The Next Frontier of Customer Experience

Competitive advantage of a differentiated Customer Experience

The digital transformation opens up an unprecedented variety of touchpoints to the customer. Omnichannel Customer Experience (CX) is thus becoming one of the most important differentiating factors. Companies can gain an edge by developing an overarching CX strategy and management. This enables them to deliberately craft every customer touchpoint—both digital and physical—and orchestrate the Customer Journey end-to-end.

Not only is online commerce booming like never before, but consumer expectations of the CX have never been higher: High accessibility, personalized offers, and relevant content, preferably individually tailored, at the right time across all channels. Companies need to provide a coherent experience and make switching between channels appear seamless. These benchmarks have been set by the digital native companies. The bar is very high. It can be challenging for companies to achieve this if they lack a deep understanding of changing preferences. They know too little about what their customers want, how they interact with digital offerings, and what strategic and organizational perspectives can be derived from this.

The Different CX Journey Channels

A positive CX requires that companies know the needs and desires of their customers intimately. After all, anything that doesn’t interest the customer won’t be noticed or will be mercilessly clicked away. A positive Customer Experience, on the other hand, has a significant influence on brand perception and sales, thus representing a key success factor and a competitive advantage. The CX is not limited to the moment of the purchase decision—it starts with the first perception of the brand via many touchpoints, online and physical, and it includes all interactions before, during and after the purchase.

The key to understanding the current level of CX is quantitative and qualitative user research and data. It allows a comprehensive view of the customer. Digital actions and reactions can be tracked. Feedback on physical activities can be made available through in-depth interviews, cognitive walkthroughs, surveys, and measured via a Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) and the like.

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“CX includes all interactions before, during and after the purchase.”

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Companies with a successful CX strategy use the clients’ feedback, all the data traces they leave behind, to improve their offering or develop new business models. Implementing an effective CX strategy across all channels, geographies and products is a complex process.

On the one hand, the company must create the technical prerequisites and, on the other, align the organization and corporate culture with customer-driven orientation. BCG Platinion has devised a framework to help companies develop and implement a successful Customer Experience strategy.

 

It covers objective definition linked to company strategy, major CX cornerstones such as customer structure, behavioral archetypes, Customer Journey setup, as well as guidelines and governance for CX.

 

It further includes measurement methods and blueprints, control elements such as KPIs and, of course, knowledge management.

In a series of articles, we will present our framework, illustrate strategies and approaches for developing and implementing a dynamic customer experience, and explain individual measures and their success factors.

 

 

 

Article 1: All or nothing: Designing holistic Customer Experiences

 

Article 2: Stand out from the crowd: Defining the core CX differentiators

 

Article 3: Total CX: Mastering the complexity of the Customer Journey(s)

 

Article 4: Look outside, copy with pride: Leveraging examples and best practices in CX collection

 

Article 5: One size doesn’t fit all: Personalization versus standardization of CX

 

Read the single articles in full length here:

 

 

 

 

  • Digital & Tech | Article

    All or Nothing: Designing Holistic Customer Experiences

    The first article of our series dives deep into why using frameworks helps in building a new CX strategy and reducing the complexity of the process

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  • Digital & Tech | Article

    Stand out from the Crowd: Defining the Core CX Differentiators

    The second article in our CX series shares how to define the CX differentiators based on strengths and objectives

    Learn More

    About the Authors

    Dr. Iana Kouris

    Managing Director
    Frankfurt, Germany

    Iana is a Managing Director at BCG Platinion in Frankfurt, heading Design & Engineering Team in Berlin. Iana leads projects across industries focused on Customer Experience Strategy, Customer Journey Redesign, Design Thinking enablement and Digital, Agile and Human-Centered Transformations. Iana joined BCG Platinion from Nokia & Nokia Bell Labs, where she was leading Transformation by Design and before that was driving Business Operations & Executive Customer Engagement. Prior to that, Iana spent 7 years in management consulting at McKinsey & Company Inc. Connecting different disciplines was always Iana’s passion, which is reflected in her multidisciplinary studies, including a Dr. degree in Business Administration from RWTH Aachen University, Dipl. in Mathematics, BA in Philosophy & Economics, and further qualifications in Design, Fine Arts and Music.

    Dr. Martin Böckle

    Lead Strategic Designer
    London, United Kingdom

    Martin has a strong focus on designing human-centered digital experiences within the practice areas of BCG Platinion solving strategic design challenges through the application of qualitative and quantitative research. He is a strong advocate for behavioral design concepts like gamification and contributes to the emerging research stream of human-centered artificial intelligence (HCAI). Furthermore, he focuses on other topics such as design due diligence (DDD), design leadership and design strategy for Metaverse applications.

    Robert Thorpe

    Senior Strategic Designer
    Berlin, Germany

    Robert is a Senior Strategic Designer in the Berlin office of BCG Platinion. His core proficiencies include large scale qualitative and quantitative research practices, customer experience journey mapping, technological design flow management, as well as UX/UI best practices and benchmarking.