6+4 (Six plus four) Customer experience engineering approach

6+4 (Six plus four) Customer experience engineering approach

Source : A Study on Startup Branding through Customer-Experience-Engineering Approach and Service Design Thinking, Chiahsun Lee, 2014

1. Few findings from Cisco and HTC case study

KSF of Cisco Customer Experience Strategy
a. Cisco leverages many new tools and self-builds software in its service network; these technologies are enabling Cisco to differentiate its customer experience.
b. With a robust service design and engineering process with its genesis in customer needs, which are identified through surveys, followed by the accurate identification of problems, Cisco redesigned its service interaction platform based on the observations on customer feedback related to their processes. Cisco has changed several times to exploit emerging opportunities to migrate their service type to a new service.
c. Cisco also treats the data as an important factor driving decision making and shaping the customer experience strategy; during the data interpretation process, which includes the statics (SPC tools), Cisco, with the talent procured because of its acquisitions, can perform data analysis and data mining.

Have chance to win Customer back?
The best moments for HTC has skipped since HTC made vague promises as HTC One customers were disappointed that HTC did not offer a consistent brand image and that their experience deviated because of different suppliers and poor display performance; these disputes gained publicity over the social media, with the failure of QB branding being a major contributor to the company culture issues and lack of customer commitments at the company leader level. Communication gaps exists in internal and external caused doubts and it resulted the loss of the advantage that new launched products had used to have leading features and specifications 6 months to 1 year ahead of the market. HTC had spotty reputation to its customers and lost carrier loyalty. HTC getting weak on company’s ability to keep their commitments with customers became the most critical aspect, these were huge influential factors for a successful brand company, whether a start-up or a company just transformed from being an OEM.
Further, one of many failure reasons behind that is HTC gave up their focus on Csat since customer feedbacks should be valued as a direction for new product development (NPD) through the process of analyzing customer insights, which used to be key process for VOC extracted from multiple channels and from integrated media tools. HTC might have chance to win customer back as good organizational heritage they had, it could effectuate innovation diffusion inside the company.

2. 6+4 Customer experience engineering approach
part I : A service model with six categories

- Brand Promise

Brand promise presents a style of company's leadership to a strong commitment of a customer-minded culture. Whether case studied is one of success or failure, we discuss the best possible customer experience with a brand promise that can be manifested in visionary and capable leadership. Leadership needs to be aligned with the company culture in its operations.

HTC paid a heavy price when customers encountered inconsistent product specifications Cisco’s CEO announced its customer experience strategy only after the company discovered that its customers having a negative image about the Cisco culture. Poor customer experience was damaging the Cisco brand. Brand promise is the most important element in conveying a company’s commitment to its customers, with a conviction in a positive product and service experience relating to the brand. A company that makes a brand promise shows its determination to allocate resources and investments in new technologies such as a new CRM, data mining, data science and research, ubicomp, and the badge program from MIT. All of the above which are initiatives that require extensive time and resources for the process of defining the problem, understanding the context, verifying the solution, implementation, and staff training, etc. A positive outcome of a successful brand promise can be measured with high scores in the customer loyalty scorecard.

- Social Technology /Talent Pool

This category defines a company has an organizational structure filled with strong data scientists (or growth hackers, a data scientist is someone who applies data-discovery tools and employs scientific methods to identify new insights on data. The best data scientists are product and process innovators.

Talent with social and technological expertise is a key factor shaping the direction of customer service and maintaining the competitive advantage along with establishment of a strong organizational structure.

Designing a service organization is associated with the goal and strategy of the company. In HTC, it is clear that a strategy of hiring people with PR or marketing background, especially social media communication skills, would be helpful in the transformation to a new service development (NSD). We also learned from Cisco that the company has a fundamental advantage of plentiful technological talent as it has made frequent acquisitions of companies from different sources. This factor will significantly consolidate Cisco’s success over its competitors through successful digital marketing and a high quality customer experience. Recent research has coined a different term for individuals with these skills, calling them data scientists or growth hackers. With skills in both qualitative and quantitative analysis, the social technology /talent could leverage the data obtained from users’ feedback and then provide the company with appropriate guidance on strategy or project actions.

- Emerging Technology to Trigger New Service Landscape

As a form of technological evolution, emerging technology plays major part among customer service and customer experience movements, for maintaining competitive advantage, toward companies driving force by the newest customer service tools, new methodology, or new process implementation. SPC tools were frequently used to improve service quality in the past; nowadays, CRM expands the view on customer value proposition and potential customer requirements interpreting customer behavior from data analysis and data mining. ROI (return of investment) is another raised concern which impacts from financial side has influenced the service landscape.

One of the purposes for new technology adoption is to resolve information asymmetry between customer and product/service provider, capture and use data is the key elements to make appropriate decisions on the shaping customer experience strategy and exceeding customer needs.

We learned from above 2 case studies, a better customer strategy is aiming to use data and technologies to synchronize customer experience and company goals at the same time.

- Boundaryless Organization as Regards Product Development, Marketing, and Service

With an implication that a company engages with its customers to co-create products or services via multiple communication channels. Companies are choosing to co-create products, with a shift in customers’ roles and products, and production-oriented companies are changing their model to one of crowdsourcing, which means inviting customers to contribute their ideas toward designing or improving products through community participation.

