Digital Transformation. Heck, YES! But why?

by Thomas Wieberneit | Apr 27, 2016 | Blog |

Digital Transformation, much like customer journey mapping, customer engagement, customer experience management, is all the rage at the moment. Everybody – and their dog – talks about it. Including me … but then I think the term is widely overused. The other ones, too. Many companies strive to ‘digitally transform’ themselves. Because this is what one does. Everybody does it. But why? How? What does digital transformation deliver? Does it deliver? And what is digital transformation at all? Lets start with the last question. A transformation is a wholesales change of an organisation, e.g. a business. A transformation touches all departments of the business, its whole value chain. Digital, in its broadest sense, refers to anything computer. So, in combination ‘digital transformation’ means to change a business in order to take more advantage of computers and software, in all departments, along the whole value chain. It can even mean a change of the whole business model. Quite a tall order. Nothing that one just does just for the sake of it, one would think. This is an endeavour that an established business embarks on only if it faces the risk of failing, and one that usually takes quite some time. What are possible triggers? I see three, two of them relate to the market place, one to technology. Changing customer demands New or changed competition Technological advances OK, now we are talking. These days many businesses realise that all three of these triggers are set. Technology surely leapt forward in the past few years. E.g. the adaptation of mobiles on the consumer side is unprecedented. This got followed by drastically, and ever faster, changing...

Customer Experience and Design

by Thomas Wieberneit | Apr 18, 2016 | Blog |

A brief while ago I had a talk with Ian Hodge, a very established Australia based consultant. One of the topics we talked about was what customer experience is and how to measure it. This led to following brief conversation on LinkedIn. Hi Ian, you told me that you are thinking about what customer experience is about. Have a look at below article by Paul Greenberg. The main topic is something else but in the second half there are some very good thoughts. http://www.zdnet.com/article/adobe-doubles-down-but-it-cant-stay-in-vegas/ Cheers Thomas Thx Thomas – interesting. I like the “catch 22” problem that delighting a customer runs the risk of increasing expectations etc. An interesting challenge I perceive is the integration of data analysis with creativity in design. This was always an important aspect of “marketing” and now applies more intensively and broadly with designing “customer experiences”. Look forward to keeping in touch. Rgds Ian yes, this challenge is what I tried to voice. It is not always a technology approach. But then once could have the idea of using marketing approaches to it – at least in a B2C world something like the following could work in the digital world: Try different approaches (designs) and roll them out to different target groups. Let it run parallel to current state while gathering data. This can be usages, usage patterns, abandoned carts, changes to cross-, upselling behaviour, recommendations, endorsements, etc. Apparently this needs to be planned. bugger – hitting enter to send should be forbidden 😉 Combine this with sentiment analysis and all of the sudden you have an approach that can cover both: The consumable experience...

Customer Experience, Customer Engagement and CRM – Think Big, Act Small

by Thomas Wieberneit | Jan 15, 2016 | Blog |

This is the second post in my mini series about continuously improving the customer experience and customer engagement in the triangle of Customer Experience Management (CEX), Customer Engagement Management (CEM), and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Well, actually the third, if you include my guest post There’s no customer experience without customer engagement on friend Paul Greenberg’s ZDNet blog. A while ago, in my post CxM and PoS – A Tale of two Cities I have asked you to stay tuned in case you were interested in learning about a way of implementing the strategy of thinking big while acting small in order to be able to keep the big goal – adding value for your customers offering the best possible experiences –  at the center of actions. All this while acknowledging that priorities are shifting, budgets are scarce, and different customers prefer to engage via different sequences of touch points. Sounds like a nasty and complicated challenge. And it is! But if you break it down into smaller pieces it becomes manageable. It requires a kind of SCRUM-like project management approach, on corporate level. The objective is to have a strategy and delivery infrastructure that bases on optimally delivering to customer needs covers every touch point with the customer while remembering that not every customer journey is created equal is flexible enough to quickly adjust to changing customer demands embraces the strengths and weaknesses of the existing systems. Not every touch point needs all available information It all starts with the customer, with customer engagement, customer experience and, yeah, management of the relationship with the customer, in a mobile dominated...

CRM Evolution – Some not so random Thoughts

by Thomas Wieberneit | Aug 21, 2015 | Blog |

CRM Evolution 2015 was a very vibrant conference with lots of discussion that included a number of high profile industry influencers. For me as a first time attendee it was amazing how approachable many of these people are. But then this might come with the territory. To understand these takeaways it is important to know that my reason for attending was getting into closer touch with what is going on in the CRM world outside SAP – and New Zealand. So, these are purely notes and thoughts that result from sessions, discussions with influencers, speakers and other conference attendees, and not learnings from vendor briefings. Also, this event was split into three separate conferences: CRM Evolution Customer Service Experience Speechtek I nearly exclusively concentrated on CRMEvolution and one session from the Customer Service Experience. First things first: Was it worthwhile coming all the way from NZ? This is very clearly a yes. Paul Greenberg and the team did an amazing job in lining up interesting speakers. What now are the topics that currently seem to move the industry in random order? Customer engagement (CEM), customer experience (CEX), customer journey (CJ) and how these topics relate to CRM Big Data, with a view on the Internet of Things IoT, and related to it: Predictive analytics How to do things CRM right Not surprisingly: The Future of CRM (technology as well as industry) Also not surprisingly these are all interrelated. CEM, CEX, CJ and CRM The intersection of these three topics is extremely interesting. These are also controversially discussed topics. Paul Greenberg recently, in another “stake in the ground” article, gave...