Digital CX Goes to the Movies
As organizations realize they are no longer selling products and services but delivering on experiences and outcomes, this shift will require the ability to execute mass personalization at scale. But much of today's customer experience (CX) discussion focuses on linear customer journeys across multiple channels and the need for delivering an omnichannel experience. Unfortunately, with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), omnichannel is not good enough. The design point must focus on channel ubiquity across a variety of settings. Why?
CX efforts will move from focusing on channels to focusing on settings and scenarios. Designing experiences by individual channel—mobile, Web, chat, phone, in person—creates a disjointed experience overall. Settings and scenarios, on the other hand, take into account multiple contexts and channels. Settings can vary widely: an office, a conference room, an elevator, a car, a living room. And a focus on scenarios means accommodating multiple customer journeys in each setting.
Digital CX will deliver rich relevance through context. Role, relationship, channel, identity, time, temperature, geo-spatial location, heart rate, and sentiment are just some of the context attributes that can help deliver mass personalization at scale. Multiple context attributes will factor into every scene and scenario, delivered from beacons and other sensors in the IoT.
Digital CX will provide natural user experiences based on identity. A user's identity supplies an initial context and enables access and permissions. And a user's ambient identity in the IoT will add to the customer experience by making identity validation easier.
Here are two examples of scenes that blend setting, scenario, and context attributes into a seamless customer experience.
SCENE 1: A VISIT TO THE HOSPITAL
Setting 1: Lobby
As you enter, the hospital does a quick search on who you might be visiting. The patient gave a list of approved visitors, so you're automatically guided by smartphone to the nearest elevator bank. As this is your first visit, a suggestion is made to drop by the gift shop.
Setting 2: Gift Shop
The shop, knowing you're a new visitor, offers a 15-percent-off coupon as you enter. You choose a bouquet of flowers and go to checkout. The clerk reminds you the patient is allergic and suggests balloons instead.
Setting 3: Elevator
The elevator informs you the patient you're visiting, a family member, is on the fourth floor, the cardiac unit. As you exit, you have the option to download materials on cardiac health.
Setting 4: Patient Room
As you're next of kin, the room knows to pull up the latest chart, connect you to a chat with the physician if needed, and alert the nurse that you've arrived.
SCENE 2: A DAY AT THE OFFICE
Setting 1: The Office Building
You enter and the security system asks if you'd like to go to your floor, the 10th; catch up with your boss on the eighth floor; or greet a customer, who's arrived early and is waiting in the customer visit center on the fourth floor.
Setting 2: Elevator
As you approach your floor, your admin automatically sends a request to your device for a lunch order for the day, and your meeting schedule opens up for the next three hours. All relevant work files come up for viewing. A chat session with your team opens up so you can monitor any questions related to you.
Setting 3: The Conference Room
You enter for a meeting and don't have to take notes: The meeting is automatically transcribed with speech recognition, and the system knows who's in the room and what languages they speak. A chat session automatically starts for everyone attending the meeting remotely.
Setting 4: The Car
Your car pulls up your last call and asks if you want to dial in. Notes and presentations appear on screen based on who you're talking to. The car notices you're low on fuel and asks if you want to stop at the nearest station.
Thanks to the IoT, these sorts of scenes will soon play out at a hospital or office building near you. Will your customer experience design be up to the challenge?
R "Ray" Wang is principal analyst, founder, and chairman of Constellation Research. He is the author of the business strategy and technology blog A Software Insider's Point of View. His latest best-selling book is Disrupting Digital Business, published by Harvard Business Review Press.