USING DIGITAL TO RE-IMAGING B2B CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES

An update of an article that first appeared in INSEAD KNOWLEDGE

A broad array of digital tools can help you re-imagine the customer journey.

“Digital transformation” is a slippery term for marketers and other senior executives. It is so often used that many are vague about its actual meaning. There is a common misconception that companies must rush to refashion themselves as “digital first”. After all, B2B customers around the world increasingly live online. The last few years alone have seen new digital tools, technologies and trends exponentially increase the number of customer touch points that corporate customers rely on to engage with their suppliers.

Yet my research shows that a swift, haphazard adoption of digital trends is usually worse than doing nothing at all. B2B companies shouldn’t stand still, but it is better to walk in the right direction than to run the wrong way. The consistent winners of the digital race are usually not the fastest adopters of new technology, but the ones who properly integrate digital into an existing organisational strategy. The winners understand that digital shouldn’t replaceme analog customer relationships experiences, but enhance them.

To make this work, suppliers to corporations will often have to change the way they do business and incorporate digital tools into their customer experience. Think of digital tools – AR, VR, AI, social media, 3-D printing, etc. – as “software” that doesn’t function properly unless it is installed properly, on the right hardware with users (your employees) who know how to operate it. Analysing customer data, design thinking, lean management and cross-silo coordination become more important than the technology itself.

Most important, before leveraging any digital trends, executives must understand and deconstruct the customer journey. Only then can a company identify low-hanging fruit and isolate touch points where data, digital tools, and channels can make the biggest difference to the customer experience.

Instead of the buzzword “digital transformation”, companies should think about “digital transformation of the customer experience”. The end goal is to offer a superior customer experience and be better able to generate growth in competitive environments. GE, Amazon Web Services and Adobe are great examples that show how companies can strategically leverage digital trends to engage customers effectively at important touch points.

Optimising the customer journey

But let’s back up a step. Above, I mentioned understanding and decomposing the customer journey in order to make better-informed decisions when leveraging digital trends. How do you start to do that?

First, employ a step-by-step approach to customer-experience mapping, a process for discovering how customers or new users feel as they engage with your brand across each touch point in their experience. It’s also about understanding what customers really need, want and expect at each touch point.

For this you need customer insights, which should not be confused with data. Data is only the raw material needed to extract an insight. Converting the former to the latter can be complex because of the extensive volume of data that can be accessed by B2B companies today. Before digital, channel barriers and organisational silos limited the accessibility of corporate customer information. Data privacy rules notwithstanding, today’s companies have access to a head-spinning amount of information about their corporate buyers and users that can be assembled from their own database, the industry ecosystem and from online sources such as search, GPS, ad clicks and social monitoring. The data faucet has become a firehose pouring out insights for those who can control the flow.

How do you know when you’ve got a strategic insight? There are three main criteria:

● Novelty – You don’t shout “eureka!” unless you’ve discovered something new or uncover a novel way to understand an old customer behavior.
● Credibility – The insight should be derived from data and validated by interacting directly with customers.
● Actionable – The insight must connect to business goals and merit taking action to take advantage of it.

The toolbox

Luckily, in recent years, a host of enterprise services and tools has become available to help turn data into insights – drawing upon everything from traditional research and intelligence tools to automated decision making and smart analytics (like your fridge ordering your favourite milk). Based on their specific needs, companies can choose from this array of offerings to assemble their own digital transformation toolbox. This enables companies to pinpoint and exploit opportunities for optimising the customer experience.

Google in Russia

Google used tools developed for its own corporate customers, such as YouTube, Google Trends and search analytics, to win in the Russian market against the key competitor Yandex. Back in 2012, Google found that younger Russian entrepreneurs were gravitating more towards mobile, and that their evolving mobile habits were more flexible than the desktop-based behaviors of established business people. Also, the younger the Russian, the more likely it was that he or she had used Google in the past.

Google decided that the novelty and convenience of Voice Search, a mobile-only feature unique to Google, would attract young digital adepts. Good word-of-mouth among the large group of 25- to 45-year-olds would have a major impact on corporate customers, a key target segment. By December 2015, Google.ru’s share of the mobile search market reached a historic high of 37.5 percent from just 27.2 percent in January 2014. Voice Search – and the multi-channel communication campaign launched to promote it – was critical to this success.

Seize the micro-moments

Deconstructing the customer journey of corporate customers uncovers a surprising number of touch points that can serve as springboards for optimised customer experiences. To implement, companies can select from a rapidly expanding arsenal of data gathering tools offered by Google, Salesforce and Amazon Web Services to name just a few major suppliers.

For example, a while ago I helped a leading Las Vegas hotel digitize its understanding of the customer experience. We discovered that the average guest’s interaction with the property contained 125 touch points! A single venue, such as the onsite dance club, encompassed more than one: the bar, the rest rooms, etc. Corporate customers overlapped with vacationers and consumer travelers in some but not all of the touch points. They also tended to value some services such as rapid check-in, broad band capacity and airport shuttles more than consumers.

Scanning the customer journey end-to-end, we first sought the low-hanging fruit, areas where customer-centric improvements were not only necessary but also straightforward to execute. Right away, we homed in on the check-in process, where corporate guests’ first impression of the property was often harmed by a long wait at the reception desk. We leveraged mobile technology to allow customers to check in online with their phones. We also introduced keyless room access via a mobile app, video tours so guests could see what their room looked like prior to check-in and an automated concierge for re-booking if they were unsatisfied with the room.

It took quite a few digital trends – mobile, video, Internet of Things, robotics, etc. – to revamp the customer experience around one vital touchpoint (check-in). Applied across the entire customer journey, this method constitutes digital transformation that matters.