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So far we have discussed customer loyalty and engagement strategies when it comes to building a great customer experience. In this post we will cover the need for customer convenience as an important element in the customer experience that you deliver as a brand. But why something so seemingly simple like convenience is a critical benchmark for a great customer experience? There are a few good reasons!

• It saves time: Time is money, something we’ve been taught since we were in school. Well, today, a customer’s time is your money. The faster he’ll be able to complete a transaction, the higher your sales.
• It encourages buying: A convenient option of sourcing their desired product or service – such as grocery shopping on a tablet – encourages the customer to shop more without having to physically exert themselves.
• It changes perception: The more convenient options your customers have, the more they will perceive you to be a trustworthy retailer, thus increasing their loyalty towards your brand.

It is imperative that as a business, you are willing to go that extra mile to satisfy your customers. The obvious benefit of this is winning the trust of your consumer, besides building higher brand recall, ultimately helping you set the foundation for a long-term relationship.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think about why is convenience such an important factor for them. The retail space is moving online, diminishing the need for face-to-face interaction. Self-service is the new mantra in convenience. Businesses in today’s digitised world need to focus on targeted marketing and trust building strategies, that are subtle, yet effective where the customer has a chance to interact with your brand, in isolation.

Tapping the full potential of today’s customer-empowered marketplace requires a complete view of the customer across the organization and across every touchpoint in every medium. With customers moving online, physical interaction is now being replaced by seamless customer experience. Soon customers will manage most of their relationship with the enterprise without interacting with a human.

Another fascinating example of self-service are Smart kiosks and Digital Branch that you see in varied customer facing businesses and banks. We see them today in movie theatres, helping consumers skip long queues and of course as ATMs, perhaps the most prominent example of how self service and convenience are intrinsically linked to a better customer experience. I would even go as far as saying an app is the new age self service kiosk sitting on your customer’s mobile phone. Think about it…. Today I don’t have to walk into a store, I can shop while lying in bed in the middle of the night, or in the early hours of the morning on my way back from the gym. Is it convenient? Yes! Does it lend to a better experience for the customer? Most definitely.

If you are looking to provide a superlative customer experience for your business, every time anyone interacts with your brand/business, it is not only important to win their loyalty and use innovative engagement strategies, but to also make the whole experience ‘convenient’ for them. Advanced Customer Communication Management Solutions, such as Interact DX help businesses create all forms of customer communications that can be delivered across print, web, and mobile channels, resulting in enhanced customer experience and loyalty.

When designing a customer experience that is hinged on convenience, these are the questions you need to ask yourself?

• Security: Customers need to be assured that their information is safe and will not be misused.
• Value Addition: Businesses should strive to make every interaction a memorable one for the consumer, whether it is through upselling based on previous purchases, or offering discounts for loyalty.
• Commitment: Businesses need to be committed to acquiring new and retaining old customers – it needs to be an ongoing process.

You are well on your way to enhancing the quality of customer experience and if you want to hit the top rung of the success ladder, then stay tuned for our next post, as we delve into yet another ingredient that adds to the perfect customer experience recipe!

Five decades back in time, who would have thought of a website that would allow us to type our thoughts in only 140 characters, and such a platform would gradually turn into a big success and have the power to alter the way we think, act and behave today? Technology is evolving rapidly, and so is the way we communicate with each other.

Tracing back to our origins, the pioneering invention that aided human communication was a ‘pictograph’ which involved writing being engraved into a stone. The science of communication has reached an altogether new level, ever since then. We are in an age, where Facebook reminds us of our best friend’s birthday, Twitter tells us what is trending, and Instagram gives us a picturesque view of everyone’s lifestyle. Each one of us is inevitably a part of the digital transformation that is taking place today and altering our lives in countless ways.

The advent of e-commerce websites is bringing our necessities to our doorstep within no time. Today, each and every individual has the power to influence the decision made by another individual by sharing a review or recommending something online. This paradigm shift in the way we interact with each other is helping us make better and more informed decisions.

Amplified usage of mobile devices, smartphones, and multi-channel social media platforms is inducing customers to steadily move away from the paper-based mind set and steer towards dynamic communication. Over the past decade, the role of customer communications has been elevated as a core component to help enterprises compete on delivering better and enhanced customer experiences.

