The Customer Experience Cloud

Have you ever had a disjointed experience dealing with a company?

Imagine that you are stuck in the airport. You were on the last flight of the day headed for home. And, they cancel it. There is usually a series of changes first like a delay or two and maybe a gate change. You don’t know much other than you aren’t getting home today. And, because of the series of delays, it is now too late to get a hotel room for the night. You get to sleep in the airport… with CNN loudly playing on the TV, the TSA announcement every 5 minutes warning you to only pack liquids in 3 ounce bottles and not to take bags from strangers, and the mayor of the airport city proudly welcoming you and wishing you a pleasant stay. What fun.

You have had a chance to interact with the gate agent or maybe the phone center to rebook your flight for morning. They know you are stuck.

You have probably posted on Facebook and Tweeted to the world that you are tired and frustrated. You might have mentioned once or twice that you hate the airline and that this airport experience is less than pleasant.

While you are trying to get comfy sleeping in a chair or on the floor, your phone buzzes. You have a new email. It is the airline inviting you to take advantage of the great sale that is going on. Book your next trip with these great cheap fares now!

How likely are you to be receptive to that offer? Booking your next flight with this airline is probably the last thing you want to do. In fact, the email offer likely has had the opposite effect – pushing you away from future interactions and purchases.

This is an experience design improvement opportunity. The airline, airport, and other vendors involved in this experience need to understand things from the customer’s point of view. What are they experiencing and how could it be made better.

But, to really make improvements, there will need to be coordination across departments and systems. A small improvement might be to pause the outbound marketing communications with a stranded traveler. That means that the service and marketing systems would have to have a shared view of the customer. This could be a challenge, right?

Fortunately, there is a clear vision for how to achieve this vision. It is called the Customer Experience Cloud. Altimeter is a research group that delivers great insights. In the Customer Experience Cloud, they provide a clear map for the systems and approach needed to deliver better end to end experiences. Note that Altimeter requires you to complete a form to download this report. It is a great report and I encourage you to get it.

Today’s customers don’t care whether they’re talking to the marketing department or the service department. To them, there’s only one brand, and they demand to be recognized across the entire company as the same, unique individual. Altimeter

According to Altimeter, there are four essential components of the customer experience cloud.

A system of record that stores all of information generated from customer interactions across all channels.
A customer insights team to provide a rich understanding of the customer rather than channel or silo specific interpretations. This team creates rich customer personas and customer journey maps to help everyone understand the customer and their experience clearly.
A content management team that takes the findings from the customer insights team and creates content that can be delivered to the customer across all of their interactions on different channels. This enables a consistent voice and a cohesive story throughout the customer journey.
A system of engagement that enables communication with the customer throughout all of the interactions on the web, social media, email, mobile, and more.

I have spent significant time working toward a similar vision, building a team capable of delivering customer insights and partnering with content, marketing, and support teams. For me, having a system like the customer experience cloud in place is a critical step toward ensuring you can deliver great experiences. When combined with other elements of experience design, this is a really good start toward defining how to deliver great end to end experiences.

What is your thought? Have you tried to build a customer experience cloud in your organization? What has worked well? What challenges do you still face? Let’s continue the discussion. Leave a comment or reach me on Twitter @XDstrategy.