Increasing volumes of customers are willing to participate in company activities. Cisco welcomed customer to join peer-to-peer support groups. Customers could interact with the other customers, which broke the traditional boundaries between the product development function, marketing function, and service team. HTC displays a similar intention as they have developed the FOTA and tellHTC platforms to capture customer behavior; two-way communication could delight customers as the device sold should embody the HTC-customer relationship—this is the strategy suggested by this study after the tellHTC project. A context care experience is based on understanding the customer context. Data capture and proper interpretation for business insight or intelligence is critical, as correct decisions need accuracy and judgment in the use of data. This would be the differentiate from competitors as proactive action like anticipate and respond to customer needs can be done before discovering potential shortcomings through customer research or feedback. There are some practices in some ICT companies, customers could participate jointly with the company new product quality testing process even if they are not hired by, or have a contract with, the company; this helps the company to identify any unknown aspect relating to the customer context.

- Seamless Experience Strategy

A seamless experience strategy stands for a company's strategy and executions to create a seamless customer interaction experience. The case study shows that Cisco migrating to a new service network after it acknowledged of customers using a website to resolve their issues than through making a phone call. This pertains to multichannel engagement; many companies adopted SSME to identify the best route for interaction; however, customer experiences may not always follow a standard pattern, and this is an obstacle to design products or services by contextualizing experiences.

As HTC has tried to extend its service coverage to provide a more digital experience; it launched a chat service and an online trouble shooting and diagnostic tool. This could be improved upon by using a widget that could be embedded in devices, and the customer could easily click a button that would cause the widget to integrate the location, mobility, and service function. Cisco demonstrates its multichannel engagement in cross-functional customer interaction, with the concept of “All to All.” This is a preventive and cross-functional collaborative concept using lessons learned across contact centers; tools for best practice; intelligent infrastructure; systems such as ISACC and IPCC media, blending/ICM v5 shared contact portals and shared web tools; and much more. Cisco developed the training school and Cisco certification program for equipping people with Cisco product knowledge before seeking jobs, resulting in a healthier partnership and mutual benefit to Cisco and its product users.

- Offering Nonagent-based Customer Support

This category defines a company provides an easy-to-access self-support system whenever customers need an instant answer or solution, such as a peer-to-peer community.Companies allow customers to access answers or solutions through the internet knowledge repository, enterprise virtue agent (EVA), and peer support via the community, with a self-diagnosis tool provided.

Technology and the appropriate use of data for the Nonagent-based customer support offering solution would ensure the exclusion of useless content and the prevention of an unpleasant or helpless feeling that would vitiate customer experience. This is crucial, as customers are increasingly demanding accurate answers or instant solutions, with a robust and usable platform.

part II : A service solution with four categories

- Branding

From the Cisco and HTC case studies, we noticed that the service model change is driven by brand transformation, whether it is from OEM to a brand, or rebranding. Customer perceived and satisfied with a brand, this brand company delivers consistent product quality and results repurchase, a solid customer loyalty. In terms of the brand promise, using social and technology talent, corporations can incorporate innovation to shape their brands, by primarily focusing on building the brand assets and brand strength to transform these into brand value. Startup branding is attaining importance as the potential rapid growth of young companies due to ICT attracts entrepreneurs; behind these successful APP startup stories, we can see external forces from the macro environment, such as government policy, the education system, and passionate investors.

It is easier for entrepreneurs to create an innovation culture at early stage as a young company has the opportunity to hire talent with a skillset of social technology to create an adequate internal infrastructure, to apply innovation processes of developing new products and designing new services. Presently, they lack of adequate resources that have expertise and are reputed or well-known to existing customers; these are problems faced by Cisco and HTC even though they have a long-standing market presence.

Marketing events such as online campaigns, meetup events, or a newsletter are common tools for image and brand building activities. Furthermore, by using search engine optimization (SEO), Google AdWords, and Yahoo!, search marketing now are popular in the ICT industry because of their wide reach and their speed to make the brands “go viral.” More recent trends in new startups include the creation of unconventional or innovative approaches for branding activities, customer experience, and delivery design, in contrast to traditional techniques.

- Service Design Thinking

Service design thinking implies a mindset in product design and branding, which engages and values its employees and customer feedbacks. Customer perceptions can be satisfied through direct experience when they deal with the front-end staff, or through indirect experience, which includes word-of-mouth, posts on a forum/discussion board, or articles written by influential individuals. Both Cisco and HTC are engineer-oriented companies; therefore, its natural for them to use engineering methods to refine their customer servicing strategies. The engineering methodology usually starts from a problem discovery stage, followed by a prototype/ user test for developing resolution, and then the proof of validity or idea at the final step of problem-solving / exploration process. The common problem/opportunity discovered from the case studied is that companies are committed to facilitate better communication between themselves and customers, to create seamless interaction and improve customer experience.

Quality management is essential for delivering customer experience delivery; it can be measure via the Csat performance rating after every transaction, with the Csat analysis findings and SPC tools that are frequently used in operation activities whenever the root causes need to be identified through deep dive research, to facilitate improvements.

Customer engagement is another crucial to the product life cycle; in this study, the proposed service model invites customers to participate in product development and marketing activities, which can strengthen customer acquisition and retention.

- Data Science

We learned from the case study of Cisco that technological factors are involved in the customer experience concept through service innovation initiatives. In the case of HTC, it sought a robust knowledge management mechanism to manage the increased volume attributable to logs and support activities.

Services can be regarded as being knowledge-intensive, as customers who purchase high-tech products, also seek to increase their participation in sharing their personal experience and knowledge. Therefore, the knowledge discovery process (KDD) is useful in processing raw data to create knowledge; this is a key element in data science, which primarily focuses on extracting value from data and turning it into business strength.

- Big Data

CSAT is still the top priority for brand companies currently; customer value can be measured through their behavior and experience instead of a research survey or interview, .

Customer data can be collect from everywhere-it might be a Sociometric badges or posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals, device logs, service logs, statistic experts have tools like RFM model, machine learning and Hadoop to get customer insight, to using new technology and prediction modeling, which is heavily used in ICT industries.