With customer communication becoming a key differentiator, static one-way communication has been replaced by interactive customer communication that ensures a connected customer experience. Digitally empowered customers expect brands to know their preferences and engage with them through their medium of choice and have meaningful and timely interactions.

We need to transform the way we look at each and every medium of customer communication like a monthly bill or a statement; and empower customer engagement with a two-way, consistent, personalized and secured customer interactions. Consider customer communication not only as a medium to connect across touch points, but as a crucial channel to establish customer relationships.

The payments industry is today witnessing rapid and disruptive innovation across its value chain. Technology has rapidly multiplied efficiency in wearable payments to far beyond mobile devices. It has amazingly integrated payment methods into apparel, fashion accessories and other adaptable wearables.

We thus have Paypal and Starbucks further innovating on ‘smart-watch’ technology. Mastercard is looking at a wearable payment system with clothes and accessories for ‘touch-less’ payments. Nymi, the smart wristband, allows authentication through biometrics. Fitness wristband Jawbone has teamed up with American Express in the US. Xiaomi’s MiBand has made Alipay its partner in China. Multitudes of near field communication (NFC) devices periodically enter the market. Power Reviews1 reports that 82% of shoppers looked to wearable technology to enhance their shopping experience, and 22% wanted touch-less or one-click payment.
Welcome to the world of wearables. Gartner states that “by 2018, 50% of consumers in mature markets will use smartphones or wearables for mobile payments.”.2

From a logical and convenience perspective, wearable payments make great sense. Leave your wallet at home and pay with your wearable device. Enjoy greater convenience, personalized support, offers and discounts. The question is, can it become a mainstream payment method?

The commerce of wearables

Figure 1 shows how America made their payments in 2015.

Tractica3 estimates that worldwide wearable payments are currently around $3.1 billion and will grow to $501 billion by 2020. Gartner predicts that 50% of consumers in mature markets will use smartphones or wearables for payments by 2018. Pundits are unanimous that possibilities are unending and only the reach of innovation will limit the scope of wearable payments.

Not without challenges

As with anything new and innovative, wearable payments have their own set of challenges.

Pricing, for one. Some of them are placed out of reach of ubiquitous use. The comfortable popularity of mobile-based NFC payment could outpace other wearables. Concerns on security still remain. And finally, the wearable wallet will need to bundle payments with non-payment services such as coupons, loyalty, or digital receipts to create strong value for consumers other than just the gizmo geeks.

The road beyond wearables

Clearly consumers are interacting with devices far beyond beyond plastic and smartphones with unbelievable ease. So what lies next in the foreseeable future? Are today’s wearables, exciting as they may be, just a transitional technology? Will the ultimate end-goal be an integrated implantation with our body? Looking at the hurtling pace and panorama of innovation nothing seems impossible. It is very possible that our environment will automatically adjust to our physiological, emotional and physical needs through chips and systems embedded in our bodies.

Will the wheel of innovation turn full circle? Only time can tell.

1. ‘2015 Mobile, Wearable Tech and Hyper-Relavance’
2. Gartner, Predicts 2016: Know Your Customers to Capture Opportunities in the Personal Technologies Market.”, November 18, 2015
3. ‘Worldpay’ Report

It was first talked about as a strong business opportunity. Gartner had predicted that worldwide spending on information security would reach $71.1 billion in 2014. Very quickly, the opportunity turned stronger, but it was now founded on a serious threat. And even before 2015 turned the corner, major security forums declared 2016 as the year of cyber risk. The cyber security market is now set to soar to $170 billion in the next 5 years. It has grown to such epic proportions that it has also given birth to a parallel industry, cyber insurance.

Shocking data breaches involving millions of dollars in the last two years (the high-profile cyberattacks on 77 million user accounts at Sony Pictures and on 76 million records of JP Morgan Chase) have shown that information security is no longer a mere IT concern, but a serious business imperative that envelops business continuity, trust and brand reputation. The 2015 Cost of Data Breach Study from IBM and the Ponemon Institute computed the average cost of a data breach at $3.79 million.

Organizations are waking up to this emergency alert. Some have adopted risk-based cyber security frameworks, while others have deployed specific strategies for cloud-based services and the Internet of Things. Microsoft, IBM and Raytheon have declared their serious intent to tackle this as a business priority with their recent acquisitions of niche cyber security firms (Microsoft acquired the Israeli firm Adallom, IBM acquired Resilient Systems and Raytheon bought over Blackbird Technologies).

