized discounts
and promotions that are particularly valuable at an immediate time and place,
using both historical intelligence and real-time information of where the customer
is and what he is doing, down to the store aisle in which he is browsing.
• Better
enabled store associates: As much as digital behavior has become
an overriding influence on consumers, brick-and-mortar locations are still an
essential piece of any business’s customer empowerment strategy, with four out
of five purchases still occurring in stores, according to our 2013 shopper survey.
The key is arming sales associates with the tools, information and training to
provide higher levels of service than ever before. (For more on this topic, see our
white paper, “Retail Gets Personal.”) Many businesses start by providing store
associates with a Web-connected tablet, and that’s a good start — with Web access,
the salesperson can see the same information that the consumer can. However,
beyond technology enablement, real differentiation comes from training sales
people to sense the customer’s true motivation and empowering them to make
decisions that can “rescue the sale.” This can mean matching a competitor’s
price, looking up inventory information at nearby locations, arranging for home
delivery or otherwise serving the shopper to the extent that it isn’t worth it to go
elsewhere (see Figure 4, next page.).
FUTURE OF WORK ENABLER: CUSTOMER EMPOWERMENT AND ENGAGEMENT (A MULTIPART SERIES)
9
10. Store Associates Provide Competitive Edge
Shoppers find value in the human element of in-store shopping.
Which of the following would you most like to see improved among store associates?
21%
Ability of store associates to
match competitive prices
29%
25%
Improved in-person customer service skills
32%
Access to info on product features & benefits
enabled by smartphone, tablet or digital signing
8%
5%
2012
21%
More store associate engagement in the aisles
2013
12%
8%
7%
Equipped with mobile check-out tools
17%
Better electronic access to product information,
inventory location and ordering
15%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
(Percent of respondents)
Response base: 2,500 shoppers in the U.S. and Canada
Source: “RIS Shopper Survey,” Cognizant/RIS, 2013.
Figure 4
Moving Forward with Customer Empowerment
Whether in retail or any other industry, understanding and engaging with the new
customer is a challenge for all businesses leaders. However, the fundamentals of
product, price and service are just as relevant as ever. Even while devising and
executing on their customer empowerment strategies, businesses cannot take
their eye off providing the most relevant products at the right price points and
surrounded by excellent service, both in the store and online. This is true all the way
to the completion of the transaction and beyond, to post-sales service. At each and
every one of these touchpoints, businesses have the ability to leave the customer
frustrated, satisfied or thrilled with the experience.
Companies that win will refrain from jumping into an initiative before thinking through
the four steps: moving to a customer-centric business model, using analytics to get
to know customers, establishing their business goals and identifying the highest
value tactics. With a strong foundation and a unified approach, companies can meet
and even exceed the expectations of today’s empowered customer.
10
FUTURE OF WORK
November 2013
11. Footnotes
1
“Don’t Need Mobile? You’re Nuts,” SlickText, Aug. 1, 2013, http://www.slicktext.com/blog/2013/08/dont-need-mobile-youre-nutsinfographic/.
2
“Retail Gets Personal,” Cognizant Technology Solutions, 2013, http://www.cognizant.com/retail/shopperstudy.
3
“The Traveler’s Road to Decision,” Google and Ipsos MediaCT, July 2012.
4
Stewart Gandolf, “24x7 Dependence: I’ll Bet Your Smartphone Is Within Arm’s Reach Right Now,” Healthcare Success Strategies,
May 1, 2013, http://www.healthcaresuccess.com/blog/healthcare-marketing/247-dependence-ill-bet-your-smartphone-is-withinarms-reach-right-now.html.
5
“Apple’s App Store Marks Historic 50 Billionth Download,” Apple Computer, Inc., May 16, 2013,
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/05/16Apples-App-Store-Marks-Historic-50-Billionth-Download.html.
6
Suzanne Choney, “Get Instagram Prints From Walgreens,” NBC News, Nov. 20, 2012,
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/get-instagram-prints-walgreens-1C7181506.
7
Kashmir Hill, “Today in Social Media Misadventures,” Forbes, Sept. 11, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/09/11/
today-in-social-media-misadventures-att-deletes-apologizes-for-911-themed-tweet/.
8
“The Biggest Social Media Blunders of 2013 So Far,” MyCleverAgency, July 24, 2013,
http://www.mycleveragency.com/2013/07/the-biggest-social-media-blunders-of-2013-so-far/.
9
“Burberry’s New Look,” NRF Stores, January 2013, http://www.stores.org/stores%20magazine%20january%202013/
burberry%E2%80%99s-new-look.
About the Author
Shannon Warner is an AVP within Cognizant Business Consulting, providing digital transformation
business advice to retail, consumer goods, manufacturing, travel, hospitality and utilities/energy
companies seeking to provide cohesive, relevant, value-added customer experiences across bricksand-mortar, Web, mobile, social media and call center touchpoints. Shannon’s areas of expertise include
digital commerce, digital information strategy and management, customer experience management,
digital marketing and loyalty, and program management. She can be reached at Shannon.Warner@
cognizant.com | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/shannonlwarner/.
FUTURE OF WORK ENABLER: CUSTOMER EMPOWERMENT AND ENGAGEMENT (A MULTIPART SERIES)
11