2021 Adobe Summit Recap: Digital Customer Experience – The New Approach
During their Adobe Summit session, Uday Kotla, Global Business Head, Digital Experience at Infosys (Blue Acorn iCi’s parent company), and Senthil Kumar, Sr. MTS Domain Architecture, Director, Product & Technology, T-Mobile, revealed fascinating insights into customer experience disruptions that are emerging in the pandemic-ridden world. They discussed the challenges companies face, how they are transforming businesses, and the technology choices they are making to reimagine delightful customer experiences.
Watch the recorded session here or read the recap below.
Common Challenges Companies Face
With the emergence of new business models, delivering hyper-personalized experiences at scale has become a must-have for companies that want to remain competitive. Companies succeeding in personalization focus on leveraging data to create 360-degree personas and understanding the end-to-end customer journey.
Today’s technologies enable companies to collect data across the customer journey and present personalized experiences no matter where an individual interacts with the brand. Many companies find it overwhelming when deciding which technologies align with their business needs and integrating those systems for a seamless experience.
BUDing Experiences
Uday introduced a concept called BUDing Experiences to help companies remember what businesses need to prioritize when evaluating new technology and customer experiences.
- Boundless for all users, including customers, partners, and employees
- Ubiquitous on all delivery channels
- Delightful, engaging, and meaningful
Companies will face many decisions when choosing their technologies. Will you build or buy a platform? Is open source or commercial the best option? Enterprise or best of breed? Uday has found many companies choosing to invest in enterprise marketing platforms such as Pega, Salesforce, Adobe, or OpenText.
When choosing technologies for T-Mobile’s digital experiences, Senthil involves key stakeholders across the organization to define and align on a technology strategy. Once they align on a strategy, they choose the technology that will deliver the best experiences for their customers. “Given the options, we always look for what best solves our customers’ pain points,” said Senthil.
How T-Mobile Responded to Disruptions in the Industry
No matter where a customer interacted with T-Mobile, whether from home or in-store, the telecom company wanted to provide safe and convenient experiences. When the customer care team switched from working in call centers to working from home, T-Mobile gave them access to the same technologies and applications they were using in the office to ensure no disruptions in servicing customers.
Senthil noted that when it comes to online self-service, many companies prioritize delivering a great customer experience, but very few have mastered it. T-Mobile implemented an option to chat with a retail representative on the T-Mobile site, mobile app, and Facebook Messenger—ensuring they can interact with customers in their preferred channel. If customers prefer to visit a physical store, the telecom company added an appointment scheduler to the T-Mobile website. For tasks like account authentication and password recovery, the telecom company implemented simple yet secure options for a frictionless journey.
Connecting the Dots Between Data & KPIs
T-Mobile’s approach to digital customer experience meant connecting the dots between actionable insights, 360-degree customer views, and measurable KPIs. To effectively leverage data, companies need to add an AI and machine learning layer. “It’s important to leverage AI to understand the customer intent and help us determine what is the next best action,” said Senthil. This helps T-Mobile combine real-time contextual information with historical data to deliver personalized communications across the customer journey.
Senthil has seen a greater push towards disruptive models and capabilities such as digital selling, self-service, and personalized views of plans and usage patterns. To meet the needs of their customers, T-Mobile is delivering demography-based configurations and data-driven customer experiences through connected devices.
What Areas Telecom Should Focus On Next
Areas like 5G, IoT, and connected homes, SD-WAN/SASE, and mobile data offloading may seem like buzzwords today, but they are the reality of tomorrow. “Connectivity has become a central part of daily life,” noted Senthil. Companies need to focus on technologies that will enable secure and connected experiences and real-time communications. Most importantly, customer delight must remain at the core.
If your company is ready to take a new approach to digital customer experience, contact us today to see how Infosys x Blue Acorn iCi can help.