On the other hand, the cybercriminal knows his business well and is getting sophisticated and more skilful with each passing year. We just need to be smarter to prevent and defend more sophisticated cyber-attacks in days to come. As we move through 2016 and beyond, our cyber resilience needs to extend far beyond just information and access security. It needs to be business-centric and focused on proactive vigilance, rather than being reactive based on detection. We need to confront known and unknown, intended and unintended repercussions arising out of our cyberspace activities.

Data Sources:

• The report “Cyber Security Market by Solution (IAM, Encryption, DLP, Risk and Compliance Management, IDS/IPS, UTM, Firewall, Antivirus/Antimalware, SIEM, Disaster Recovery, DDOS Mitigation, Web Filtering, and Security Services) – Global Forecast to 2020″, http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/cyber-security.asp
• 2015 cost of data breach study: Impact of Business Continuity Management
• http://www-03.ibm.com/security/data-breach/
• http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2828722

“Innovation needs to be part of your culture. Customers are transforming faster than we are, and if we don’t catch up, we’re in trouble.”
~Ian Schafer

No, I don’t mean to sound like a pessimist by starting this blog post in the “customer experience” series with the above mentioned quote. But I did want to quote Ian Schafer here with the intention of bringing about a shift in the dialogue. You see our last two posts, illuminated the fact that we are in the “age of the customer” and that clinching his love and ultimately loyalty will be the cornerstone for your brand’s success. But that’s only a half truth. Let me explain.

There is no need to dwell on the fact that digitalization has shrunk the marketplace, and helped it explode all at the same time. For instance, a person sitting in Uzbekistan today can also dream of running a successful e-commerce outfit, and rake in the millions (individual country laws permitting), while serving customers both in developed and developing economies, which might not have been possible only a decade ago. But it’s not just because of a great idea or the fact that he has worked hard on developing a great product alone. Customer experience is much more than that. In fact, if anything a good business idea and a great product are only the ‘raw ingredients’ in your customer experience meal. It’s the spice of innovation and the zest of engagement that will add flavour to your brand’s overall customer experience.

And here’s why!

While earlier, customers engaged with a brand through television, radio, media, outdoor advertising, and various other touchpoints, today, the Internet and digitalization has changed the game. No scratch that, it has redefined it.

According to a news report I read recently, we are generating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data and what’s more fascinating is that 90% of this data has been generated in the last two years. And while one may argue that data was always growing, the difference today, lies in the access we have. Analytical and processing capabilities have taken giant leaps over the last few years, we now know how to use what we have and do it well. Smart mobile devices too have made access to information easier than ever before. The result?

Today, that Uzbekistan based e-commerce company with 3 people at the helm is capable of attacking the market and scaling up with incredible speed that would stagger large scale enterprises more rapidly than ever before. It can insert itself effectively between you and your customers and zero in on lucrative value-chain segments. And his biggest differentiator? An innovative engagement strategy for his customer.

According to Gartner’s Gene Alvarez, “Customers will not tolerate companies that have amnesia when it comes to remembering them and their preferences for recognition. This makes it imperative for companies to recognize their customers and to serve them pertinent content that demonstrates the proper recognition and treatment”. In others words, we believe this means that it pays to have an innovative and effective customer engagement strategy that will help not only clinch the customers, but keep them coming for seconds.

How can you innovate the go to engagement route for your customers, it’s simple –

Listen – online and offline. To feedback, to suggestions, to responses and even conversations. They will give you an insight into who your customer is and what he wants. In fact, it may even be a good idea to involve your customers in changing or building an innovative customer experience, ensuring higher chances of success

Build a relationship – Not just on birthdays and occasions but around habits too. Holiday seasons, end of the month slash sales (because the salary is depleting), being a brand that understands and wants to give back to the society (think natural calamities).

Get creative, and even a little crazy is good – age old marketing strategies won’t cut it, you will need to go direct, social, personal and be the brand that your customer can relate to, or certainly wants to. For instance, a great example is that of Discovery, who in 2011 set up its Influencer Panel to listen to its audiences, who in turn helped shape the name, logo and programming of its new network. Being digital is a big part of any customer experience today. So don’t be afraid to automate, however, do keep in mind that you can’t simply have a technology solution play out in front of your customer, you need to humanise that digital interaction – deliver something that is delightful, immersive and simplified. In short you need to deliver a superior digital customer experience.

