The global economic crisis has triggered significant cuts to government budgets, forcing public services to be delivered both more efficiently, and less expensively. Especially in the UK, service design has made great inroads in influencing the way that central (and local) government engages with its citizenry.
Enterprise software is big business. It underpins the corporate world, counts untold end-users, and represents a significant chunk of IT spending. But enterprise software vendors often fail to apply the tried-and-tested methods of customer experience design to the way in which they get their products to market. Julie Hunt thinks they’re missing an opportunity.
Significant changes to an organization can be driven by activities from across a wide spectrum, from rebuilding an underlying IT system to the wholesale overhaul of a service. In the latter case, we see service design as an integral part of the overall project. But how does one handle the overlap between service design and change management?
With predictions from marketing, technology and customer experience for 2013 in full swing, changes in the boardroom are emerging as far as customer advocates are concerned. In an interview with Marchai Bruchey (CCO of Thunderhead), Neil Davey discusses her role, activities, and responsibilities as a chief customer officer, making corporate culture more customer-centered.
Recently, Rosenfeld Media published Content everywhere. It’s a guide to creating future-ready, flexible, reusable, manageable, and meaningful content wherever it needs to go. Content strategist Bas Evers read the book and decided if it’s worth recommending.
In april of 2012, we started with our corporate blog on customer experience (design) for large organizations: BiRDS on a WiRE. Identifying relevant, interesting and valuable content has been our focus all the time. Content created by CX professionals from within Informaat and curated content by others from outside. We noticed that customer experience got a lot of attention and we think that will not change next year. On the contrary.
What are the responsibilities and the authority of customer experience owners within organizations? This research question was answered by senior customer experience professionals and executives from leading telcos in various continents. Telcos are allocating the most resources to customer experience. But while 92% of telecom executives say that customer experience is a top strategic objective of theirs, as customers, they rate the experience poorly or average at best. So, where are telcos on the maturity path for CX?
At the end of every year, analysts, thinkers and watchers provide their view on where we stand and what’s ahead of us in the coming year. These crystal ball readers predict our future with lots of statistical materials, like diagrams, charts and other nifty visualizations. Applied to various domains such as the internet, mobile or (social) media, they all agree on one thing: Digital disruption of society is getting stronger and stronger. So, what’s their lookout for 2013?
The best way to start improving the customer experience of a (business) organization is to map out the current customer journey. A customer journey map outlines all interactions, touchpoints and information exchanges between customers and (employees of) the company. But then the map must be used as a tool to improve customer experiences significantly. How can that be done? Three board members from Strativity Group Inc. wrote a series of articles on how to do customer journey mapping right.
Content strategist Bas Evers reviews “Content Strategy for Decision Makers“, a manuscript by Rahel Bailie and Noz Urbina. He highlights five important lessons for organizations and discusses whether the book lives up to its title.
Inconsistent, incoherent and fragmented customer experiences are more the rule than than the exception. One of their major causes is the lack of coordination between departments in an organization (a.k.a.the silos). Initiating Customer Experience Councils might be a tactic to make sure customer experiences are orchestrated properly.
Many organizations struggle with complexity, externally as well as internally. Yet, focusing on tactics only has limited value. The value of strategy is long-lasting. Strategy involves human needs, characteristics and drivers that never change. It guides the creation of a plan to get from the existing situation to the desired one, shaped by goals and constraints. At the “NEXT Service Design” conference in Berlin, Alexander Baumgardt (“a practical buddhist who makes money” at Systemic Partners) outlined the value of strategy, design and human needs for business organizations dealing with massive change.
The digital revolution keeps accelerating, and shows no sign of slowing down. Staying abreast of the trend, business consulting firms have developed opinions on how digital is fundamentally changing business. At a recent conference, Gartner predicted that by 2015, about a quarter of all organizations will have created a new seat at the senior executive table: the Chief Digital Officer. But what does this new leadership role bring to the boardroom?
As many might know, one of the most prominent promoters of customer experience in business organizations is Forrester Research. After publishing their widely-covered book OutsideIn: The Power Of Putting Customers At The Center Of Your Business, they now organize a series of events for the business community to explain why companies – in order to survive the 21st century – must focus on customer experience.
One of our clients has set itself a clear objective: improving its customer-centered service delivery and cost reduction through increasing the autonomy of its customers. That means more digital self-services and a project requiring a comprehensive service design approach. We started with a “service design tasting” first.