While companies need to make strategic decisions about the best pathways for their industry to build customer value, having a differentiated customer engagement is a non-negotiable element to offer a great customer experience in any case.

Gartner, Smarter with Gartner, Organizations should focus on three key opportunities to drive the future customer experience, September 10, 2015, http://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/the-customer-experience-in-2020/

In our first post of the series, we spoke about what customer experience means, and how it is defined by businesses across the board, irrespective of the industry they belong to. But, if you, like many have wondered why the sudden emphasis on customer experience, then I urge you to read on. After all companies both big and small have been doing business for centuries right? So why the sudden need to woo the customer – to delight him or in some cases even ‘wow’ him? There are a few valid reasons to do this today – chief among them being ‘To drive customer loyalty.’ We live in times of “blink and you miss it” information driven world. Today every minute there is millions of terabytes of data being searched, shared and exchanged.

In such a setting, a loyal customer can reap in rich dividends for any business and create that much needed multiplier effect in a highly competitive market. In fact a Harvard Business School report showcased that on an average, increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25%-95%. There is no doubt clinching a loyal customer has evolved to become a key competitive benchmark. It can be the difference between success and failure for any business.

And here’s why:

Social power: The steady rise of social media, online services, location-based services and connected devices has led to a tectonic shift in the way businesses function. While earlier businesses thrived in the age of manufacturing and distribution and even morphed to a large extent with the advent of the information age, today, they are squarely placed in the age of “customer experience”. Each post, tweet and like on the multiple social platforms are indicators of a customer’s experience with their brand and will likely influence their future buying decisions.

Information is wealth: Access to the internet has made gathering information easier than ever for customers and businesses alike. It has made services accessible and competitive landscapes flatter. However, as we traverse through the new age of customer experience, customers are not only users of information, but they are the ones also driving it. Therefore it is necessary for brands to have customers who are loyal and can act as powerful ambassadors for them, lending more credibility and faith.

Power of one: The balance of power has shifted. Today, brands that engage with their customer and have to be more intuitive, have to be mobile first and have to focus heavily on their digital presence. Consider this, a recent Deloitte study on changing customer behaviour sites that 84 percent of digital shoppers reach for devices before or during store visits. Even in the B2B scenario, customers rely heavily on word of mouth and referral value that a brand has. One bad customer review on social networks or online forums is all it takes to severely damage the reputation of a large brand.

Cost comfort: It has been well researched that a loyal customer is not only likely to be a repeat customer but more often than not is likely to spend more as time goes on, paying a premium to interact with your brand, fulfilling every marketer’s dream. And guess what its far cheaper to retain a customer than it is to acquire one!

As management guru Peter Drucker said: “The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise, is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer. “And their experience with your brand is the final word. So show your customers the love if you want to win over their ‘precious’ loyalty!

There is a restaurant in Los Angeles, located in an inconspicuous neighbourhood and it doesn’t scream gourmet from its facade. It has a female chef leading the menu, and serves food that has its roots in 13th century traditional Japanese meal style called kaiseki where the diners experience the “Chef’s table” pre-organised menus. But that’s not what makes it unique.

You see, this chef ensures that every diner not only experiences her unique brand of signature kaiseki dishes playing out like a symphony or a story by themselves, but also get a chance to meet her at the end of the meal and share their experiences on what they felt at the end of each course. Every diner’s experience and menu of what they are served is documented by the chef. She has 8 binders full – and no customer will ever have a repeat dish at her restaurant. Ever!

Now isn’t that what customer experience means!

It is in the attention to detail. It is in the superlative experience provided each time. It is in the thought and care put into every interaction the customer has with your brand.

We found this definition online and whether you belong to the banking and financial sector, the red hot ecommerce and digital industries or even the entertainment and food sectors, the glove still fits.

A CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE is a Customer’s perception of their rational, physical, emotional, subconscious, and psychological interaction with any part of an organization. This perception affects Customer behaviours and builds memories, which drive Customer Loyalty and affects the economic value an organization generates.

In 2014, customer experience was pegged as a top priority for most marketers, whereas in 2015 it became a central focus. However, 2016 has been pegged as the “year of the customer” wherein customer experience will likely dictate all other priorities for businesses. This is the shift that enterprises need to adopt in their perspective if they are the compete in the hyper speed digitally shaped market, that their customers are a part of.

But simply saying “have a great customer experience” is not enough. You need to define what the key constituents of a great experience are, and that’s exactly what we will do for you. Each post will take you through an important aspect that acts as a contributing factor to your brand’s overall customer experience. The ingredient that will add the umami flavor to the dish your brand serves, so to speak!

So watch this space for our next post on the first essential ingredient that lends to just the right flavour of customer experience!

Anybody familiar with Identity Management in a Digital era will recognize that Identity Management in times of where boundaries of the firewall are blurred can be a very chaotic affair. Multiple tactical tools, access policies, data repositories that even reside outside the firewall, a combination of manual processes, etc., only complicate matters.

While digital has blurred boundaries, user authentication continues to be anchored by usernames and passwords making nearly every organization vulnerable to credentials harvesting, identity thefts and cyber attacks. These recurring Identity and access problems continue even though identity management scales to become a bigger element of enterprise security. As enterprises embrace cloud, social and mobile, they tend to lose coverage and control of their IT infrastructure. This essentially indicates that they need to have higher degree of control and checks, balances on the parts of their infrastructure where they still exercise control. Thus Enterprise Security is driving Identity Management to redraw the boundaries of their IT.

In such times, there have been a slew of new age Identity Management providers like Ping, SailPoint, ForgeRock in addition to the original heavy weights like Oracle who continue to attempt and scale their coverage to suit the digital times. But CISOs are increasing relying on one professional expert who have and approach Identity Management for their IT with enterprise wide view and can offer a unified Digital Identity Platform for making their security objectives a reality. Clearly CISOs need a Trusted Security Partner.
To know more visit:
https://www.aurionpro.com/enterprise-security/

As the world goes increasingly digital, it is evident that the consumers are adapting to it faster than enterprises are. The consumer is today digitally more empowered than the enterprise is. He has stopped receiving static communication from businesses and prefers to interact with the business. He knows more from other customers on social media channels and uses it to make informed choices of purchase and engagement with the enterprise’s business, products and services than he has ever before.

With over a third of consumers in the US, Europe being the millennial population who are more digital, it is clear therefore that the enterprises simply have to scale up and go more digital and interactive than ever before or they will be left behind losing market share and revenues. In places like India, this population is a very large chunk with predictions stating that over 50% of the consumer population with considerable purchasing power will be from the millennial segment by 2020. Businesses and enterprises don’t have a choice. They either adapt early and succeed or get left behind and eventually lose their position in the market.

So what can they do? To start with, they ought to move from being an archaic customer engagement culture to being a new-age one. And it starts with Customer Communication. Gone are the days of static paper bills, statements and receipts being simply converted into PDF and being called e-statements, e-bills and e-receipts. The time has come to transition from these static points of communication to interactive, engaging, enriching experiences for consumers. It’s time businesses stop transmitting and start interacting!

The sweeping wave of digital innovation has not left no industry untouched and the Logistics and Supply Chain industries have also had to grapple with how to leverage new age, cloud, mobile and digital technologies to foster innovation within organizations. Logistics players need to rethink how their distribution operations can function in light of the possibilities that the new digital shift offers.

CIOs are evolving to take centre stage as Data, Digital and Innovation has opened up newer opportunities. But success towards greater efficiency and greater yield on investment is not easy. They ought to learn to leverage technology to achieve flexibility and agility to re-route and re-distribute consignments according to customers’ needs. One of the important elements being explored towards this is the need to have control towers with decentralized technology approaches while gaining with an opex model of using cloud will fit the business better. This is significant give the great demand to optimize the transportation network. The third element is to explore the world of the sharing economy; find out what this means for logistics and how technology can enable logistics companies to indulge in new business models drive by the ‘shared’ mind-set.

Eventually the CIOs who succeed in logistics will be the ones who use integrated solutions and collaboration concepts such as omni-channel distribution, smart city planning and shared fleet management strategies to model a new cohesive supply chain and distribution architecture leveraging cloud. This will yield above than anticipated efficiency gains and cost reduction that are crucial for success in this industry. Aurionpro is participating at the 17th Annual Logistics CIO Forum and should you want to meet up with us to have a conversation around how to streamline and enhance your logistics operations by improving efficiency and optimizing working capital, schedule a meeting with us by contacting us now